Crowdsourcing for Edu-Change: Help Us Find Education Non-Profits to Support

The Vision

There are a million education blogs, websites, and non-profits out there advocating for change. One beauty of change.org is its mission to bring together millions of people interested in change, and connect them to existing nonprofits already working to make the changes so many of us want, and in need of our support.

That vision - of serving as an activist portal that supports and grows existing groups collaboratively, instead of splintering them by creating redundant causes that compete with, and dilute, the work those groups are already doing - is what makes change.org unique.

Education.change.org is only four days old, so it's early days here. One of my top priorities right now is to identify and contact as many education non-profits worth supporting as I can. And there's no more sensible way to do that, as far as I can see, than to ask you all to pitch in by "crowdsourcing."

Huh?

Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.

A Simple Way You Can Help

Real simple: Hit "leave a comment" below, and paste links or contact info for the education non-profits you want us to support. We'll take it from there.

Eine Kleine Synchronicity: A Closing Story

I'm one of many thousands of educators who, after drinking the social-media-and-web 2.0-in-education koolaid a few years ago, has been blogging and networking (hey, follow me on Twitter) for education reform like the sanest of madmen. And while so many of us have been able to cause ripples with our work, the inherent solitude of being one voice among tens of thousands on the world-wide web has kept all of us from being able to make waves.

Frustration with that prompted me, about a year ago, to contact some people to discuss how we could consolidate our forces and create waves at the least, tsunamis at best, that aimed not just at talk, but at political action to change education.

Long story short, this classroom teacher had neither the time, resources, nor tech skills to make such a vision a reality, and that pained him.

Then came change.org.

Reacting to the news of this site's launch, one of the people involved in that old discussion, Scott Schwister in Minnesota, wrote this a couple of days ago:

Back in ancient times, during one of our potent conversations, you said something about a vision of web 3.0-to-come: read-write-ACT. Take all the words and thoughts and convictions and put them into action. And here it is, and here you are.

Life's been so fast lately, I'd forgotten those conversations. But Scott's right. The convergence is a mind-bender for me.

So Here We Are.

Let's get started. The pooled talent in the comments in four short days already inspires (and, yes, humbles and somewhat intimidates) me. I'm hoping it will come through on this crowdsourcing request. Help your pet education non-profits by adding them below?