DonorsChoose

For the month of October--and for the third year in a row--ScienceBlogs will be teaming up with the DonorsChoose Bloggers Challenge to raise money for worthy classroom projects. This year, they've added a nifty blog widget, which I've posted at the top of my left sidebar. So, if you're in a generous mood, you can donate directly from my widget, or you can visit my challenge here. DonorsChoose is a website where potential donors can browse through project proposals written by teachers from all across the US, and this year I've personally picked out ten projects that I would like to see…

ScienceBlogs and science bloggers, in general, have enthusiastically supported fund-raising efforts by DonorsChoose for the past two years, and we're doing it once again for 2008. DonorsChoose works like this: teachers write descriptions of what they want and how they'll use it for teaching, and submit their proposals to DonorsChoose. We pick the projects we like and if you like them, too, you can help get these projects funded.Donate to schools! Win a prize! Last time I did this, we ended up funding three cool projects in biotechnology education. Students in Mrs. G's classroom in South…

Thursday was the last day of the month-long DonorsChoose challenge, and ScienceBlogs did incredibly well. You can view the full leaderboard here, but Janet of Adventures in Ethics and Science offers these details: 20 Sb blogs mounted challenges; 12 of them met or exceeded their fundraising goals. We raised:$54,335 from Sb donors$15,000 from Seed Media Group(More than $69,000 total.) 155 classroom projects fully funded (although this will go up a lot when we spread the $15,000 from Seed Media Group around) and many partially funded. That's fantastic, and, thanks to some very generous…

I missed my chance to get my own DonorsChoose challenge together, but that doesn't mean that you have to miss your chance to contribute and, of course:  WIN FABULOUS PRIZES!!!!  WIN FABULOUS PRIZES!!!! WIN FABULOUS PRIZES!!!! It's easy.  Just head on over to one of these pages On Being a Scientist and a Woman   (Her teachers still need $83) orThe Questionable Authority   (His teachers need $88), or A Blog Around the Clock and click the right links. You know you want to.   

You're seeing other ScienceBlogs readers donate, now join the love train*. A rare serious post from Steve explains The Real Mozart Effect and why we should support music education with DonorsChoose. Playing an instrument has cognitive and developmental benefits. That reason formed an episode of The Simpsons, too: Lisa's Sax. Homer wants to buy an air conditioner but Lisa needs help to nurture her brain with more than Springfield Elementary has to offer. Unsure what to do, he walks out of Moe's toward It Blows, with $200 in his pocket. He sees a music store and says, "Musical instrument?…

The DonorsChoose fundraiser is in full swing here on Scienceblogs.com. As always, Janet's blog is the Information Center for the drive, and you can also check Dave's graphs as well. As you know, Seed Media Group is matching $15,000 of your donations. The Scienceblogs.com Overlords have also announced some additional prizes! * 21 "Seed Hearts Threadless" tee shirts * 21 ScienceBlogs mugs * 21 subscriptions to Seed magazine * 9 copies of "The Best American Science Writing 2007" These prizes will be divided into three thirds and each third will be given on one of the next three…

We're one week into the DonorsChoose Bloggers Challenge, and we're already off to a great start. Thanks to some generous donations, we've already (as of the publishing of this post) raised $295 here at The Scientific Activist (30% of our $1,000 goal). Even more impressively, the participants at ScienceBlogs have together raised over $12,500. And, we still have over three weeks to go! So, let me thank you all for your generosity, and, if you haven't donated yet, please take a look at the projects that need funding. Even a little bit goes a long way. One project that I'd particularly like…

It's that time of the year again, when us bloggers take a moment away from our posturing to actually do some good for this world. Yes, that's right: today DonorsChoose is kicking off its 2007 Bloggers Challenge. And, just like last year, several of us at ScienceBlogs have put together our own challenges to raise money for science classrooms. Last year's challenge was such a success here at ScienceBlogs (raising $26,938.80 for science classrooms) that we're doing it again this year... for twice as long! The challenge starts today and will continue until the 31st of October. So, please,…

This announcement is related to another bigger one that's coming in just a few hours. Six Apart (who runs MovableType, the blogging platform we use at ScienceBlogs) is giving away $30 philanthropic gift certificates for use on DonorsChoose. The only catch is that you have to contact Six Apart by noon today (Monday, October 1st)! At DonorsChoose, teachers submit short proposals for classroom projects that need funding, giving potential donors a wide array of worthy causes to contribute to. Today is also the beginning of the 2007 DonorsChoose Bloggers Challenge, but there will be more on that…

In the comments of a recent post, one reader asked for recommendations of good science-related causes to donate to. Not having much (or any) disposable income myself--being a poor grad student and all--I realized that I didn't have many suggestions myself. So, I asked around, and I found, not surprisingly, that there are a ton of worthy causes and organizations out there that need funding. In particular, some of my SciBlings here at ScienceBlogs.com were very helpful with their own suggestions. Although I've compiled quite a list here, I know that this just barely scratches the surface,…

The ScienceBlogs/DonorsChoose Challenge is now officially over, and Janet Stemwedel has the results at Adventures in Ethics and Science: 195 of you made donations. Together, those donations added up to $16,097.27. You also helped 4 of the 19 challenges meet their goals, securing an additional 10% of the totals raised in those challenges ($841.53) from DonorsChoose. Thus, with the $10,000 match from SEED, you've raised $26,938.80 to help students and teachers get what they need to make education happen. I'd like to send a special thanks to the four generous donors who gave a total of $345…

The latest word on the ScienceBlogs/DonorsChoose fundraising challenge is that as of Tuesday the total amount of donations had reached $12,325.59, plus $10,000 in matching funds from Seed. Here at The Scientific Activist we've raised $345.00 in generous donations, bringing us to 7% of our ambitious goal of $5,000. That's great progress, but I know we can do even better than that! It's a great cause--helping to bring quality science education into our schools--and any donation, regardless of its size, is a positive step forward. To donate, click here! "http://www.donorschoose.org/images/…

It looks like I have quite a few new people coming to the site today to read about some pretty bizarre chemistry, so if you happen to be one of them, I'd encourage you to have a look around the rest of the site. To find out what The Scientific Activist is all about, read my introductory post, or click on the "About" tab. Also, please consider helping out science classrooms by donating to my DonorsChoose fundraising challenge. One of the more interesting ongoing projects on this site has been chronicling the animal rights movement in Oxford, and the extraordinary response of the local…

As I've spent my entire weekend alternatively sitting in front of a ginormous magnet running NMR experiments and in front of a computer screen analyzing the data from those experiments, the blogging has unfortunately been light. However, I just wanted to give a quick update on the ScienceBlogs/DonorsChoose Fundraising Drive that we kicked off last Thursday here on ScienceBlogs. The most detailed rundown of the progress so far can be found at Adventures in Ethics and Science, although it's about a day old now. By midday yesterday, as a group ScienceBlogs had already raised $8498.73 to help…

OK, people, here's your chance to help out science and math classrooms with much needed funding and to show everybody here at ScienceBlogs that The Scientific Activist has the best damn readers around! To donate to a worthy cause, click here. The ScienceBlogs/DonorsChoose raise-money-to-help-science-classrooms-a-thon! Those of us who blog here at ScienceBlogs think science is cool, important, and worth understanding. If you're reading the blogs here, chances are you feel the same way. A lot of us fell in love with science because of early experiences in school -- teachers who made science…