Modeling Compassion Driven Innovation 

This Undertaking is Enabling Students to Make a Difference and Solve Real World Problems

I am delighted to see that three education and technology powerhouses have joined together in an inspired effort designed to help students follow their passions and make a difference. This is a really exciting undertaking that combines much of what today's technology-enabled teachers are interested in, like inspiring and motivating students to believe in themselves and take actions to make a difference, and using technology to better the world we live in and solve real world problems.

The Players

I could hardly envision a more vital group of educators and professionals – I have tremendous respect for these three women, and working as a team they are like a force of nature!

Vicki Davis – CoolCatTeacher: I had the pleasure of interviewing Vicki for one of the first few “Education Technology Thought Leader” interviews I did back in 2014. The widely known “CoolCatTeacher” is an ed tech pioneer who has earned legions of followers and fans with her blog and podcast and she continues to bring motivation to thousands with her regular video casts featuring educators from across the world.

Angela Maiers – #ChoosetoMatter: Angela is one of the most inspiring educators you'll find – a real powerhouse of passion advocating on behalf of our students and their future. She started Choose2Matter.org, and her motivating message, shown here in this “You Matter” TED Talk, has moved countless people. The keynote speaker and author of “Classroom Habitudes” (I wrote this overview of this excellent book here last year), and co-author of “The Passion Driven Classroom“, continues to change lives through her work.

Alefiya Bhatia – MAD-Learn:  Alefiya is the force behind MAD-Learn, a Mobile Application Development platform being used by students across the world. I spoke with Alefiya last year and keep meaning to reach back out and work on a post about MAD-Learn here (where does the time go?). I was impressed with her and the MAD-Learn platform, and it's really great to see her team up with amazing educators like Angela and Vicki on this electrifying undertaking.

What an awesome collaboration! If only more teachers and technologists could join forces behind promising visions like the one that inspired MadAboutMattering.

The Project

MadAboutMattering is a volunteer effort that started by asking potential participants to share the things they see in our world that they find heartbreaking. These issues are run through a process to select candidate efforts to greenlight and move forward with. As I write this, topics that have been approved include Poverty, Bullying, Animal Abuse, Domestic Violence, Suicide Prevention, and others.

Here, listen to Angela explain the project's aims in her own words:

I plan to reach out and to learn more about how this exciting endeavor has progressed, but in the meanwhile just reading about it got me so pumped that I had to share! Of course, as educators know, one great way to learn more about something is to research it and write about it, so this was also a great way to start to understand what MadAboutMattering is all about. I am psyched to see how this progresses and to see their goal of creating a scalable model come to fruition.

We should all be so MadAboutMattering (for our students)!