April 2013 Newsletter Vol 5: Issue 10 - World Wide Workshop April 2013 Newsletter

Dear Partners and Friends, April brought exciting recognition to the Workshop, putting us in touch with decision-makers and innovators from all over the country at NSBA and SIIA, and from around the world at the Skoll World Forum. Globaloria students were also given the chance to meet expert STEM innovators at the HP and Google campuses. We warmly welcome a new funder in California, the Leo M. Shortino Foundation, and a new advisory board member, award-winning media theorist Douglas Rushkoff. We are delighted with the new friends of the Workshop, and we thank those of you who have been with us for many years for your continued support. Cheers, Idit

follow Idit on Twitter | follow Globaloria on Twitter | forward to a friend

In This Month's Issue: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Dr. Douglas Rushkoff Visits the World Wide Workshop Skoll World Forum Features Idit as Global Social Entrepreneur National School Boards Association Names Workshop Technology Innovator SIIA Selects Globaloria for Innovation Incubator Leo M. Shortino Foundation Awards Grant to Workshop NCWIT Selects a Globaloria Aspirations Award Winner to Run Local Computing Camp San Jose Students Get Inspired for STEM Careers at HP and Google Idit Participates in Reconnecting McDowell Partners Meeting

1. Dr. Douglas Rushkoff Visits the World Wide Workshop On April 25, award-winning media theorist Douglas Rushkoff, author of 12 books, visited the Workshop to share with the team his latest book, Present Shock. We discussed his key concepts--narrative collapse, digiphrenia, overwinding, fractalnoia, and apocalypto-and how to take these into consideration as we design technology-infused education for youth to support the development of their self-expression, self-agency, and human-tohuman interaction; how certain computational tools can elicit the merits of quality concentration in learning, rather than speedy, superficial, fragmented knowledge; and the role of game design for developing connections, narrative and community. In his book Program or Be Programmed (2011), Rushkoff advocates for kids and youth to learn to develop agency with technology through computer programming, and in this he is aligned with the Workshop manifesto that "coding and computational creativity is the new literacy." We are honored to announce that Douglas Rushkoff has joined our advisory board to inspire our team and the youth we serve.

2. Skoll World Forum Features Idit as Global Social Entrepreneur

World Wide Workshop founder and president Dr. Idit Harel Caperton was a featured panelist at Skoll World Forum 2013, a conference to advance social entrepreneurship around global problems. Idit's panel, entitled Blended Learning: The Proof and the Promise featured Khan Academy founder Salman Khan, Ideo education lead Sandy Speicher, eAdvance CEO Stacey Brewer, and Stanford University d.School professor Debra Dunn, as moderator, discussing how technology can improve education quality and access globally.

Idit and fellow panelists discuss blended learning at Skoll World Forum

3. National School Boards Association Names Workshop "Technology Innovator" The National School Boards Association (NSBA) featured the Workshop as a Technology Innovation in the 2013 Showcase at its annual conference, held in San Diego on April 1315. I was honored to introduce Globaloria to thousands of school board members and superintendents who attended from across the United States and Canada to learn about the ways in which innovative programs, like ours, are changing education, said Amber Oliver, VP of Partnerships and Operations.

4. SIIA Selects Globaloria for Innovation Incubator The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) named Globaloria an Education Technology Pioneer to be featured at the annual SIIA Ed Tech Industry Summit, May 5-7 in San Francisco. Stay tuned for our update about this meeting in our

May newsletter.

5. Leo M. Shortino Foundation Awards Grant to Workshop The Leo M. Shortino Foundation awarded a grant to the Workshop to expand the deployment of Globaloria in San Jose/Silicon Valley. The Shortino Foundations grant helps close STEM and digital literacy gaps and address barriers to educational achievement for at-risk and low-income youth in the region.

6. NCWIT Selects a Globaloria Aspirations Award Winner to Run Local Computing Camp Laura Plascencio of East Austin College Prep (EAPrep), a ninth-grade Globaloria Student, was one of only 24 young women nationwide to receive a grant from the Aspire IT Middle School Outreach Program Pilot Fund to lead a computing camp for middle school girls this summer. Aspire IT will employ a "near-peer" approach to provide young women with a positive, sustained experience of learning and creating computing alongside their peers. Plascencio was the runner-up for the Central Texas NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing in 2012, which awarded her this grant.

7. San Jose Students Get Inspired for STEM Careers at HP and Google th th On April 25, Hewlett Packard (HP) hosted more than 60 Christopher School 7 and 8 graders at their Palo Alto headquarters. It meant a lot to the young students to hear the history HP in Silicon Valley and its products, learn how a strong technology company functions, and ask a panel of HP representatives questions about working at HP.

Christopher School students during a field trip at the HP offices in Palo Alto. On April 26, more than 30 Santa Teresa High School students took a STEM Innovation Field Trip to Google headquarters in Mountain View. Besides receiving an inspiring (and entertaining) presentation

on Computer Science, computer scientists, and the importance of STEM education, students toured and enjoyed the energetic, playful atmosphere of the Google campus. The exciting trip was topped off with lunch at the Google Cafe and a visit to the Store for Google goodies!

Santa Teresa High School students outside Google headquarters in Mountain View.

8. Idit Participates in Reconnecting McDowell Partners Meeting On April 22, Dr. Idit Harel Caperton presented the achievements of Globaloria in West Virginia at the Reconnecting McDowell Partners Meeting in Charleston, WV. The Workshop is an official partner of Reconnecting McDowell, a comprehensive, long-term initiative to make educational improvement in McDowell County, as the route to a brighter economic future for the community. This academic year, Globaloria is reaching 1000 students and teachers in 32 schools in West Virginia, of which more than 100 students and teachers are in four McDowell County schools.