Finishing up the 2010 Donors Choose Sciencebloggers for Students Drive

This year’s edition of the science blogosphere’s drive to raise money to support classroom projects with Donors Choose has ended. However, if you were a donor this year, we need you to do one more thing. HP has donated matching funds which will be translated into a gift-code sent to the email address you used to originally register.

To expend these funds, you need to check the value on the gift-code and then go to Donors Choose and donate this value to one or more remaining projects.

Please consider these fine remaining challenges from the DrugMonkey blog giving page.

A project for High School frog dissection requires only $278, we could reach the finish line on this one easily with the matching funds from those of you that already gave to the DM challenge.

A middle school pig dissection project is also probably within reach at $478 remaining.

Thanks for participating this year, donors!

Why not to donate to Donor’s Choose

I’m sort of curious about those of you who don’t see the appeal in Donor’s Choose. Don’t get me wrong, I pick and choose my philanthropy efforts too-we can all only do so much. So I’m not criticizing, just wondering.
Are your philanthropy dollars being spent elsewhere? On what sorts of causes?
Are you too poor to spare $10?
Do you have a philosophical problem with having to raise funds for what should be public funded education?
Are you not seeing the value in the projects that are asking for your support?
We’re all anonymous here so be honest.

Donor’s Choose Science Blog Challenge 2010 is Rockin’

…but have you donated? All it takes to feel all warm and fuzzy inside is to throw down $5 or $10, maybe $25, in support of a classroom that needs support for science-related activities.

It’s a battle of the Biologists, a clash of the Chemists, a grapple of the Geologists, an opposition of the Oceanographers, a face-off of the Physicists!
October 10th through November 9th, science bloggers from far and wide will compete to see who can deliver the most supplies to students across the country.
Want to throw your hat in the ring? Create a Giving Page!

The Leaderboard has Scienceblogs.com at the top with $5,259 raised from 78 donors. The readers of Discover Magazine Blogs clock in second with $4,203 from 46 donors. Scientopia is breathing down Disco’s neck at $4,172 from 60 donors. Ocean and Geo Bloggers ($2,199; 47 donors) are outpointing Lab Spaces ($1,884; 38 donors ), but I look for LS to make a strong run- the bloggers have been getting after it for this year’s drive. WIRED science blogs ($262; 3 donors) and a collection of independent bloggers ($221; 8 donors) are contributing as well.
I encourage you to click over to the DrugMonkey Blog Challenge and donate. Seriously. Every $5 makes a difference. Every donor counts. Even if you don’t like the ones I’ve selected, browse the other challenges or just browse the whole Donor’s Choose project list. Kids need to be excited about science, learning and education. This is one small way we can make a difference folks.

C'mon Scientopia Readers, are you going to let those Disco Mag readers beat us?

…but have you donated? All it takes to feel all warm and fuzzy inside is to throw down $5 or $10, maybe $25, in support of a classroom that needs support for science-related activities.

It’s a battle of the Biologists, a clash of the Chemists, a grapple of the Geologists, an opposition of the Oceanographers, a face-off of the Physicists!

October 10th through November 9th, science bloggers from far and wide will compete to see who can deliver the most supplies to students across the country.

Want to throw your hat in the ring? Create a Giving Page!

The Leaderboard has Scienceblogs.com at the top with $5,259 raised from 78 donors. The readers of Discover Magazine Blogs clock in second with $4,203 from 46 donors. Scientopia is breathing down Disco’s neck at $4,172 from 60 donors. Ocean and Geo Bloggers ($2,199; 47 donors) are outpointing Lab Spaces ($1,884; 38 donors ), but I look for LS to make a strong run- the bloggers have been getting after it for this year’s drive. WIRED science blogs ($262; 3 donors) and a collection of independent bloggers ($221; 8 donors) are contributing as well.

I encourage you to click over to the DrugMonkey Blog Challenge and donate. Seriously. Every $5 makes a difference. Every donor counts. Even if you don’t like the ones I’ve selected, browse the other challenges or just browse the whole Donor’s Choose project list. Kids need to be excited about science, learning and education. This is one small way we can make a difference folks.

—
crossposted at DM on Sb

For half the price of a Brooklyn hipster's Fixie ride.

“Are we going to dissect anything?”

Thus query the 9th grade students in Mr. S.’s class at Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn.

My students are ninth graders from a high school in New York City. We are one of the few larger public high schools still functioning. Most of our students are coming from poorer school districts here. I try to give them memorable learning experiences in the science classroom and lab in order to keep their attendance up as well as turning them away from the idea that science is boring and impossible for them to master and enjoy.

A goal we share here in the science-related blogosphere, do we not Dear Reader? What would Mr. S. like to do?

I would like to provide my students with an opportunity to dissect frogs. Last year, the dissection lab was cut due to budget constraints. The most common question asked by students during our lab meetings is, “When are we going to dissect something?”

$448

This is the amount needed to complete the funding of this project.

