Yahoo! Teachers: It's About Relationships

Last week, Karon Weber, Bill Scott, and I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the National Science Teacher Association (NSTA) Conference in St. Louis where we introduced Yahoo! Teachers (and the Gobbler) to science teachers from every corner of the globe!




Watch the Yahoo! Teachers video featuring Sue Wright.

We met teachers from every region of the United States, along with teachers from Sweden, Canada, Ireland, U.K., and Hong Kong who were were excited to hear about Yahoo! Teachers. We were also excited to be able to show them the video that featured Sue Wright, one of our 2006 Yahoo! Teachers of Merit Program.

 

Beyond Yahoo! Teachers, it was a fantastic opportunity for us to talk with teachers and hear their stories. Bill met a teacher from Iowa who spent 3 years selling nachos at school basketball games to earn enough money to buy an interactive SMART board. This teacher wanted to make sure, despite the budget cuts in his district, that his students would be able to benefit from the latest technology in his classroom.

 

I met a wonderful teacher who has taught in New Orleans for the last 25 years. When I asked him how his school was doing post-Katrina, his eyes filled with tears. He spoke passionately about how hard life, let alone learning, has been for students at his school since the great storm hit New Orleans.

 

After listening to Karon talk about Yahoo! Teachers, a group of teachers from Arkansas were so excited and happy to discover that a tool like this was going to be released, they asked Karon if they could give her a hug!

 

At the NSTA reception (on the top of a hotel with a killer view of the St. Louis arch), all three of us had the opportunity to meet a teacher from Kentucky who went up in the space shuttle as part of NASA's Teacher in Space program. She is a passionate advocate of science and space education in the schools.

Having the opportunity to listen to so many educators tell us their stories, fueled our passion for this project. It also reaffirmed our belief that Yahoo! Teachers isn't just about technology (although it's really cool!), it's also about relationships. We appreciate all the teachers who took time to share their stories with us and look forward to hearing more of your stories and feedback at our Yahoo! Teacher workshops this summer.

 

Throughout the conference Karon, Bill and I shared the story of how a group of teachers came to Yahoo! last summer to help us build technology that addresses their particular needs in the classroom.

 

In this video, Bill Scott shows you how you can use the Yahoo! Gobbler to easily collect and organize materials from any page on the web!

We are so appreciative of our Yahoo! Teachers of Merit for taking time out of their busy life and summer vacation to partner with us to steer the development of Yahoo! Teachers. Over the course of the last year, they have caught the vision of how social media tools can be leveraged to support the teaching community.

 

We are excited to finally be able to share the story and open the doors to the new Yahoo! Teachers. And we are even more proud that, from the get-go, this is a community designed for teachers, by teachers.

So if you haven't already, please take a tour of Yahoo! Teachers, put yourself on the map and sign-up for an invite. We're just getting started and we want you to join us!

And if you're going to NECC 2007, be sure to stop by the Yahoo! Teachers booth, pick up some swag, and say hello! We'd love to hear your story too!