This week, I continued to explore DonorsChoose.org. I found a teacher from one of my schools who started a project. Here is the project.
Mrs. Cahill's Classroom Project.
I donated $10 which refreshed my memory on some of the options which are offered. The process is quick, easy, and user friendly. Donors can remain anonymous or can personalize the donation by leaving a message to the students and teacher. Some projects offer a gift to donors who donate a certain amount of money.
In my last blog, I questioned whether DonorsChoose.org should be considered a Web2.0 website. There is a lot of communication and collaboration on the site among teachers. Part of the site allows you to collaborate with other teachers in your state, or even link up with donors who are willing to match donations. These are all Web2.0 qualities but they are only from the side of the teacher. Students never get involved in the site. Even so, I think many teachers could benefit from creating a project, which would ultimately help students. Finding funding for instruments is always a challenge for instrumental music teachers like myself, so I will look into creating a project to raise money for this purpose. By creating a project on DonorsChoose, I can easily promote it to all of my schools, friends, family, family of students, etc.
CLICK HERE to see a charity rating for DonorsChoose.org
There is no strict definition of Web 2.0 so it is hard to say definitively if this is Web 2.0, but I think it is. It is a tool that makes it easy for people to interact online. The interaction is fairly limited, but think about doing this in a Web 1.0 world. In a Web 1.0 world, you might send an application to an organization, and they might post your project on their Web site. In a Web 2.0 world, the process is similar, but it is much easier. There is still human intervention so they can screen projects, but Web 2.0 makes this much easier.
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