In Brooklyn. Where the hipsters throw down this kinda cash for a bit of cycling bling. Probably twice this amount.

Can you spare $5 or $10 to help out? $25? Every little bit counts. Take the chance to recruit a scientist…or just to help another kid realize that learning can be fun.

For this year’s DonorsChoose science blogging challenge Hewlett-Packard has committed matching funds up to $50,000. So every dollar you donate will be doubled.

Donor's Choose 2010!

cross posting from DM on Sb:

It is my favorite time of year for blog-related group action activities.

Welcome back to the science blogosphere’s efforts to raise money to support classroom projects with Donor’s Choose.

As always, the key consideration is that every little bit counts. If prior years are any judge, the grad students in my readership are unbelievably generous, given their limited incomes. Just sayin, PIs, just sayin.

Also, I’ve selected a bunch of projects for your consideration that caught my eye for undoubtedly random and personal reasons. If you don’t see anything that catches your fancy, take a look through other bloggers’ lists or search for yourself at the Donor’s Choose site. No matter what you choose to support, kids win. And that means we all win.

__

Addendum:
Now, I must confess that I blew it this year. I was distracted working on some grant or other and blasted up my Donor’s Choose challenge page (Science up the Schools 2010!) ahead of the official launch date for the competition between blog collectives/interests. My total bad. but then The Gam launched….and our new MortalBlogEnemies launched…and what was I gonna do? Now PZ has thrown down with his 8 billion pound commentariat.

Sorry Janet. I’m not having a good few weeks here….

Donors Choose Challenge 2010

It is my favorite time of year for blog-related group action activities.
Welcome back to the science blogosphere’s efforts to raise money to support classroom projects with Donor’s Choose.

As always, the key consideration is that every little bit counts. If prior years are any judge, the grad students in my readership are unbelievably generous, given their limited incomes. Just sayin, PIs, just sayin.
Also, I’ve selected a bunch of projects for your consideration that caught my eye for undoubtedly random and personal reasons. If you don’t see anything that catches your fancy, take a look through other bloggers’ lists or search for yourself at the Donor’s Choose site. No matter what you choose to support, kids win. And that means we all win.
__
Addendum:
Now, I must confess that I blew it this year. I was distracted working on some grant or other and blasted up my Donor’s Choose challenge page (Science up the Schools 2010!) ahead of the official launch date for the competition between blog collectives/interests. My total bad. but then The Gam launched….and our new MortalBlogEnemies launched…and what was I gonna do? Now PZ has thrown down with his 8 billion pound commentariat.
Sorry Janet. I’m not having a good few weeks here….

Last Chance to Science-Up Some Schools

I have been a bit distracted and keep forgetting to remind you that the DonorsChoose Social Media Challenge is coming to a close. If you keep meaning to donate to one of our selected projects or those of another ScienceBlogger (or heck, any project at all), now’s the time. The challenge ends at the end of the month. As always, don’t be too shy to donate even a little bit. Every $5 or even $1 inches those projects that much closer to funding. And I won’t lie, I love the idea of lots of people getting involved, even if they don’t have a huge amount to give.
I’m looking forward to the end of the fundraising drive because I get to distribute some Reader Appreciation Prizes to some of our reader/contributors.
Don’t forget to forward me your confirmation if you want to enter the drawing. Even if you don’t fancy wearing our nameplate, you’ll be able to shop at a selected number of other Sb’er schwagshops as well. So go donate, help some kids learn a little more science and throw your hat in the ring for a thank you from Your Humble Narrator.

HP Challenges the DM readers to throw down for DonorsChoose!

Breaking news from the DonorsChoose Social Media Challenge for 2009! HP already contributed $50 to every challenge on the board. Now they are offering a matching deal to spur competition. PalMD’s and Isis’ readers may have exhausted their wallets and now it is time to catch up by scoring matching funds from HP. From the DonorsChoose email:

HP has been tracking the competition closely and has already made a $50 contribution to your page, as a result of all of your hard work. The good news? HP wants to make yet another contribution to your Giving Page. The more you raise by this Sunday, October 25, the more HP will contribute!
Next week, we will distribute $200,000, the rest of HP’s contribution, to all Social Media Challenge Giving Pages. But this time, your share will be calculated on a pro-rata basis based on the amount you’ve raised by Sunday. What does that mean? Now is the time to motivate your readers, followers, friends, fam and fans to donate to your page, so you can claim a larger share of the funds!
And there’s yet another bonus: after the Challenge is over, everyone who donated to your Giving Page will get a DonorsChoose.org Giving Card, courtesy of HP. Those donors will get to decide which projects are supported with HP’s $200,000 in funds

So if you’ve been holding back or meaning to get to it, now’s the time to stroll on over to the DM Challenge page and give a few bucks to the kids.

Economy still bad, kids need your help!

