L to R: Sherri Shaner, RAFT Director of Development; Mary Simon, RAFT Executive Director; Thomas Ezrin, VP Global Total Rewards and Corporate Sustainability at Flextronics

San Jose, January 15, 2013 – Resource Area For Teaching (RAFT) announced today that Flextronics has donated $10,000 to provide continued support of RAFT’s Education Program.

RAFT repurposes or “up-cycles” materials donated by local businesses into pre-packaged Activity Kits that facilitate hands-on learning for students of Math, Science and other subjects. RAFT’s business model supports educators, students, and the planet by keeping items out of landfills, converting them into engaging activities that immerse students in the learning process.

Flextronics has awarded a total of $45,000 in grants to RAFT since 2008. Mary Simon, Executive Director and Founder of RAFT, voiced the impact of this donation by saying, “Over the years, Flextronics’ generosity has been invaluable in helping RAFT serve the needs of Bay Area educators and their students.”

“Flextronics is proud of our long-standing relationship with RAFT,” said Thomas Ezrin, senior vice president, Global Total Rewards and Corporate Sustainability at Flextronics. “We strongly support the great work that RAFT does toward science and math education in our communities, and take pride in providing support to such an important cause.”

Award funds were presented to RAFT on December 20, at RAFT Headquarters in San Jose, California.

Flextronics supports a range of community development efforts, including initiatives that improve education and the environment, among others. The Flextronics Foundation was established in 2002 and serves as a catalyst for positive change in communities around the world.

RAFT serves more than 10,000 educators in classrooms, home-school settings, and after-school and community-based programs with products (Idea Sheets and Activity Kits), professional development, and affordable teaching supplies to enrich and improve the education of over 825,000 young people each year. RAFT Activity Kits and Idea Sheets are based on the nationally adopted curriculum standards and cover a range of grade levels and subjects.

San Jose, CA (Feb 07, 2012) – Resource Area For Teaching (RAFT), a pioneer in hands-on teaching methods, has received $100,000 from Cisco, the worldwide leader in networking technology, to develop an education web platform that will enable RAFT to extend the benefits of hands-on teaching to more children nationwide.

Today, 10,000 educators use the organization’s hands-on tools to teach more than 800,000 students in Silicon Valley, Sacramento and Denver each year. Through the new platform, RAFT hopes to reach over 1,000,000 pupils nationally by helping educators communicate and collaborate on the best practices of hands-on teaching methods online.

“Teachers deserve the latest in technology tools to help them educate with lessons aligned to science, math and other education standards,” says Ricardo Benavidez, community relations manager, Cisco. “We’re pleased to be able to expand the reach of RAFT’s innovative work through the future education platform. This new online presence will harness the power of the network to bring RAFT’s lessons to more teachers, ultimately helping students achieve their full potential.”

RAFT’s Executive Director & Founder, Mary Simon says, “Cisco transforms how people communicate and collaborate, and we’re excited about accessing the company’s expertise and other resources to improve collaboration among educators. Through implementing and integrating the Internet and other technologies into the new platform, we will optimize the value of RAFT’s offerings and operations to serve teachers nationwide. This will further our aim to ensure that all students receive a hands-on education that ignites their interest, nurtures their natural curiosity and helps them maintain a lifelong love for learning.”

RAFT receives over 500,000 page views from educators seeking hands-on, curriculum aligned teaching ideas. RAFT will leverage this interest by sharing its resources in an online community where educators can access the Idea Sheets, tip sheets, and the mentoring historically offered only via RAFT’s physical centers. Teachers will be able to share their opinions and experiences with peers and other professionals, and in school and out-of-school educators may buy RAFT Activity Kits that include required materials to carry out those activities.

6th and 7th Graders having fun while learning with the RAFT Owl Pellet Activity Kit

San Jose, Calif. – Resource Area for Teaching (RAFT) and Citizen Schools are collaborating on a ten-week pilot project to evaluate the effectiveness of ’Hands-On’ activities in after school STEM education through December 13th, 2011. The students from Kennedy Middle School and Mc Kinley Institute of Technology in Redwood City  will use a variety of projects from dissecting ‘owl pellets’ to learning about water absorption in plants in the two STEM apprenticeships – ‘CSI: Kennedy,’ and ‘Don’t Pave My Bay, Bro!’. The two programs focus on forensic sciences and environmental awareness respectively.

