Monday, February 22, 2010

THANK YOU! A Wonderful Webcast Event!

All,

THANK YOU! Because of your hard work and efforts, Friday’s Haiti videoconference and webcast was a huge success. The University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Video Network (who coordinated the webstreaming technology) had one of their largest streaming event EVER with close to 600 sites around the world connecting to watch your fantastic presentations.

Photos from the event can be seen at http://picasaweb.google.com/magpik20/KidsHelpHaiti#. You can also upload photos from your site there! If you’re receiving this email, you should have permissions to upload photos to the album if you log into Picassa using an account associated with the email address I have on file for you. You can always send your photos to me and I’ll upload them too!

It looks like this event made the newspaper in Texas! The Denton Record-Chronicle featured Ms. Watson’s first graders’ performance in the webcast event: http://www.dentonrc.com/sharedcontent/dws/drc/localnews/stories/DRC_ponderkids_0220.1354ed3e5.html. If your local media covered your participation, please let us know!

We also had some fabulous Tweeters, Bloggers and Facebookers during Friday’s program! Many thanks to the students at Southern Lehigh Middle School, The Haverford School, Mansfield High School, Cornerstone Learning Center, Hempfield SD and Paige from Mt. Vernon High School for blogging, tweeting and facebooking! Thanks to your participation in the social media aspect of this program, you’ve all won giveaways!

  • Southern Lehigh MS (@Design21SLMS) - Virtual Field Trip to Kiglauit Educational Adventures (http://www.kigluaitadventures.com/)
  • The Haverford School (@HATV) – 1 GB Flash Drive (courtesy of Tandberg)
  • Cornerstone Learning Center (@jason.flom) - $25 Gift Card from Best Buy (courtesy of LifeSize)
  • Mansfield HS (@russro) - 3 Water Bottles (courtesy of Tandberg)
  • Hempfield SD (facebooking) - 1 GB Flash Drive (courtesy of Tandberg)
  • Paige Darnold (blogger, jr. at Mount Vernon High School) – $25 Gift Card from Best Buy (courtesy of LifeSize)

Contact me on how to claim your giveaway - - and many, many thanks to our sponsors who provided them!

An archive of this event will be made available as a podcast (broken into smaller segments) on iTunes University and also as a multicast through VideoFurnace. The archive will be available on Friday, and we will post instructions here on how to access it.

In the meantime, check out the student blog entries at http://studentshelpinghaiti.blogspot.com/. If your students want to add an entry, please let me know!

Again, many thanks to all of you. Please keep the momentum going - - here are some ideas:

Thanks again. We couldn’t have done this without you!

Best,
Heather, Mike and the Rest of the MAGPI Team

Friday, February 19, 2010

In creating a website for young people to be able to get on and see different events that might be going on to help Haiti, is successful in letting the students know what is going on. Overall, every idea that was given out and described to help out Haiti were all good ideas. I believe that all of them, no matter how small they were, they were beneficial and helped in one way or another. I think that it doesn't matter how much you help but it matters if you are willing to give your time and energy to help out those who are in need. Are you willing to put those who are in more of need then you are before yourself?
I like the idea of different costumes or different things that are out of the ordinary for students to wear for donations. I think that my school should do something like this because this is really a good idea. This is a really good idea to get everyone in the whole school to get involved. I think even pep ralley's or something in that category could also raise a lot of money for Haiti. These pictures and videos, are extremely effective i feel to get people want to help.
I like the idea that everyone and anyone can get involved into the architecture of humanity because they are planning on building schools that are earthquake resistant. This will help the students to want to go to school and want to make themselves better. It's just amazing that anyone can help benefit the program and help make the building of the schools happen. I really like the fact that everyone has so much hope for the people in need and that they are so concerned and dedicated to helping them get themselves back on their feet. It's so wrong how certain people instantly judge others based on their race, relgion, ethnicity, etc., although they may be slightly different from you, there is no reason to judge them. But some people do and it's so wrong because this is why Haiti is still in trouble, because some people don't want to help out because they believe they are better then them. This is so unbelieveably incorrect, the people are no different any one of us, their needs may be more intense then ours but they still need help none the less. Imagine if your child, mother, father, sister, brother, grandmother, or anyone else was in this, wouldn't you want to help them out? Well some people don't see it that way i guess.
In showing the different kind of ways that the plate tectonics can run into each other is vital to explaining what happened to cause the accident in Haiti. I think more people will understand better once they know everything exactly in the scientific version on the earthquake. The group of 8th grade students that came together and made tshirts with their hand prints on them and sold them for money to fundraise for Haiti was a good idea. Many people like just plain tshirts to just do anything in and don't want to wear a nice tshirt doing something that requires a old tshirt. The idea to take photographs of people and sell them for money was a good idea as well. More often people like to have photographs of themselves and their friends to put in photo albums or to even just to have for memory of good times. I think it was a really good idea to create a facebook page because so many people have a facebook page and are on it constantly. Facebook is the new addiction for young teens and even adults, so creating a facebook for Haiti was a great idea. To give different rewards for donating to Haiti is a good way to get more students involved and want to help because no matter what they give, they are recieving something else in reward. It's very beneficial either way.
Creating different necklaces and bracelets with the different metals in their different shapes are very smart to raise money. This fundraiser is very smart because so many people enjoy necklaces and braceletes, this is a common thing so for them to create something sentimental to those in Haiti will help them gain money for them. Sometimes just words can't impact a person and it can't paint a picture in reality for some people. The real life pictures and an actual video of the earthquake that had happened in Haiti is a huge impact to people. Then they feel like they can actually feel the pain and desperation in some of the peoples faces. Then they can feel everything that those people who lost so many things, they feel everything they feel just by the expressions on their faces. This real video and pictures, I think, is the best way to get people to want to participate and donate money to help Haiti. It can really hit a person and make them realize that in life, not everything is picture perfect and that bad things really do happen and just not in movies. I think these students really realize what kind of suffering Haiti is dealing with and just how much help they really do need.
The idea for a rehabilitated care is a very considerate for the ones who have lost an arm or an leg and have to get around but have intense trouble just trying to walk. People don't realize what it's like to loose a limb when it hasn't happened to them. In Haiti a rehabilitation center would be a great impact and help more than anything. Haiti needs help long term, they can't have a group of people who only plan on helping short term. These protestics are very helpful for those who have lost an arm or leg.