The eduFire Blog » Community

Thank You for Helping us Donate $700 to DonorsChoose!

Koichi — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:30:56 +0000

Last week, we had a Retweet charity that supported a classroom from DonorsChoose, where every retweet you made on Twitter garnered $3 up to $300. A bit THANK YOU to all of you. We also got some extra support from DonorsChoose (matched up to $200) Tofugu ($100) and Jon Bischke ($100), bringing the grand total up to $700! Because the classroom doesn’t need this much money, we’ll be choosing another classroom to donate to in the coming days. If you have any recommendations for a classroom (found on DonorsChoose) please let us know in the comments down below! We want to find one that supports technology in the classroom, but also really really helps out some kids.

Thank you again for your 220+ retweets to help these children! You have changed their lives for the better, and we’re really proud to be a part of it!

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Tweeting for Literacy – How YOUR Tweets can change lives

Koichi — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:47:26 +0000

All day today, eduFire will be donating $3 per retweet (don’t know what a retweet is? Check out this free class on Twitter going on today!) to an ELL classroom in Oklahoma, up to $300. Click on the image below to get to the original Tweet so you can retweet it.

Please help these kids out! They are second-graders who don’t speak English at home, and that’s affecting their ability to learn how to read. By making this donation, we can help them learn using a bit of technology (we love technology!). All it takes is a simple retweet, nothing more, nothing less! We really love to support education in all shapes and sizes, so your help will be greatly appreciated, and directly help real people!

Now, this classroom actually needs $456 to reach their goal, so we want to encourage you to get involved too, if you are able! We’d like to ask any and all of you, who are reading this, to help out education and join our tweeting campaign! Just add your name on to the original tweet, and ask your followers to retweet it. We’ll be updating (below) whenever somebody else joins in. Be sure to tell us when you do, so we can write something so more people know!

If and when we do exceed $456, or if too many people donate to this cause before we get the money to them (probably tonight or tomorrow), we’ll pick another classroom to help, via this wonderful website, donorschoose.org.

So what are you waiting for! Open up your Twitter accounts and tweet tweet tweet away!

Update 1:00pm PDT: @jonbischke will donate another $3 per retweet up to $150! Go Retweet his Tweet!

Update 1:23pm PDT: @tofugu will donate another $3 per retweet up to $100! Go Retweet his Tweet!

Update 6:20pm PDT: Just received word that have another $200 match. I need to leave it anonymous for now until I know for sure that I can mention it here. Cool! :)

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Add Your eduFire URL to JapanSoc

Koichi — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 04:35:56 +0000

I just came across this in JapanSoc today! We love this website, so thank you for making us a part of your e-lives!

JapanSoc is a social bookmarking site a lot like Digg, but only for Japan-related things. I know there’s a lot of people learning Japanese on eduFire, so you should definitely check it out. It’s a great site and community!

Anyways, another big thank you!

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eduFire Educates Teachers and Students

Koichi — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:49:53 +0000

eduFire has created two class-list pages: The eduFire Teacher Class page, and the eduFire Student Class page. Now, just to clarify, we’re not here to tell you how to teach, or how to run your classes. We do, however, want to show you how to use the tools that are available to you, and help you with marketing your classes and teaching services. The actual teaching part? That’s all up to you, of course. We’re not going to step on that. We just want to make sure everything works for you, and you know the potential of the platform before you start teaching!

When you join eduFire from now on, you’ll get links to these classes in your eduFire mail, but for you eduFire veterans, it might be worth scanning these pages every once in a while to see what’s new. It’s not just tutor and student orientations that we’re offering! There will be marketing classes as well.

If you have any suggestions or ideas for classes that you think could help you as a teacher or student, please let us know and we’ll see what we can do! We hope that these classes will help you squeeze every bit of potential out of the platform, and let you be the best possible teacher!

Once again, here’s the links: Classes for Teachers and Classes for Students

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Following the Brilliant Minds Behind Hacking Education

Koichi — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 05:59:04 +0000

An incredible event went down in New York today: the “Hacking Education Conference.” Jon was there, and even though I wasn’t, I followed it on Twitter and was able to contribute a bit from across the country. Everyone at the conference (or tweeting about it) used the hashtag #hackedu to keep track. All day, I’ve been compiling a list of all the contributors to the #hackedu conversation and wanted to share them here with you, so even after the conference is over, you can continue to see what these educational geniuses are up to. Oh, and of course, with every Twitter-related article, a shameless plug: follow us over at @edufire.

Who’s Tweeting #hackedu? A list of “Education on Twitter”

This is just a list of people who have contributed to the “Hacking Education” discussion on Twitter (will be adding more as they come along, to a certain extent). I don’t know exactly who was at this conference, but honestly, it doesn’t matter. Everyone listed below is passionate about changing education for the better, so if you are as well, this is a great list of people to follow! If they have a blog, I linked it under their name.

If you’re looking for a good recap on the event, AVC does a great overview with some great points as well (my favorite is number 11). My congrats and encouragement to everyone out there hacking education! I’m looking forward to building change and a great future for the system!

