Congratulations to our 2013 Speak Up Heroes!

Hello to all of our Project Tomorrow supporters and Happy Friday! We hope the month of October has treated you all well. Exciting events are on the horizon here at Project Tomorrow. In this blog post, you will find information regarding... Our Speak Up Heroes This Year's Speak Up 200 Cohort The Launch of Speak Up 2013 Happy Reading! Feel free to share your thoughts with us on Facebook, Twitter, as well as comment below! -The Project Tomorrow team

Speak Up Hero Awards 10 years of Speak Up Surveys 2003-2013 These special recognitions applaud the extraordinary support for Project Tomorrow’s Speak Up surveys provided by a few companies and organizations over the past 10 years. The awards were announced at the Celebration of 10 Years of Student Voices about Digital Learning event at Haworth Inc. in Washington, D.C. on September 19th, 2013. The following organizations were honored as Speak Up Heroes: US Department of Education's Office of Technology State Education Technology Director's Association (SETDA) Blackboard Inc. SMART Technologies The Jon Bernstein Strategy Group To learn more about these organizations, and how they have been strong advocates and supporters of Speak Up and Project Tomorrow over the years, please visit our special Speak Up Heroes page:http://www.tomorrow.org/speakup/SU_heroes_2013.html. We will also be doing a follow up feature next week! So make sure to check back! Congratulations to our 2013 Speak Up Heroes!

Speak Up 200 Schools—based on 2012 Participation For full list of schools please click here. With Speak Up 2013 in full swing, we wanted to take this time to thank our past Speak Up participants! We greatly appreciate all the support and encouragement that went in to making Speak Up 2012 such a success, without you Speak Up would not be possible! To honor top participating schools and districts, each year Project Tomorrow nominates the top 200 Speak Up schools for our Speak Up 200 recognition program based on total student participation, length of time involved with Speak Up, and use of data in local decision making. The schools selected for Speak Up 200 represent a broad range of educational institutions in rural, suburban and urban communities. The complete list of Speak Up 200 recognized schools are highlighted on the Project Tomorrow website at http://www.tomorrow.org/speakup/speakup_200.html. To read more about this year's Speak Up 200 schools, please check out the Press Release. Based upon total participation and demonstrated commitment to engaging their stakeholders in local decisions on education issues, five school districts were also recognized for special distinctions.  Top 5 Speak Up 2012 school districts (based on total participation): Klein ISD (Texas) Shelby County School District (Alabama) Weslaco ISD (Texas) McAllen ISD (Texas) Richardson ISD (Texas) Additionally this year, all of our Speak Up 200 schools will have the opportunity to download a special Gold, Silver, or Bronze badge to place on websites, social media outlets, e-mails, blogs, and more. To download your unique badge, click here.

Congratulations to our Speak Up 200 Schools!

Speak Up 2013 is open for input now through December 20th! Click here to take the survey today! Join the conversation about the use of technology for learning through Speak Up, a National Research Project. The online survey is open to students, educators, parents and new this year community members. It's quick and easy to get involved! To take the survey follow the instructions below: Go to www.speakup4schools.org/speakup2013 Select the appropriate survey (Click here for tips on deciding which survey to take) Select your state Enter your school name, if a member of the community please select a local school or enter in your zip code to select a school to take the survey under. Complete the survey before Dec. 20th! Please be sure to share with your network of friends and family! *Students will be required to enter in the secret word to access the survey. Register as the primary contact of your school or district (at the link above) to manage your information and assign a student survey password to ensure confidentiality-- all students will need to enter in the secret word to take the survey. As the primary contact for your district, school or organization you will be in charge of the promotion and encouragement of the survey at your selected organizational level. In return, you will receive free, online access to your aggregated results with state and national comparisons in February 2014. Our helpful and handy promotional materials are here to help you spread the word about Speak Up to your school/district's students, parents, teachers, administrators, community partners, and more! View our full list here. Follow Speak Up on Facebook, Twitter and Blog for all the latest updates on Speak Up Surveys. Together, let's work together to leverage technology to promote better learning for our students nation wide!

Thank you for reading. Don't forget to Speak Up now through December 20th! Questions? Contact us at speakup@tomorrow.org