Hi Guest,
We hope you had a wonderful and relaxing July 4th or Canada Day weekend and have had a chance to disconnect and take a summer break, in one form or another! I know many of us are starting to gear back up for the new school year so we’ll look forward to seeing you soon at one of your Back-To-School events in the upcoming weeks!
This week, we’re excited to be attending our first ever NFTE Entrepreneurship Summitas a new NFTE partner. There is such inspiring work being done by teachers across the country to inspire student entrepreneurship, and we are thrilled to be joining hands with NFTE to help more middle school and elementary school students have access.
Founder & CEO
MAD-learn Partners with the Mindbox Design Championship
We are proud to help Mindbox India add a 5th category for App Design to their awesome Design Championship! Design Championship is an interschool competition held across different cities for students to showcase their talent. The competition will be held across India in nine cities: Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Madurai, Coimbatore, Kochi and Lucknow. Students from all over India are eligible to participate in this competition. Register here.
The competition encourages the students to think out of the box and prepares them for the future. It emphasizes finding solution to real-world problems. Using 21st century tools, students create visual prototypes by thinking creatively. The overall outcome is development in Problem Solving, Design Thinking, Effective Communication and Decision-Making Skills. Design Championship is a diverse yet fun and beneficial form of learning.
BOCES Partnerships Help Expand MAD-learn in NY
For several months, MAD-learn’s New York state representatives have created partnerships with Boards of Cooperative Educational Service (BOCES) so that MAD-learn can be offered to more schools. BOCES services are created when two or more school districts have similar needs that can be met through a shared program. Sharing is an economical way for districts to offer programs they otherwise might not be able to afford. Erie 1, Nassau, West Suffolk, East Suffolk were among the first to accept MAD-learn as an approved vendor. Putnam / Northern Westchester BOCES has become the latest to partner with us. We are very excited to have all of these BOCES consortia on board!
Left-Right – MAD-learn NY representative Michele Fitzsimmons, VP of Sales Kimberley Bynoe, and PNW BOCES Education Technology Director Dr. Jen Wilson show off their Models Schools Program through which MAD-learn can now be purchased!
Celebrating The Students of “2 Voices”
The District School Board of Niagara and MAD-learn have enjoyed a successful partnership over the past five years. Many teachers and students throughout southern Ontario have created thousands of apps for various classes, MAD about Mattering projects, Connect Conference demonstrations and more.
Two girls in Scott Young’s middle school class created an app called 2 Voices that puts the end user in the shows of either one of two German citizens during the Holocaust, each faced with decisions about how cooperative they would be when confronted by a Gestapo. Heavy research for both historical accounts and pictures make the experience come alive. Aliya and Yara received a personal congratulatory video from our CEO and here’s what they said:
“Omgggg!!!! That’s so awesome! I literally ran up the stairs to class…and I made some grand entrance yelling,” said one. The other exclaimed, “I have to keep reading that e-mail all over again to take it in. It truly did make me smile and, in fact…
I don’t think this smile will fade anytime soon. It’s crazy to think that something [we] did when we were just in grade 8 is still being recognized to this day.”
MAD-teacher of the Month
This month we celebrate the work of Amanda Bourn from Hawthorn South Middle School, outside Chicago. She is the second from her district to be recognized, following in the footsteps of one of our MAD-pioneers, Tanya Stahl. Amanda began using MAD-learn in May of 2017 and has run the program successfully ever since. For all of the successes she and her students have realized, we are also impressed with the dedication she showed to keep things going, even as she was on maternity leave this past school year.
Amanda shared her thoughts about using MAD-learn, saying, “The MAD-learn platform truly embodies the goal of my Family and Consumer Science content area and our goal at Hawthorn District 73, which is to “inspire all students to embrace learning in an ever-changing world.” With the help of MAD-learn, I am provided another avenue to bring real life academic applications into my classroom that challenges my students to create a viable product that can be used in a future career.”
End-of-Year Reflections