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Meet Up with TeachStreet in San Francisco!

Koichi — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 18:00:32 +0000

Our good friends at TeachStreet (kind of like eduFire, except they coordinate ‘in person teaching’) are heading down to San Francisco to meet up with their users in the San Francisco Bay Area. They have issued a warm welcome to any eduFire users in the area as well, and I highly recommend you go if you’re nearby! There will be coffee, good company, and networking opportunities for all kinds of teachers. They will be in SF from 3/11 to 3/14, and you can RSVP for one of the coffee meetups by clicking on over here.

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Take an eduFire Classe for Charity

Koichi — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 08:58:43 +0000

Jon and Marco are doing something really cool right now – they’re teaching two absolutely amazing classes, and donating 100% of the proceeds to charity. I’m really looking forward to both of these classes, not just because it’s making a difference, but because the content is fascinating as well. Let’s see what they’re teaching!

How to Easily and Effectively Answer 99% of Your Questions

In an average day we each ask ourselves hundreds or even thousands of questions…How do I market my business? How do I cure myself of this illness? How do I fix my computer?

Increasingly success is determined by our ability to quickly and effectively find answers to many of our questions. In this one-hour presentation I’ll walk through how I use tools like message boards, Facebook, Twitter and Google to get fast and effective answers to many of the questions I face. It’s a big part of the “secret sauce”! :)

This class has a $5 fee associated with it. However, I will be donating 100% of my proceeds to a non-profit I strongly believe in called KIPP. KIPP stands for Knowledge is Power Program and so by signing up for this class you’ll be empowering yourself with knowledge and helping to empower students in low-income areas.

February 17, 5:00pm PST – Join this class now!

That one’s happening in the next 24 hours, so get on that one soon while you still can. If you haven’t taken a class from Jon before, you always come away feeling like you’re ready to take on the world. That’s inspiration + presentation + a bit of Jon Bischke for ya. Let’s look at the other class, by Marco.

Special Memory Class

Please note that I am having eduFire donate 100% of my fee for this class to an amazing charity: http://www.roomtoread.org/

The eduFire team appreciates that money is tight with all of us at the moment in this current economic climate. Therefore, they have kindly donated a couple of eduFire t-shirts and also free coupon codes (value up to $25) for me to give away during this class!

The class will be focused on helping you remember something you never thought possible, so much information, and yet you’ll be able to remember it! Amaze your friends, amaze yourself, chance to win stuff and most of all you’ll be giving to a wonderful cause! Fabulous.

Please do get your friends and family to join, even those who may not have registered on eduFire before, NOW is the time to come! Let’s try and fill the class up with 99 students!

March 8, 3:00pm PST – Join this class now!

Marco is another fabulous teacher – I took a memory class from him a few weeks ago, and came away being able to memorize a list of fifteen different things in a matter of minutes. I could read it backwards, out of order, in order, whatever. To this day, I can still recite the items on the list. I can’t imagine what a class like this one would do to someone. 100 things, perhaps? 1000? I suppose you’ll have to see for yourself!

If you have a passion for learning, and want to help a couple of good causes, sign up for these classes today, and come away a bit smarter! Look forward to seeing you there!

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Bringing J-Bloggers Together

Koichi — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:38:13 +0000

On Saturday (that’s Sunday, Japan time though), eduFire hosted a J-blogger meetup for Japan-related bloggers located all over the world. Of course, eduFire is not a website that puts together virtual conferences. There was an educational aspect to this meetup as well (I swear!), and everyone (from J-bloggers, to non-bloggers, to wannabe bloggers) could attend and learn.

Although the conference was organized beforehand, had a presentation (on great Wordpress plugins for your blog), and had an agenda, the best part were all the spontaneous discussions. Someone would ask a question about blogging, J-blogging, Japan, etc., and there were always a few people that had a good answer. Everyone came away knowing more than they did three hours earlier (that’s right, it went on for three hours!), and I know several participants were inspired to start their own blogs up as well.

Here is a list of the Bloggers that joined us. I highly recommend you check out their blogs / websites!

- Koichi (Tofugu)
- Deas (Rocking in Hakata)
- Carlie (GoddessCarlie)
- Louis (Xorsyst)
- Brett (Rainbowhill’s Language Lab)
- Nick (JapanSoc)
- Chris (NihongoNotes)
- Michael (MichaelDowney)
- Shane (Nihon Sun)
- Jason (Jason’s Advs in Rural Japan)
- Tae Kim (Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese)
- Dave (The Ramen Blues)
- Jonas (Yonasu.com)
- Kirk (Jamaipanese)

Thank you everyone for attending, it was great to have you!

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Twittering for a Good Cause: eduFire + Room To Read

jon — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:38:48 +0000

Last Thursday night we all did something really fun on Twitter. Koichi was running one of his Twitter classes that night and we wanted to do something fun that would get people using Twitter. Earlier in the day we had given away a few free classes and T-shirts but I thought it would be neat to use Twitter to help out one of our favorite charities, Room To Read.

