Tag Archives: education

She’s the First gives girls in developing nations a chance at education

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Quick Summary

  • Yapp highlights She’s the First and its work supporting girls’ education as part of a mission-driven story.
  • The post connects technology and storytelling with a cause-focused organization.
  • Readers interested in nonprofit impact and social-good use cases will benefit most from this feature.

 

She's the First


In 2009, recent college grab Tammy Tibbetts thought up (and bought up the URL for) She’s the First, inspired by her work with Donate My Dress and a college final. The organization — which sponsors girls’ education in developing nations to give them the chance to become the first in their families to graduate from secondary school — launched with a video PSA in 2009, and has grown leaps and bounds since.

College and high school chapters starting popping up across the States after a student at the University of Notre Dame held a tie-dye cupcake bake sale, raising $900 for She’s the First to send 3 girls to school in Nepal. These {Campus} chapters of She’s the First grew, and helped bring Yapp into the picture.

For their 2012 campus leaders conference, She’s the First put together an app as a digital and mobile version of their program, with the ability to interact. They loved  the Yapp so much that this year, they ended up replacing their printed programs, which wouldn’t be ready in time for the summit, with the app. Leaders from 83 high schools, colleges and universities gathered to learn, reflect, and amp up, with all the info and updates they needed in the palm of their hands.

The awesome mission of She’s the First is supported by fundraising events from these college and high school chapters. They’ve solidified the “social selling” model with a twist. Similar to charity: water, they want people to use their own creativity and passions to raise money and awareness for an incredible cause. By jumping in with young college and high school chapters, She’s the First is leading the pack in turning social selling into social giving.

The bake sale has become the staple fundraiser for She’s the First, but any creative campaigns are welcome — think marathon sponsorships, painting parties, birthday donations. All the money raised at fundraisers goes directly to the girls; it costs around $300 to sponsor a girl’s education for a year, including uniforms, food, mentorship, and the awesome support of the organization.

So far, the ladies (and gents!) behind She’s the First have sponsored 615 years of education for girls in 11 underdeveloped countries. There are 289 She’s the First scholars, and they wear their sponsorship like a badge of honor.

If you want to host a fundraiser or donate to She’s the First, check out their site and join the mission. If you’re in school and want to start a chapter, take a peek at their apps below to see what’s in store! Once your plans are in action, put together a Yapp so the She’s the First founders and your community can stay in the loop. Show off what you’re baking and of course, include info about She’s the First.

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Edcamp UNconferences embrace EdTech & app creation

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Quick Summary

  • Yapp shows how Edcamp-style events and unconferences can use app creation to support better communication and planning.
  • A custom app helps centralize schedules, updates, and content for education-focused gatherings.
  • Educators and organizers of collaborative learning events will benefit most from this use case.

 

Yapp Spotlight:Edcamp Foundation

In 2010, a group of educators in Philadelphia came together to create the first Edcamp UNconference. The create-your-own schedule format took off, and Edcamp spread from state to province to nation. Teachers come together all across the world to talk about what matters to them — they set the agenda morning-of, they teach the sessions, they work together to tease out new ideas.

We love working with Edcamp organizers. If you remember primary school, you probably recall frazzled teachers — their plates are constantly overflowing, yet they still make time for professional development. They’re busy planning (and teaching and counseling and administrating…), but almost always answer with enthusiastic curiosity when we at Yapp reach out to help them go mobile.

Edcamp’s aren’t tech specific events, but technology has become an integral part of education (think square = rectangle but rectangle ≠square, then thank your 2nd grade teacher).  We introduce them to Yapp as a tool to organize their unconferences, and they see it as a tool to upgrade their classrooms.

Best of all, Edcamps are a totally free resource for teachers. The Foundation provides organizers with blog resources, seasoned organizer mentors and Edcamp-friendly sponsors to keep production costs minimal.

So far, we’ve partnered with a bunch of exciting Edcamps, offering setup assistance and raffle prize swag. If you’re an educator and you want to start an Edcamp, check out The Edcamp Foundation to get started.

And once you’re set to go, check out Yapp and give us a shout! We want to help you make the most of your unconference.


Yapper of the Month: Michael Fisher

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Quick Summary

  • Yapp spotlights Michael Fisher as a featured user in its Yapper of the Month series.
  • The post shows how real people use Yapp in practical and creative ways.
  • Readers looking for customer inspiration and community stories will benefit most from this feature.

