Google's contribution to nonprofits

Many people may not know yet that Google has an extremely effective and generous grants program that helps nonprofits connect with their audience. Our Vocabulary Junction campaign, for example, has been made possible by their grant and it had a dramatic effect on our website.

Yesterday and today I participated at the Google grants workshop at headquarters in Mountain View.

I'm impressed and humbled by the generosity and support extended to the philanthropic community, and delighted to meet the dynamic and enthusiastic team that provides support to over 7,000 nonprofits.

It is fun and inspiring to learn directly from the bright and fun Google volunteers who blew my mind with making the complex simple.

Also, I'm really impressed by Google's internal culture:
The communication within the team, the beauty of the campus and of course, the cafeteria. 

Everybody seems to have a wonderful and wonderfully productive time. 

Posted via email from LearnThat's Blog

Thank you, thank you, Google!

We recently got a grant expansion that allows us to dare and undertake a campaign I've been dreaming of for a long time.

This will be the first year for Vocabulary Junction, giving free tutoring to third graders in the U.S. and Canada.

Read more about it here: http://www.learnthat.org/vocabulary/pages/view/pr_google_vocabularyjunction.html

Posted via email from LearnThat's Blog

New site is live...

We switched the flip... flipped the switch... we're LIVE!

Really enjoying our new site and getting lots of great responses... and of course questions for the new Pay-Per-Result.

It takes people a while to understand that WE MEAN IT... on our site you only pay if we teach you something you didn't know before...

We had trouble with our recording equipment so still working feverishly to finalize the introductory videos... more to come soon.

Posted via email from LearnThat's Blog

New site about to launch...

We're so excited... just making final changes to the new site.Scheduled to go live tomorrow!!

Anyone who wants to peek and share feedback: beta.learnthat.org/vocabulary

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From 0 to 296 in three days... amazing!

Yupp, I can't believe this myself! We're on rank 296 right now, over 500 votes in three days or so, and having a rank of 200 or higher on 7/12/2010 means a $20,000 grant!
Please, if you read this and haven't voted, or know of people who would vote for our vocabulary tutoring campaign, this is the link:
http://bit.ly/learnthatword
It just takes a few seconds!

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Vote! Share with your friends! We can do this!

Wow, we are impressed by how many responded to our email call for help. We're at close to 300 votes, but will need about three times as much to win a grant.
If you haven't voted yet, please click on http://bit.ly/learnthatword and give us a click... if you did vote, please considering sending the link to your friends and family, or repost on Facebook!

By the way: We hear from a lot of people who click the "like" button and then are confused about what to do next. When you click that, often a "verification required" link pops up that you need to click next and enter the captcha. That's the last step before voting... Thank you!!

Posted via email from LearnThat's Blog

Word Cup... last rounds!

The last round of the Word Cup tryouts are upon us.
Please check out the schedule at www.wordcupcafe.org and try out!
If you qualified for the semifinals, please make sure the take the quiz before August 1st, or your invitation will expire.
Good luck!

Posted via email from LearnThat's Blog

The race is on... please vote for us @ Chase Community Giving

Our nonprofit has entered the race to win a Chase Community grant, and we need your help! The grants are given to the top 200 nonprofits based on votes.

We heard about this just recently, and still need about 800 votes before 7/12 to make it, we've done great so far... but we need to get many more votes.
Can you help us out by voting for our Vocabulary Junction campaign, making free tutoring available to third graders nationwide? Please also repost this on facebook, via email, in forums/networks, etc.
As a thank you for taking time to vote, we will credit 10 learning credits to you.
In the near future, when www.LearnThatWord.org replaces www.eSpindle.org, users will only pay for measured learning results, and 10 credits represent about a month of free tutoring!

Here's how it works:

1 - Click on this link: http://bit.ly/learnthatword. (You have to be logged into your Facebook account)

2 - Click on the get started link:

3 - On the next screen, approve that Chase can connect with you and get access to your public Facebook info (they will list your name and profile images after you vote).