I was first exposed to Room To Read a couple of years ago when I read John Wood’s excellent book Leaving Microsoft to Change the World. Wood’s story of leaving a high-profile (and well-paying!) corporate job to help improve literacy in the developing world is incredibly inspirational. As someone who is very passionate about bringing world-class educational opportunities to those who are less fortunate it resonated strongly with me.

On Thursday night we decided to use Twitter to raise some money and awareness for Room To Read. KyNam Doan does a great job of summing up what went down in this blog post so I’ll just provide the quick details here. Basically we put the word out that for about an hour and a half we were willing to donate $1 to Room To Read for everyone who re-tweeted our message. This was a little bit scary because we didn’t cap the amount so in theory we could have had thousands of people re-tweeting the message in that time span (lesson learned there…probably a good idea to cap stuff like this!).

What happened was awesome to watch. We dm’ed a few folks who we thought would want to re-tweet but for the most part we just put it out there and watched what happened. It was really cool to see the viral effect as people passed this along to others. What was awesome too was to see people checking out Room To Read. Even more impactful than the money that we’re donating is that hundreds of people heard about Room To Read, most of them likely for the first time.

At the end of the day we counted 186 re-tweets (we decided to include re-tweets that came in after 9 PM PST as well) and so we’re rounding up and donating $200 to Room To Read. To help track re-tweets we put the #edufire hashtag in the post and were pleasantly surprised to see the hashtag show up on the homepage of Twitter Search that night.

Yup, there we were, right next to Blago, Obama and the Super Bowl. :)

We really had a lot of fun doing this and probably will do it again sometime. It’s a great opportunity to shine a spotlight on a deserving educational non-profit and there are a lot of them out there (e.g., Curriki.org, Donors Choose, etc.). And it’s a good way for the community to come together and do some virtual and viral good.

Thanks to all who helped us out be re-tweeting and definitely go check out Room To Read and see if you can help them out in any way!!

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Who’s on Twitter?

Koichi — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:19:11 +0000

More and more people out there are using Twitter to micro-blog their lives. It’s becoming a great way to connect with people all over the world, learn about people’s lives, and tell others about yourself as well. In fact, eduFire recently gave users the ability to add your other websites to your profile (what? eduFire isn’t the only place that you visit? Absurd!). It’s been about two months since that happened, and so we’ve found all the eduFire members that use Twitter so we can share it with you. I encourage you to follow each other, learn from each other, and become a closer community! If you’re not on Twitter already, what are you waiting for! If you are on Twitter and you’re not following us, here’s our Twitter page. We’ll follow you back!

Jon Bischke (CEO): http://www.twitter.com/jonbischke

DJ Noelle: http://twitter.com/writesonoma

Koichi: http://www.twitter.com/tofugu

Norm Copeland: http://www.twitter.com/normc

Christina Varghese: http://www.twitter.com/christinichka

Jonnie Palmer: http://www.twitter.com/jonniepalmer

Enrique Kates: http://twitter.com/eckates

Dr Hamdy: http://twitter.com/Dr_Hamdy

Tina Solar: http://twitter.com/theparentpack

Fiona Murphy: http://twitter.com/fionamurphy

Debbie H: http://twitter.com/karstaway

Brett Fyfield: http://twitter.com/rainbowhill

Sanyu Miharu: http://twitter.com/Sanyu

Kate Spencer: http://www.twitter.com/katexgg

Stacy Digregorio: http://twitter.com/girlmostlikely2

Laura Rivers: http://twitter.com/leuga

Brandi Cohen: http://twitter.com/brandic

Russell Mull: http://twitter.com/mullr

Andrew: http://twitter.com/lawnmowerlatte

Omar Fernandez: http://twitter.com/omareduardo

Viet Hoang: http://twitter.com/viethoang

Craig Sosonko: http://twitter.com/modernangel76

Ian Benedict: http://www.twitter.com/duelist

Peter Sobanski: http://edufire.com/users/4436

Erin: http://twitter.com/TofuguErin

Dave Schappell: http://www.twitter.com/daveschappell

Arky B: http://twitter.com/ArkyLewis

Ron Hayes: http://www.twitter.com/rehj

Attila Malarik: http://twitter.com/attilam

Tony Burton: http://www.twitter.com/tonyburton

Jaksa Novicic: http://twitter.com/Bigfootmech

Mandy M: http://twitter.com/shinikiss

Matthew Bennett: http://twitter.com/matthewbennett

Salar Salahshoor: http://www.twitter.com/salarsalahshoor

Villa Vance: http://www.twitter.com/vhiel

Ben Weiner: http://www.twitter.com/lostinpatterns

Heathyr Black: http://twitter.com/HeathyrBlack

That’s a pretty big list, but it could be a lot bigger! Follow your friends on eduFire, and help make the community grow! We’re hoping to do a little more with Twitter in the future, and your participation will definnitely help with that!

If you would like to be added to the list of eduFire users on Twitter, just leave the info in the comments, or email me! Also, don’t forget to add it in your profile page! Happy Tweets!

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