Back To School Blitz: Free Upgrades and Gifts

We’ve just announced two new back to school programs for educators that will let them get free Gold upgrades and other gifts like LEGO sets and up to $1,000 for buying school supplies. Here are the details:

Program for Teachers and Librarians

PBwiki’s Back To School Challenge
(http://www.backtoschoolchallenge.com) allows up to 100,000 individual
teachers and librarians to sign up and earn a free one-year Gold Upgrade
(regular price $250) by using, blogging about, and referring others to
PBwiki. In addition, top performers in the challenge will receive donations
such as a $1,000 gift certificate from PBwiki for purchasing school
supplies, educational products from LEGO(R) Education (The LEGO Group’s
educational division), autographed books from award-winning science author
Janice Van Cleave, and the bilingual board game GiftTRAP (named “Best Party
Game” by both Games Magazine and Creative Child Magazine). “With sales of
more than two million copies, and translations in fifteen languages, my
books are tools used by educators around the world to expand science
education beyond the textbook,” said Van Cleave, the author of popular
books such as Janice VanCleave’s Teaching the Fun of Science. “By enabling
collaboration, wikis can add binomial expansion to the educational value in
my books.” For a list of these donations, visit the PBwiki web site
(http://pbworks.com/content/btsc-sponsors).

Program for School Districts and Educational Organizations

PBwiki’s Partner Program for Education allows school districts and
organizations that standardize on PBwiki to offer free one-year Gold
Upgrades (regular price $250) as an exclusive membership benefit. Already,
organizations such as the Mathematical Association of America, and the
Wisconsin Society of Science Teachers have signed up to offer PBwiki to the
individual educators they serve. “We use PBwiki to help promote our annual
meetings, and as a collaborative tool for a variety of special projects,”
said Michael Pearson, Associate Executive Director of the Mathematical
Association of America. “There is growing interest in the use of wikis and
other interactive, web-based tools for the classroom. Providing a free
trial of PBwiki will allow our members to experiment and learn how to use
wikis to benefit their students.” School districts and organizations
interested in joining the program should visit the Partner Program page
(http://pbworks.com/content/edupartners).

The Back To School Challenge and Partner Program for Education run
through October 31, 2008.

But don’t take our word for how cool this is…here’s what CMSWire had to say:

“These applications and services will allow teachers and students to collaborate in ways that students have never imagined. The uses are virtually unlimited.

Most of us here at CMSWire probably can’t even count the ways we could have utilized such technologies back when we were in school.

The effects of this could inspire students and teachers to familiarize themselves with technology, Web 2.0, and collaboration. This won’t keep students out of the principal’s office for using their cell phone during class, but it is nice to see companies like PBwiki giving back to the educational system. More companies should have similar programs.”