Young people aged 8- to 17-years-old are being invited to participate in a nationwide video contest to create innovative ideas using science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics to tackle the biggest challenges in schools, communities, and the world.
The Disney Big Hero 6 XPrize Challenge is inspired by Disney's new animated feature Big Hero 6 and is trying to find real-life student counterparts to the film's animated heroes. Contestants are asked what one problem they would take on to change the world, and how they would do it.
Six winners will travel to Los Angeles to attend the Hollywood premiere of Big Hero 6 in early November, meet creative minds at Walt Disney Animation Studios and Imagineering, and join a special "Visioneering" experience. The deadline for submissions is October 12. For more information, please see the
contest page.
Pilot Program to Train 20 Seattle Parents
A pilot program to train 20 Seattle parents for a larger role in their children's schools was recently featured in the Seattle Times "Education Lab" project.
Community and Parents for Public Schools, a local parent-involvement group and member of the Road Map Project Community Network Steering Committee, recently secured grant funding for the pilot program. The program is modeled on a local community association in Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood. Although many parents in the neighborhood do not speak English at home, hundreds have been trained to volunteer and tutor in their children's schools.
The program will train 20 volunteers as classroom aides. The first 10 will be deployed at Seattle's Dearborn Park International School--a Race to the Top high-need school--later this fall. Beyond that, five other schools with high populations of Latino or Somali families are under consideration for the second wave of parent mentors, expected to begin work in the spring.
For more information, please see the
Education Lab piece.
