We’re thrilled to welcome our guest author Angela Maiers, award-winning educator, speaker, consultant and professional trainer known for her work in literacy, leadership and global communications.

The Quest2Matter

Solving the world’s problems requires contributions from every individual.

Students represent one group whose potential contributions are underestimated.

This is unfortunate, because I believe:

• Students are willing to be the change we need, and indeed to lead the change.
• They want to express their passions in meaningful ways.
• In spite of their years, students are a force to reckon with.

The Quest2Matter invites students to the table. It asks to hear their ideas, respects their perspective, and believes they matter and can make a difference in the world.

This is an unprecedented opportunity to celebrate the genius of youth on a world stage, and inspire other students to follow suit. It will also give their ideas a chance to be noticed and mentored by our partners in the business community.

How do I get started?

1. Students decide on a Quest to solve a problem that breaks their hearts, and then begin to solve it.
2. Once a Quest is completed, students tell their story on a post on Kidblog. The story can be told in writing or through a video or pictures.
3. Students are also welcome to submit previously completed projects.
4. All qualifying posts should be part of a “public” class created by the teacher, and the title should include the term “Quest2Matter”.
5. If the teacher has an existing Kidblog class account that is not public, he or she may create a new, public class specifically for the purpose of posting student Quests.

What happens once a student enters a Quest?

• We’ll evaluate all submitted Quests and spotlight the most inspiring ones.
• We’ll be writing about many of the Quests on our partner websites.
• One student, or group of students, will be presented with the first-ever Bammy! Award for Special Achievement by a Student at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. in September 2013.
• One student, or group of students, will be honored at the Business Innovation Factory’s BIF #9 Summit in Providence, RI in September 2013.
• To be eligible for recognition at these ceremonies, Quests must be submitted by June 7.
• However, Quests may be submitted after that date, and we will add new ways to honor Quests in the future.

We can’t wait to see what genius projects your students create!

More information on the Quest2Matter

About Angela Maiers

Angela is an alumnus of The University of Iowa and has her masters degrees in educational supervision and reading from the University of Iowa and has spent 22 years working in Elementary, Middle and University settings as a classroom teacher, reading specialist, coach, special programs facilitator, and University Professor.

Today, Angela is at the forefront of New Literacy and Web 2.0 technologies. An active blogger and social media evangelist, she deeply committed to helping learners of all ages understand the transformational power and potential of technology as a vehicle and platform for their success in school and beyond.

Angela’s intimate knowledge of teaching and learning, down-to-earth style, and powerful message of literacy as change have made her a highly sought after keynote speaker and a vibrant courageous voice in both the business and education space. Her latest books, The Habitudes and The Passion Driven Classroom have inspired readers everywhere with lessons and ideas necessary to find their way on the social web and this newly flattened world.

As owner and lead consultant at Maiers Educational Services, using her passion for literacy and technology to discover creative ways to assist schools and organizations in meeting their learning and productivity goals.

Blog – http://www.angelamaiers.com

Twitter – http://twitter.com/angelamaiers 


Kidblog is pleased to announce upgrades to our server infrastructure in response to ever-increasing demand. We apologize if you’ve accessed the site over the past few weeks at peak times and noticed slow page loads. As of this week, you’ll notice an immediate difference!

This school year, Kidblog has grown to become the largest education blogging platform in the world.  It’s our mission to provide teachers and students with the best possible user experience. So we’ve invested in the infrastructure to ensure even more reliable service.

In the interest of transparency for you data nerds,  here’s a server performance snapshot of the last 7 days.

Spikes in the graph represent longer page load times. Red bars represent brief periods of downtime. As you can see, we’ve flattened those peaks and had 100% availability since the upgrade. Pages now load 500% faster during peak times of day.

We wish you and your students experience continued blogging success!

-The Kidblog Team

The following is one of a  series of guest posts written by real teachers across America who embrace Kidblog in their classrooms. We’re excited to showcase their stories of dedication and success right here for you readers at home.

Welcome Back! It is time for the final interview videos with 6th grade teacher Russ Goerend of Waukee Iowa.  If you missed the first blog post featuring the beginning of the interview watch that here!

In this segment, Russ and Matt continue to talk about how blogging has been a big success with the writing process in his classroom. Thanks for watching, we hope you enjoy and gather some nice takeaways and inspiration.