4 - On the following screen, click "like" by clicking on the highlighted button (you can "unlike" Chase at any time). Click on the verification required link and fill in the captcha.

4 - Click "vote for this charity"... Thank you!! Send an email to support@eSpindle.org with your Facebook name and your eSpindle username, and we'll credit your account.

5 - Please share this info with your friends and everyone who cares about education: Facebook, emails, forums, networks. http://bit.ly/learnthatword... this is urgent!!

Let's start closing the Vocabulary Divide that causes so many elementary students to struggle. We still need about 800 votes before 7/12... just a little miracle that should be well possible with a little help of our friends!

Thank you for your support!!

Posted via email from LearnThat's Blog

Click here to set a title.

I just heard from one of our members. He's heading for the National Spelling Bee finals in Washington D.C. in early June and very excited.

Over the last few years, our site has become a major hub for these amazing mental athletes, since we are the only comprehensive and fully managed spelling program to help them manage their ambitious goal.

We also offer a forum for spelling bee contestants: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eSpindle_SB/

This particular child just emailed me saying "I am using your website as my personal coach. It is such an amazing program!" He has studied over 17,000 words with LearnThatWord so far... what an amazing achievement! There are only two members who have studied more -- you can see the highest scoring users by moving your mouse over the blue round "1" icon on the home page or next to the quiz.

I was wishing him good luck, but then thought how inappropriate the term seemed compared with his level of preparedness. Luck is so often looked at as something random. However, contrary to popular folk myth, luck very rarely just drops on people. Instead, it follows a formula.

l = p x o

Luck = Preparedness x Opportunity

Of course, this child may encounter one of the few words he has not yet studied or that his brain has forgotten under the onslaught of vocabulary data. He may be making a mistake. But he has taken every step to minimize the likeliness of that by making sure he is prepared to the highest degree.

And from what I can see of his character so far, I'm sure that even if he hears the bell and not the questions of the media this year, he's likely to be back next year.

Luck is not blind. She only has serious trouble seeing clearly. Get up and try to stand right in front of her by striving to increase your preparedness and opportunities wherever you can. Don't give up. Every action you take to either increase your preparedness or your opportunity will seriously increase your chances of being tagged by "luck."

 

Posted via web from LearnThat's Blog

Learning Style De-Bunk

The newsletter from the Dana Foundation is always highly interesting. Today's news stream debunked the "fancy myth" of learning styles and that somehow somewhat somebody could actually made sense out of all that hype and turn it into results.

Here a quote from the article:

What are you calling a learning style?

“There’s not much to this notion of learning styles,” said Daniel Willingham, of the University of Virginia, and no evidence that categorizing children by such terms as “visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learners,” for example, helps them learn.

The notion that we can categorize people by how they prefer to learn has seeped into popular culture; 90 percent of the undergraduates in Willingham’s classes raise their hands when he asks them if they know what their learning style is. But research has not proved the categories are useful.

For example, in one study researchers divided children into “auditory learners" and “visual learners,” and then gave them an “auditory task” and a “visual task,” expecting the auditory learners to ace the first and the visual learners to ace the second. They got the opposite results.

“In many of these studies, the original classifications don’t always work,” he said; one person might be classified a “serialist learner” one day, but would meet the standard for its opposite, a “holistic learner,” the next. “The theories at hand aren’t effective,” Willingham said; perhaps another learning theory will appear that is, but he doesn’t see one on the horizon.

His talk had the tables buzzing; many teachers and administrators said they at least consider learning styles when they design curricula or make lesson plans. Willingham said relying solely on such a perspective might lead to less-effective teaching, but he does promote the idea of “changing-up,” using a range of different modes in the lesson.

Posted via web from LearnThat's Blog

The trouble with "free"

The boat is rocking at Wikipedia.
The media is upset that images deemed child pornographic were allowed to persist on the site.
The Wikimedia team is upset because Jimmy went in and deleted them without lengthy consensus discussions.

