Among Yahoo’s many users are a vast community of public school teachers, parents, students, and education advocates. Yahoo! is dedicated to supporting education and helping both students and teachers thrive. We’re continually sharing and hearing stories about what our community does to help our classrooms gain much needed funding – bake sales, magazine subscription sales, collecting empty cans, gift wrap and more. So today we launched Yahoo! Homepages for Homerooms, a program that gives everyone a new way to help teachers and classrooms get funding from now through Dec. 23, 2010.

Through Yahoo! Homepages for Homerooms, public school teachers are eligible to receive funding from Yahoo! if they have a project posted on DonorsChoose.org, a renowned education nonprofit through which public school teachers can request funds for needed classroom items – books, art supplies, a projector, you name it!. Yahoo! will provide full project funding (up to $600 per project) to the projects that receive the most Yahoo.com homepages. We’ll fund up to $350,000 by the end of the year.

If you’re a teacher and do not currently have a project on DonorsChoose.org, visit our Teachers page to find out more. If you already have a project on DonorsChoose.org, you’re automatically eligible to participate in Homepages for Homerooms, so start spreading the word to your community to make Yahoo! their homepage in support of your project.

To help support a public school project get funding:

1) Visit yahoo.homepagesforhomerooms.com/projects and find a project you’d like to support.

2) Click “Support this project” and follow the easy steps to make Yahoo! your homepage. Each person may participate once.

3) Spread the word to teachers, colleagues, and friends to help your favorite project get funding — the more homepages are generated, the more classroom projects we’ll fund

The nature of the online and mobile environments is rapidly changing and so are the challenges for teachers and parents – from digital-reputation management to addressing cyber-bullying.  Kids need to be in control of their online persona – that is the ways in which they represent themselves online, and how that persona can have an impact throughout their lives.  In this day and age, you are what you post!

Today marks Yahoo!’s third annual CyberCitizenship Summit in Sunnyvale, Calif. addressing the leading issues youth face today –  digital reputation management and cyberbullying.  Along with our co-hosts, Technology for Learning Partnership, we are bringing together more than 180 educational leaders from around California, child safety experts, and local law enforcement leaders to address how to guide students’ online persona.  With an increase in Internet and mobile gadgets coming into the home this holiday season, teachers and other participants will come away with real and practical information to help them understand the online environment in which their students live and toolkits to help students manage their digital reputations.

Over the years, Yahoo! has worked collaboratively with industry peers, child safety groups and law enforcement with the common goal to find new ways to protect children online.  At this year’s summit, we are thrilled to partner with some of the most notable national child safety experts to offer educational leaders guidance on digital literacy.
Presenters include:

Anne Collier, ConnectSafely
Marsali Hancock, iKeepSafe Internet Safety Coalition
Larry Magid, ConnectSafely
Diana Paradise, Technology for Learning Partnership
Catherine Teitelbaum, Yahoo! Safely
Glenn Warren, Orange County Office of Education

In advance of the summit, we worked closely with iKeepSafe.org, and sponsored the development Project PRO – a hands-on curriculum guide and a resource kit to help educators coach youth on protecting and managing their digital reputation, and strategies to keep youth safe from bullying.   Summit attendees will be guided through the program and implementation strategies and be provided with the kit for immediate use at their school site.
Hosting this summit is just one of the ways we work to help foster a safer experience for children. To learn more about digital reputation management and tips for preventing cyberbulling, visit safely.yahoo.com.
Catherine Davis Teitelbaum
Director of Policy for Child Safety