YAPPER OF THE MONTH: Michael Fisher, Educator & Author

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Michael is a Kannapolis, NC, native now working in Buffalo, NY. He first discovered Yapp last May at the edJEWcon educational conference in Jacksonville, Florida. As an educator teaching other educators how to integrate modern learning into the classroom, he was sparked to investigate. His first app ended up taking him about seven minutes to create, and he was hooked.

In his recent book, “Upgrade Your Curriculum,” Michael introduces app-making as a new skill that kids will need. “We’re trying to get teachers to see that the more students do their own work, the more they’re going to own the learning,” he said. For Michael and the education community, apps and technology are launching pads for learning at the highest level: creation.

Technology in the classroom gives students and teachers a way to get global feedback for edits and revisions, Michael said. It opens the world up for students to experience and gives them knowledge that they can and will hold on to. The learning, he said, comes from the research and connection that technology presents. A student can submit a link, justify why it gives the answer to the question, and then receive instant concrete feedback from an instructor that won’t go in one ear and out the other.

Michael’s other favorite apps include TMZ and IMDB for their easy design, Flipboard’s social magazine, and xTraNormal’s mini movie maker.

You can find Michael online at @fisher1000, in print in Cure for the Common Core and Upgrade Your Curriculum, and blogging at www.digigogy.com.

Yapper of the Month gives us the chance highlight one of our awesome Yappers each month. Know someone whose been sharing the Yapp love? Let us know!

Yapper Monday: Education Central

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Quick Summary

  • Yapp features an education-focused community story showing how apps support schools and learning groups.
  • The post highlights mobile communication as a practical tool for organizing educational experiences.
  • Educators and school communities will benefit most from this example.

We’ve had teachers, students, professors and principals all creating Yapps to keep in touch with their communities. Today, we were highlighted by MiddleWeb contributor Michael Fisher as a tool educators can use to let kids “own the learning,” so we’ve decided to highlight a few of our Yappers who are keeping up with classes and communities with their awesome apps.

If you’d like your Yapp to be featured on this blog, in press mentions, on our homepage, or in our email newsletters, please fill out this brief form: http://bit.ly/RN9R6R

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The public safety department at Edgecome Community College in North Carolina put together a Yapp to keep the community informed about the EMS, Fire, Law, K9 and CPR training classes that the college offers. There is a detailed schedule of the classes, a news feed for instant updates and a gallery of previous classes, encouraging new students to sign up.

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All the way from New South Wales, Australia, the Bogangar Public School put together a great Yapp for parents and for those looking at enrolling, including information on the school’s uniform shop and healthy canteen, bell times and school events, plus information on the city of Bogangar.

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A professor at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, made an app for each of her library science courses for the semester. This one, for her Children’s Literature course, works like an interactive syllabus with a schedule of assignments, Twitter feed of extras, and a gallery showing each of the books the students will read. (If only it had an alarm clock that would make sure they were in class by 8 a.m….)

Yapp for In-Person Engagement: Pearson’s Global English Meeting

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Quick Summary

  • Yapp features Pearson’s Global English use case as an example of in-person engagement supported by a custom app.
  • The story shows how a mobile app can improve communication and attendee experience in a professional setting.
  • Teams planning branded in-person programs or conferences will benefit most from this example.

We were so excited to catch up with Emilie Colker, the Director of Marketing at GlobalEnglish, a Pearson company committed to improve the performance of the global workforce through on-demand Business English development and support solutions.

Last month, Pearson held an internal development event for four companies and 60 guests in Brazil. After seeing a Yapp “out in the wild” at a World Economic Forum conference, and not yet realizing that it was a DIY app, her team was determined to create a similar experience for their own event. They asked her,

‘Can we build this?’ After researching the cost and time dedicated towards building an app from scratch, it was clear that the answer was no, an app could not be built with their available resources and time frame. But through speaking to her colleagues at the World Economic Forum conference, she realized that it was indeed possible – through Yapp!

Emilie loved that her Yapp was perfectly customizable and was easy enough to use that she could pass along the project to another colleague. In fact, her team loved Yapp so much that  they opted for a paperless agenda through the app.

However, what we loved most was the creative uses of the app for onsite, in-person engagement among the conference guests! Guests posted presentation comments and questions as well as photos to the news feed, and the groups also used Yapp to present “polls” to the audience and collect responses in real time. Emilie said that it was amazing to see attendees use their phones for engagement rather than a distraction for a change.

GlobalEnglish plans to use Yapp again for an upcoming conference next month in Thailand. Wish that we were going!