Wikipedia is a great resource in many regards, but this conflict highlights the problem of free--not only are you bound to be surprised by content that is of low quality or worse, but the article also mentions that Fox News stepped out, calling major donors to Wikimedia and complaining about the offensive material.

Depending on donations entirely, this "free" site depends on funding like everyone else on this planet.

Without consistent sustainability build in and substential maintenance costs, could the site tumble if the "big bad wolf" blows the house down?

Or would a situation like that cause people to rethink the glitzy appeal of "free"?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10104946.stm

Posted via web from LearnThat's Blog

Building Literacy One Word at a Time

With spring and a flavor of change in the air, we at eSpindle Learning are feverishly at work, making major changes to our website. By end of May, www.espindle.org will re-launch as http://www.LearnThatWord.org. Instead of the membership model we will launch an innovative concept that allows users to only pay for results! Only if you had trouble with a word and we successfully taught it to you will you pay a few pennies.

This will make LearnThatWord accessible to a much wider audience and more affordable.

We are also planning two major campaigns to celebrate our continued growth:

Come August, we will launch Vocabulary Junction, a campaign to make free tutoring available to third graders throughout the nation. If we find some extra sponsorship support, we may even be able to include 2nd graders and other countries. You can find our partner invitation here: http://www.espindle.org/proposal_o.swf.

Please contact us if you have ideas or would like to get involved!!

We are also actively looking for ways to make free tutoring available to other literacy organizations.

If you represent a nonprofit serving an audience that needs LearnThatWord support, feel free to contact us.

 

Posted via web from LearnThat's Blog

Children's under-achievement associated with poor working memory

A large study involving 3,000 students has shown that in about 10% of children problems with academic achievement were due to a lack of working memory capacity. http://www.physorg.com/news123404466.html

While the article laments that teachers often fail to assess memory deficiencies as the source for academic failure, it does not mention that memory is a brain function that can be easily exercised or left to deteriorate further, if not challenged.

Chances are we see this high number of memory deficiency because these kids grow up in a vague in-the-moment state of consumption that does not challenge them to take ownership of knowledge and invest energy into memorizing.

When we memorize, our brain is forming pathways that allow for knowledge to be stored. The more we learn (and as part of that process, memorize), the more sophisticated and powerful our brains become, allowing consequential steps of learning, creativity and understanding to happen with ease.

As a species, we are new to the information age, with all its on-demand conveniences. It's really just been a decade or two that a large percentage of mankind is benefiting from the digital data-flow provided by computers and the Internet. Faced with such overwhelming accessibility of data, the first conclusion of many is that it is no longer necessary to memorize anything.

Why burden your brain with information that you can look up with a few clicks?

This study, however, sheds some light on why memory-building and memorized content is no less important today than it has ever been. Our brains need a solid framework to make sense of our world and accomplish higher order learning.

To be able to "connect the dots" successfully, you have to know where the dots are, they have to be on your mental map. Computers provide a great backdrop and resource, but they can't replace a diminished capacity to think due to lack of memory and memorized knowledge.

It's not about how much you do, it's about how well you do it

The Chronicle of Higher Education published an article called
Divided Attention a few days ago.

The amount of information in our life has grown so much so quickly that most of us multitask to varying degrees. And there is some satisfaction to that, the feeling that you "get a lot done" at the same time.

The article highlights research that proves that doing more is not at all equal to performing well, or even satisfactory, and that attention and working-memory capacity is still what separates the true achievers from the busy bees.

Great read.

Live word translations in 37 languages

We recently launched a new feature allowing eSpindle users to set their native language and receive live translations of the word to be learned. The additional information is available on demand, so as to not distract from the otherwise English immersion environment of the quiz.

Members who use eSpindle to learn English as a foreign language love it!

You can choose from 15 different languages, including those with non-Latin scripts, like Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, etc.
To activate the feature, simply select the language by going to you > preferences.
Then you'll see the translation of the word every time you mouse over the "bubble" icon in the quiz.