P.O. Box 425087
Cambridge, MA 02142
U.S.A.
tel: 617-452-5660
http://laptop.org/

Boston After School & Beyond
89 South Street, Suite 402
Boston, MA 02111
(617) 345-5322

Boston After School & Beyond is a unique public-private venture created to expand, improve and sustain a system of quality out-of-school time programs for the City's youth. It brings together the resources, knowledge and shared commitment of Boston government agencies and the City's largest philanthropic and corporate institutions as collective force to improve children's out-of-school experiences. The organization was formed in 2004 as a successor to Boston's After-School for All Partnership and the Boston 2:00 to 6:00 After-School Initiative after a year-long planning process. Boston After School & Beyond identifies the unmet needs of out-of-school time programs and addresses them through public-private partnerships, fundraising and advocacy. Participation in after-school programs has been shown to increase academic achievement and decrease juvenile crime.  Current projects include:

• The Arts & Culture Initiative to increase the quality arts programs and strengthen the network of arts and culture providers in Boston
• Boston Youth Sports Initiative to promote youth sports as a positive youth development and physical fitness approach.
• Partners for Student Success to lower barriers to learning among struggling students by creating connections between the lives children lead in and out of school
• Boston Out-of-School Time Navigator, a collaboration between The City of Boston, BOSTnet and Boston After School & Beyond: a single, unified citywide database of out-of-school time programs in Boston

EdVestors levels the playing field for urban schools seeking private philanthropic investment to accelerate school improvement, serving as a between the donor community and those engaged in strengthening urban schools in Boston and Lowell, Massachusetts.  EdVestors simultaneously helps donors to evaluate which programs to invest in and helps those developing effective programs to reach potential supporters. Its Education Review Panel screens an initial pool of 100 urban education initiatives through a rigorous review process and selects finalists that present for consideration by likely and pre-committed donors, including both individual philanthropists and foundations. EdVestors offers potential donors two opportunities. Its annual Urban Education Investment Showcase features ten leading initiatives and donors make grants to the programs of their choosing, and the EdVestors Collaborative Fund raises money that is collectively given to a selected group of grantees. It also offers technical assistance to selected programs.

1. -The Fund for Nonprofit Partnerships, a foundation collaborative, merged with EdVestors in August 2003, becoming EdVestors Collaborative Fund
2. -Seed funding and office space were provided by The Boston Foundation

An experimental program in after-school civic engagement and learning for middle schoolers started in Boston 12 years ago and has grown into a national apprenticeship network of 2,400 volunteers operating in 30 sites around the nation.  Since 1995, Citizen Schools has built a creative and effective model that addresses community needs while building student skills.  The goal is to prepare students for leadership roles in the 21st century through an after-school program that builds on community values and expertise.  Apprenticeship work with adult volunteers involves middle schoolers in a wide range of community activities such as building solar cars, publishing children's books, organizing public health campaigns, designing urban parks, testing water quality, publishing newspapers and magazines, and designing websites.

• The Boston program has served 8,000 students in 10 different locations
• Adult volunteers are trained to be Citizen Teachers, and lead students in a 10-week apprenticeship
• An "8th Grade Academy" builds on the community engagement to prepare students for what studies show is their toughest year, 9th grade
• The daily academic support time compliments their school work, provides students with important skills to manage their homework and track their academic progress.

The National Center on Education and Economy (NCEE)
555 13th Street, NW
Suite 500 West
Washington, DC 20004
Tel: 202-783-3668
info@ncee.org

In response to dynamic changes in the world economy, the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce released an action-oriented assessment of American education and the changes it requires to keep pace with the rest of the globe.  The report, entitled Tough Choices or Tough Times, is a bipartisan call for urgent modifications in the way the US educates its youth.  As China, India, and other emerging economies begin to supply the global workforce with large numbers of highly skilled workers willing to work at a fraction of US wages, the US no longer enjoys its competitive advantage in the high-skill marketplace.  In response to this new reality, the report offers clear recommendations about how the US can maintain its high standard of living by updating the education system to reflect the realities of new global economy.  Recommendations include:

• Beginning the path to college or advanced technical training at a younger age--around 16--as most other countries now do
• Recruiting a teaching force from the top third of the high school students who go on to college
• Building a high-quality early childhood education system for every 3 and 4 year old in the US

The American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment is a high-visibility effort to address global warming through college and university presidents'  commitment to neutralize greenhouse gas emissions on their campuses, and to accelerate the research and educational efforts of higher education to equip society to re-stabilize the Earth’s climate. Building on the growing momentum for leadership and action on climate change, the college and University Presidents' Climate Commitment provides a framework and support for America’s colleges and universities to go "climate neutral."  Demonstrating that universities can be both centers of research and action, the initiative is organized by the Boston-based advocacy group Second Nature--an organization dedicated to helping institutions of higher education move from "good intentions to strategic action."

• Stabilization of our climate is one of the defining challenges of the modern era
• More than 200 college and university Presidents from around the US have signed the commitment
• The goal is to reach 1,000 signatories by Dec. 2009

Centre for Learning Technologies (CLT)
Ryerson University, Eric Palin Hall
87 Gerrard Street East,
Room 408 Toronto, Ontario, M5B 2K3 Canada
Tel: (416) 979-5000 ext. 7620
Email:bkonstan@ryerson.ca

The International Education and Resource Network (iEARN) is the premier global online educational community.  Since 1988, iEARN  has been pioneering professional development and on-line school linkages to enable students to engage in meaningful educational projects with peers in their countries and around the world.  Today, over one million school-age students and teachers from more than 20,000 schools in 115 countries collaborate daily on educational projects.  iEARN is truly a global organization with a charter that requires that at least 50% of its schools be outside the US.  Student empowerment is at the heart of the iEARN's model.  All projects are generated through student and teacher collaboration.  At any given moment, more than 150 collaborative projects are underway, addressing all major curricular areas and focused on every imaginable topics.  Current projects include:

• The Art Miles Mural Project - in which students create murals promoting cultural awareness that will eventually be linked together in a 3-mile chain, making it the largest such art piece in the world.  It will be displayed at a gala "Exhibition of the Century" in Egypt in the year 2010.
• Ecology of a Coral Reef as well as Ecology of an Extreme Desert--in which primary school-age children research the state of coral and desert  ecologies in their local and global communities.
• Cities Near the Sea--in which students work together on cross-curricular themes related to the ‘city near the sea’ in which they live

MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a large-scale, web-based publication of the educational materials from all of MIT's courses.  It is the world's largest and most precedent setting-effort of this type.  The initiative stems from the MIT Faculty's passionate belief in the MIT mission based on the conviction that the open dissemination of knowledge and information can offer the powerful benefits of education to humanity around the world.  The program enables the open and global sharing of the MIT faculty's teaching materials with educators, enrolled students, and self-learners.   MIT OCW provides users with open access to the syllabi, lecture notes, course calendars, problem sets and solutions, exams, reading lists, and video lectures from 1,550 MIT courses representing 34 academic disciplines and all five of MIT's schools.

• 95% of users report that MIT OCW has or will help them to be more productive and effective
• MIT OCW has helped to spur an international movement in open courseware.  The international Open Courseware consortium now has over 100 academic institutional members from over a dozen nations who are now publishing their course materials online
• All MIT OCW material is licensed under the Creative Commons License that allows for noncommercial reproduction and derivative works with proper attribution