Congratulations, Terra Sig Readers!

Okay, here's one final update on our drive to raise DonorsChoose.org funds for K-12 teachers to conduct projects in their classrooms.

An e-mail came in today from Charles Best, the Bronx schoolteacher who established DonorsChoose:

Thanks in great part to the attention ScienceBlogs generated, we made Internet history! During the month of October, readers of more than a hundred blogs gave $420,000 to classroom projects on DonorsChoose.org, benefiting 75,000 students. To put that in perspective, it took four months for the hugely successful Facebook causes application--with millions of users--to generate that sum of donations across all causes.

We would not have helped so many students if not for the momentum you gave our Blogger Challenge by being a top performer. On behalf of all the science students whom you helped, thank you so much!!

So, what's a "top performer?"

Well, it's the blogs within each group blogger challenge that ranked in the top 3 using the metric of "most students reached." We are indeed in lofty company with two of our dear colleagues, fellow bloggers, and scientific colleagues, Prof PZ Myers and Prof Janet Stemwedel:

ScienceBlogs, 1st Place: Pharyngula
Reached 3,264 students

ScienceBlogs, 2nd Place: Adventures in Ethics and Science
Reached 1,558 students

ScienceBlogs, 3rd Place: Terra Sigillata
Reached 901 students

None of us at ScienceBlogs knew that Six Apart (the company that makes our blogging software) was going to rank us based on # of students impacted. In fact, our colleagues Chad Orzel of Uncertain Principles and Mike Dunford of The Questionable Authority raised more money than us or Janet.

But let's face it, everyone's a winner - most of all the students who we all helped.

And more importantly, the real recognition should not come to Terra Sigillata but, rather, to our readers who have so generously shared their good fortune to promote science education among kids most in need of our support.

Thank you all!