Discovering Biology in a Digital World

We can't all be like Bill Gates and help education through a large foundation, but we can do our part! My co-science bloggers have started this wonderful fund-raiser for helping out teachers and I'm joining in.

DonorsChoose.org gives us a way to help teachers get the job done. A bunch of us at ScienceBlogs have set up Bloggers Challenges which will let us (and that includes you) contribute to worthy school projects in need of financial assistance. We'll be able to track our progress right on the DonorsChoose site. And -- because we like a little friendly competition -- we'll be updating you periodically as to which blogger's readers are getting his or her challenge closest to its goal.

You don't need to give a barrel of money to help the kids -- as little as $10 can help. You're joining forces with a bunch of other people, and all together, your small contributions can make a big difference.

How It Works

1. Use this link to open a new page with the DonorsChoose website.
2. Pick a project from the slate the blogger has selected (or more than one).
3. Donate.

(If you're the loyal reader of multiple participating blogs and you don't want to play favorites, you can donate to multiple challenges!)

4. When Donors Choose sends you a confirmation email, forward it to: sb.donorschoose.bonanza@gmail.com This is your contest entry.

Sit back and watch the little donation thermometers inch towards 100 percent. Once the Challenge ends, we'll select winners at random.

For those of you who ARE teachers:
Go to www.Donorschoose.org and submit your proposal. We might not be able to add it to this round of fundraising, but I'm sure we'll be doing this again.

Did you say something about a contest? What's that about?
Just in case you're on the fence about helping the kids, we thought we'd provide some incentives to randomly drawn donors. They are:

Subscriptions to Seed magazine
ScienceBlogs mugs
What We Believe But Cannot Prove, edited by John Brockman
The Republican War on Science, by Chris Mooney
Rebuilt: My Journey Back to the Hearing World, by Michael Chorost
Subscriptions to TIME magazine
Blogging in a Snap, by Julie Meloni
Galileo's Daughter, by Dava Sobel
The Scientific Renaissance: 1450-1630, by Marie Boas Hall
Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference, by Judea Pearl
Paleoanthropology (1st ed) by Milford Wolpoff (gently used)

I'm adding some prizes from Geospiza Education to the pot, too

An Exploring DNA Structure CD-ROM Read the review (a pdf file) from The American Biology Teacher.	A Kissing DNA T-shirt
A Green Fluorescent Protein mug	A pack of 10 Twirling Telomere magnets

Administrative Details

The contest will run from June 15 to July 1. Email your entries by July 1! Prize notification will start by July 5.

And, credit where credit is due: This drive was inspired by Sarah D. Bunting's wildly successful Tomato Nation DonorsChoose fund raiser this past March. Sars, you're an inspiration to us all.

technorati tags: biotechnology, education, biotechnology education, science education

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