The Citizen Schools program instructors, Benjamin Arnold and Daniel Chang use RAFT Activity Kits and RAFT’s repurposed materials to introduce middle-schoolers to exciting real world project simulations. During the past weeks, students used RAFT materials to understand concepts on DNA modeling, artificial blood and footprint casting, while Daniel Chang used RAFT’s Shake Table Activity Kit to model wet soil, among the many other activities. Benjamin Arnold says, “Students became investigators in their “CSI” apprenticeship, solving different hypothetical crimes by gathering evidence by using RAFT activities!”

Both the groups will present their results at a ‘WOW Event’ on December 13th. Attendees get to unravel a crime using RAFT Activity Kits to gather the clues while students in the ‘Don’t Pave my Bay, Bro!’ program will present their findings in a science-fair setting.

Middlle-schoolers explore heating and cooking with the RAFT Solar Cone Cooker Activity Kit

Daniel Chang describes the importance of RAFT’s ‘Hands-On’ Activity Kits, “The students will showcase their learning, demonstrate the power of RAFT Activity Kits, and highlight the resourcefulness of RAFT for teachers. The attendees will be impressed by our students’ creative use of RAFT Activity Kits using commonly found materials in their presentations.”

Adds Greg Brown, Education Director at RAFT, “RAFT and Citizen Schools are perfect partners because our goals are so closely aligned.  We both work to bring real-world experiences into the classroom.  RAFT ‘Hands-On’ Activity Kits, in the hands of Citizen School instructors, create powerful opportunities for real-world learning.”

RAFT makes it easy to “go green”– reusing everything from bottle caps and bubble wrap to discarded wood or foam packaging — and they become part of Science, math or Art activities.  RAFT also provides training and professional development for Bay Area educators, ensuring that they’re ready to connect and leverage the creative use of Activity Kits in the classroom while teaching to state standards.

Citizen Schools is an expanded learning time initiative that partners with middle schools to provide a longer school day. With Citizen Schools, students program their own video games, or redesign buildings with a local architect, or investigate a forensic mystery using basic chemistry – all the while bringing relevance to their education.

San Jose, CA (November 29, 2011) – “Whatever creativity is, it is in part a solution to a problem.” – Brian W. Aldiss

Martha Kanter, Under Secretary U.S. Department of Education - one of the speakers at the 2011 Big Ideas Fest

Resource Area for Teaching (RAFT) and Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME) join hands to focus on transformational change in K-20 education at the annual Big Ideas Fest, December 4th-7th, 2011. The conference gathers top minds, from innovators, speakers, students, to people from foundations and text-book companies, to share their work and ideas in an environment that encourages risk-taking and overall imagining of the impossible.

Big Ideas Fest’s unique format includes RapidFire talks from leading innovators like Martha Kanter, Under Secretary, U.S. Department of Education, Danny Hillis, Chairman and Co-founder, Applied Minds and Georgette Yakman, Founder, STEAM Education; interactive networking with education’s movers and shakers; and Action Collabs which are design-thinking labs that engage groups to brainstorm, prototype, and ultimately create scalable solutions to cumbersome issues in education.

A Big Ideas Fest attendee at the last year's event holding up a model made out of RAFT materials.

Greg Brown, Director of Education at RAFT, will facilitate a multi-day Action Collab at this year’s Big Ideas Fest. According to Greg, the Action Collabs protocol is very similar to the creative product development process used every day at RAFT. “The same hands-on approach will enable Big Ideas Fest participants to create and test ideas quickly, and will open the door for exciting products to emerge. I’m confident we will see some powerful and practical solutions come out of these sessions.”

Since its inception, RAFT has focused on helping educators transform a child’s learning experience through ‘hands-on’ education that inspires the joy and discovery of learning. By partnering with Big Ideas Fest, RAFT is further strengthening this focus.

