Come Monday, life will be very different for one member of the Eduporium team. Actually, let’s just get something out of the way right off the bat. That member is me. I’m Andy—part of the Social Media and Marketing team at Eduporium and I am writing this blog in the first person. Okay, anyways, this coming Monday, I am beginning a 74-day road trip that will take me to some of the most amazing places in the United States and allow me to visit some of the hardworking teachers who are shaping today’s students. Though the idea for a road trip didn’t initially involve teachers (or really even Eduporium), I’m extremely excited with how it evolved and took shape and, needless to say, I can’t wait to hit the road in just three days!
So, how did this whole thing come to be? My girlfriend and I started planning a road trip around the entire country two years ago after getting inspired by some friends we’d had in college who made a similar trip. We got really into the planning really quickly and, soon enough, we had an outline for our route. Oh, and we’re bringing our two-year-old Golden Retriever along for the ride.
After saving money for nearly two years and completely revamping the initial route, we each took on additional part-time jobs this past spring and realized that we’d probably be able to save enough money to get on the road in the fall. We always knew that we wanted to start the trip towards the end of August and return home in November, so it worked out pretty well.
Over the course of 74 days, we’re going to pass through 43 of the lower 48 states and visit some of the country’s best cities, sites, and national parks. I’ll do this the short way and mention that the only five states we’re not going to touch are North Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Missouri. Sorry to everyone there!
Of course, we’re tremendously excited to go further from home than we ever have before and see things like the Grand Canyon, Golden Gate Bridge, Yellowstone National Park, Chicago from the Willis Tower Sky Deck, and we’re even going to be staying in a tipi one night. But, I personally am also looking forward to some unique things, like seeing some cacti or maybe some bison, bringing our dog to a Major League Baseball game, and all of the quirks in different parts of the country.
Since I didn’t have much interest in giving up my role at Eduporium, however, I approached some of our management members in June and we discussed the trip and how I would still be able to work from the road. Plenty of people do it, so I figured I could be one of them. I also came up with the idea of visiting schools along the way—with a special gift in hand for a teacher. After some planning, our “road trip donation program” started to take shape and we have the support of one of our newest partners to thank for that.
Seriously, without this support, we would have had to rethink a lot of things. We contacted some folks at a company that’s based in San Antonio, Merge, to explain my trip and the kind of project I was hoping to lead. Thankfully, they were fully on board and equally excited to help us—even offering to donate three times more than what we’d asked for! After just a few days, a box of 10 Merge Cubes arrived at our office and I had my donations in hand—with just about a month to go before I was set to hit the road.
For anybody who is not familiar with the Merge Cube (our partnership is still being finalized, so their products are not quite yet on our store), it is a three-dimensional, foam cube with a number of small designs on each surface. When paired with a mobile device, students can point that device at the cube and the designs on the cube will be displayed in a holographic way for them to see! It’s a fantastic way to augment traditional learning with augmented reality and the educational content Merge offers is extensive!
The cube can be used in all different school subjects since the curricular content covers pretty much everything. Whether teachers are looking for something for science, social studies, history, or geography, the different units provide quite the variety. By creating a user account, teachers and students can access various content from their mobile devices and unlock more of it if they wish. We are incredibly grateful to our partners at Merge who didn’t hesitate to help us out with this project and send a sincere thank you to them!
As I mentioned, I received the cubes in the mail (I’m currently in the possession of 10 Merge Cubes) and began the process of figuring out who would get one. At Eduporium, we provide a $500 EdTech grant to a deserving educator every month. The application is open to teachers, librarians, makerspace managers, and anybody else involved in the world of innovative education from anywhere in the country. Since we launched this program just over a year ago, we’ve awarded 15 educators with new STEM tools for them to use with kids in their various programs.
We have, however, received a lot more applications than that, but have always only been able to select one recipient each month. So, what I did was go through every application and make a list of applicants who were not selected and who live or teach in one of the areas I’ll be passing through. I picked some of my favorite applications and most deserving teachers (it was tough!) and reached out to them with the offer of stopping by their school to gift them a new Merge Cube. Needless to say, there were some pretty excited reactions and I’ll be making some school stops in addition to all of the other places I’ll be visiting, which we’re all very excited for!
As of now, the list of schools I will be visiting is spread out both in terms of locations and in terms of timing. I’ll be hitting two of them in the first five days of the trip during the final few days of August and then won’t be visiting any others (as of now) until October. That’s okay, though because I’m very confident that I chose some good ones to donate to! My first stop will be in Burlington, VT at the Orchard School this Wednesday.
Other stops on the tour will include the Santa Monica Blvd Charter School in Los Angeles, the Vista Grande Elementary School in San Diego, the Mary B. Austin Elementary School in Mobile, AL, Socrates Academy in Matthews, NC, the Newark Charter Intermediate School in Newark, DE, and the Hudson Montessori School in Jersey City, NJ.
We will be sharing pictures and updates from each of the school visits on both our Instagram and Twitter accounts, so be sure to follow those if you don’t already! And, now it’s time for a shameless plug. If you’d like to follow our road trip account on Instagram, I’d love to have you. Give it a follow for all the updates. Again, I’m very much looking forward to what I am sure will be an incredible experience made even more awesome by getting to bring some gifts of technology to a handful of teachers and I say thank you to the Merge team once again for helping to make this happen.