Thanks to those of you who have already donated to the DonorsChoose Social Media Challenge for 2009! The DrugMonkey blog readers have been participating in our Challenge and have already raised $675 from 21 donors. Along the way you have helped to fund 9 proposals from school teachers!
But there are still lots of interesting and fun projects that could use your help and I will remind you that every little bit helps. Even $5 or $1 moves each of those proposals closer to reality. Since this drive started this blog has received anywhere from 500 to 1700 unique visitors per day. A little poll I ran received over 70 responses. You can scroll through and review the number of comments we get for yourself. So I know you like talking and thinking about science and the business of science, DearReader. How about giving a little bit of that back? Spread the science love around and throw down a little for the kids?

Science-Up the Schools with….Mink?

Great Job on the DonorsChoose drive, folks! The DrugMonkey Blog Science-Up the Schools Challenge is doing well with $422 raised from 16 donors. This latter makes me very happy since we’re hanging in there in the top three on the ScienceBlogs board in terms of number of donors. We’re in difficult times and my readers are often grad students and postdocs who don’t have a lot to give anyway but I love to see people getting involved and endorsing the importance of science in elementary and secondary education. Keep it coming! Every $5 or even $1 donation moves a project closer to funding. Some of them are backed by matching funds from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation so you might even leverage your kick-down.

The Conduct of Science is a Social Science

I often lament* the fact that Sb doesn’t have a blog that focuses on the methods and practices of the social sciences. The reasons are many but I think my most general formulation is that the social sciences are the most scientific of the sciences and nobody seems to understand this.

Good Works

Wow. I am just amazed at the generosity of the Scienceblogs readers. The Seed Media Science Blogs challenge has already raised $4,782 from 60 readers. These dollars go to improve classroom learning, mostly in the science and math areas.
The DrugMonkey blog readers have been participating and that makes me very happy. Great job everyone who contributed and I will ask everyone else to consider making a donation of any size. Even at the $1 or $5 level you are not just helping move closer to funding a project, but casting a vote for the importance of education. Education, science education and even a strong vote against the anti-science tactics of PeTA.

Science-Up the Schools with DonorsChoose!

Welcome to the DonorsChoose Social Media Challenge for 2009! The DrugMonkey blog is challenging you, DearReader, to pony up for school kids as part of the Scienceblogs bid to out-charitable-ize our MortalBlogEnemies. Particularly those knitters, mommyblogs and of course, Discover Magazine blogs.
As I noted at the start of last year’s Challenge:

Like many (perhaps all) of my readers, I’ve been interested in certain things my entire life. Facts about the natural world. What things are. How things work. What will happen when you poke that with a stick? As luck would have it, I managed to turn this proclivity into my livelihood. Not bad. I also get to participate in a great human endeavor that lays down lasting improvements for our species and our planet. Nice. It would be great if this opportunity was available to all young children with similar interest would it not? Well, interest is great but children require a fertile environment in which to pursue their interests.

For those of you new to DonorsChoose.org you should start at this information page on the operations. You might want to review ringleader Janet’s opening post for this year as well. In short outline, school teachers (grades K-12) propose small projects for their classroom and request philanthropic donations. Anyone at all can then donate money to a project of their choice. It is easy to browse the site and gate on projects by geographical region, grade level, topic domain (science of course, but also arts, exercise, whathaveyou), total cost and a host of other selection factors. In short it is simple to find something that attracts your interest.
For this year I have selected a number of proposals for your consideration. Other Scienceblogs folks will be selecting their own slates for consideration of their readers. So take a look around at the fascinating and educational proposals that have been selected. (While I am a reasonably competitive person, let me emphasize that the only goal here is to support projects that attract you. So browse around if nothing I’ve selected for our list enthralls you…something else will.) At the very least you will find yourself fascinated by what the teacher proposals have to say about the state of educational funding…
You don’t have to be rich to participate. Every donation counts. $20. $5. $1. Whatever you can afford, it will move a project that much closer to funding.
I’ll end with a small taste of what is in store with a sample from the children you helped last year.

More Thank-You Cards from Donors Choose

As I cannot restate enough, some of our Readers were very generous during October’s DrugMonkey Blog Reader Challenge as a part of the other ScienceBlogs’ participation in the DonorsChoose.org Bloggers Challenge. One of cool parts of DonorsChoose is that the teachers and children who have benefited from donor funded projects send Thank You notes.
I have just received another batch which I thought I would share with you.
Before you check those out, I thought I would mention another opportunity for you to support young scientists. In this case, Isis the Scientist of On Becoming an Domestic and Laboratory Goddess blog has partnered with the American Physiological Society to fund an award for an undergraduate woman who has submitted a superlative research abstract for their Annual Meeting.
Go visit Isis for all the details, all she’s asking for is your eyeball, viewing her blog pages for the next few weeks. (If you are feeling a tad more generous feel free to click the PayPal link on her sidebar and send a couple of bucks her way. It’s for the junior scientists!) [Update: I just noticed that the APS has opened up a special line on their donation page for the David J. Bruce/ISIS Award fund. In case you want to directly donate in that way.]