Have another creative idea for using apps to enhance in-person engagement? Let us know here!

Yapper of the Month: Naomi Harm

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Quick Summary

  • Yapp spotlights Naomi Harm in its Yapper of the Month series as a real-world user story.
  • The post shows how individuals and communities apply Yapp creatively for their own needs.
  • Readers looking for customer inspiration and practical examples will benefit most from this feature.

Our users never cease to impress us here at Yapp. In fact, they’ve used Yapp in such cool ways that we’ve started a monthly feature where we have a conversation with a user who has an awesome story, and has made an awesome Yapp. This month, we interviewed Naomi Harm, an education expert who trains teachers around the world!

Naomi owns a consulting company through which she teaches educators successful technology integration. She provides instruction for iPad technology, mobile learning tech initiatives and admin tech leadership, among many things.

She helps teachers find robust solutions to help make their jobs easier while, at the same time, making an impact on student learning. With her pupils, she works towards discovering what teachers can do to transform the structural approach to education to make kids more engaged and motivated in the classroom. On this topic, she said, “we know we’re offering quality instructional practices to make immediate change that will impact kids.”

Naomi’s motto is Together we are Better. One individual can’t know it all, but by working together and educating one another, we can create a safe space to learn about and optimize emerging educational technology. Most importantly, Naomi helps teachers learn how to meet the needs of all of their students using technology, keeping in mind that each child has a different way of learning.

She recently used Yapp for the Connected Educator Tech Symposium, where teachers from more than 20 school districts gathered in Wisconsin to explore a transitional approach to teaching. The conference revolved around the idea of collaboration and communication, with the hope that these will lead to immediate feedback from students. There was even a group of students at the conference—the “Student Geek Squad”— that collaborated with and taught the teachers!

Feature Friday: Education Apps

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Quick Summary

  • Yapp highlights education apps and school-focused use cases in a Feature Friday roundup.
  • The post shows how mobile apps can support communication, events, and learning communities.
  • Educators and school teams looking for app inspiration will benefit most from this feature.

It’s that time of year, summer is wrapping up and it’s time to get back in the swing of school. Of course you’re probably already thinking of pens, pencils and notebooks, but what about apps? Here’s a list to get you started.

For high school students:
 iHomework: A great way to stay organized and on top of your assignments. This app allows you to input information about homework, teachers and other engagements, so you’ll never fall behind.

For college students:
Mental case Flashcards: Better than paper flashcards, these digital memory aids can include text, images and even videos. Then, you can test yourself using a slideshow of the flashcards you’ve created.

Around Me: If you’re a freshman in a new city, this is the perfect app for acquainting yourself with your new home; you’ll quickly become an expert about your surroundings!

For teachers:
Nearpod: An amazing way to interact and engage with students, this app allows teachers to seamlessly share presentations, quizzes, polls and more with their students through iPads. It also allows teachers to see their students’ responses in real time.

For everyone:
Documents to Go: Once school starts up again, and you find yourself always on the go, no worries about being unable to access your documents. Using this app, you can tap into any of your Microsoft Office documents, wherever and whenever.

iBooks Author: You can now make iBooks—complete with interactive elements, like movies and Keynote presentations—through your iPad. It’s simple to use and when you’re done, all you do is submit to the iBookstore, and you’re a published author!

And, of course, don’t forget Yapp! Here are just some of the ways you can use Yapp for your school endeavors this year.

And finally, a big thanks to education expert and Yapp user Naomi (@nharm) for her awesome suggestions! Check her out here.

Teachers’ Appetite for Tech

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Quick Summary

  • Yapp explores teachers’ growing interest in technology as a tool for communication and learning support.
  • The post highlights how digital tools can fit naturally into education settings.
  • Educators and school leaders interested in classroom tech adoption will benefit most from this article.
A survey by PBS LearningMedia published on Mashable says that teachers have an appetite for more inexpensive technology to engage students. We agree!
Teachers, here are a few ideas of how Yapp can work for you:
1. Class parties and after-school activities — Need to remind parents who signed up to bring what snack? Want to make sure parents know to pick up their kids at 5 sharp? We know parents sometime need as much schooling as kids do. 🙂
2. School assemblies, field trips, plays and special days — You can send push notifications with Yapp, which means Johnny won’t wear flip-flops on field day. 
3. PTA, school board meetings — Keep the meetings that impact education top-of-mind for participants. 
These are just three of the endless possibilities of how teachers can use Yapp, what are your ideas?