RAFT has also donated the materials for the Action Collabs prototyping sessions this year. Megan Simmons, ISKME Education Program Director, adds, “I’ve been a RAFT fan even before I became the Education Program Manager at ISKME. The materials are awesome at RAFT! I really appreciate how many resources RAFT provides educators. We are very excited to partner with RAFT for the Big Ideas Fest Action Collabs.”

The conference is held at The Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Half Moon Bay, CA. For more information, please visit www.bigideasfest.org

Sacramento, CA (Nov 22, 2011) – “Strengthening STEM education is vital to preparing our students to compete in the 21st century economy and we need to recruit and train math and science teachers to support our nation’s students.” President Barack Obama.

Use a paper clip to measure angles!

Resource Area for Teaching (RAFT) of Greater Sacramento in partnership with KVIE Public Television recently launched six training videos to provide teachers with greater access to training in core STEM topics. “KVIE’s mission extends far beyond the airwaves into direct service to children and educators. We are proud to partner with RAFT to create this new resource for educators,” says KVIE VP of Education & Outreach, Arcelia Chávez.

These STEM training videos complete the three-pronged STEM toolkit along with RAFT’s proven and established resources (Idea Sheets and Activity Kits). This toolkit will equip educators with easy-to-use resources for bringing hands-on STEM activities, inside and outside the classroom. They also aid educators in engaging students, and increasing retention and academic achievement.

The six videos give a detailed visual explanation of the Idea Sheets using the materials provided in the Activity Kits. The videos further explain the various terms used in an activity and are an interactive, educative tool. Explains Mark Anderson, Executive Director of Greater Sacramento, “Adding videos to our Activity kits and Idea Sheets help explain them better, and the impact is far greater. Now even parents and grandparents who don’t have a science or math background can refer to these videos detailing the activities and teach their kids about Newton’s Laws or optical illusions!”

The topics in the six videos range from Trigonometry (Dangle Angle Activity Kit), plant growth – Botany (The Germinator Activity Kit), optical illusions (Black and White Make Color Activity Kit), to Newton’s Laws ( Puff Rocket Activity Kit), vibrations in music (Glove-a-Phone Activity Kit), and light spectrum (The Colors of Light Activity Kit). For more info on the videos, visit www.raftsac.org. Some of these Activity Kits can be purchased online at www.raft.net.

RAFT (Resource Area for Teaching), a non-profit has been promoting hands-on interactive learning for 18 years. RAFT of Greater Sacramento is an affiliate of the original RAFT, based in San Jose. In its three years of service, RAFT of Greater Sacramento has grown to serve more than 2,500 local educators, who in turn work with over 70,000 children grades pre-K to 12. With over 1,000 volunteers RAFT of Greater Sacramento distributes 20,000 cu. ft. of low cost materials a year to educators in schools, after school programs, and other children’s groups across the region.

The STEM Alive project was funded by a grant from the Morgan Family Foundation.

San Jose, Calif. (November 15, 2011) – Microsoft is expanding its reach in Silicon Valley by opening retail stores and partnering with local non-profit organizations including Resource Area for Teaching (RAFT) to strengthen educational impact in the society.

The technology giant, one of RAFT’s long standing partners, is committed to building community support for non-profits, by working to improve learning for children. In celebration of the store launch, the Seattle based tech company has offered RAFT a substantial grant in technology resources, valued at up to $350,000.

Jeremy Champlin, RAFT IT Specialist says, “Microsoft’s support of RAFT will allow us to offer new workshops for educators focused on the latest versions of Microsoft’s productivity software. Not just here in Silicon Valley but also in Sacramento and Denver, Colorado where our two affiliates are located. Our staff will be more efficient allowing more time to be focused on serving the needs of our educators.”

RAFT, recognized as a leader in the educational arena for its ‘hands-on’ methods of learning, has benefited by this collaboration over the years. With partners like Microsoft, RAFT is able to work efficiently toward its mission – ‘to help educators transform a child’s learning experience through ‘hands-on‘ education to one that inspires the joy and discovery of learning’.