GenoCHURCH

Inspiration Officer -

EmilyKirkpatrick

Vice President - National Center for Family Literacy

14% 14% of the adult population unableto adequately manage daily taskthat require reading skills beyonda basic level

40% 40% of 4th graders, many ofwhom are part of these families,also unable to read at a basic level.

TheChallengeCreate agame-changerin literacyimprovementefforts.

What we Learned

We embarked on a nationwide insight tour to talk with single, working-class and immigrant parents about how they engage in learning with their children.

Parents were not looking for resources on how to instruct their children.They needed a free and easy way to inspire them.

Reframe the conversation around literacy by understanding how families engage in learning.

• Successfully inspire kids and families to engage in learning and share their experience with others

• Provide fresh and relevant content that could engage a variety of audiences and work with the reality of families’ lives today

• Inspire a year-round, two-way conversation with families and educators that could grow into a self-sustaining literacy movement for the 21st century

OPportunityThe

From an academic approach to an engaging experience

Pivot Opportunity:

• Wonderopolis has enjoyed an enthusiastic response from teachers from kindergarten to middle school, teachers with different subject specialties like science and math, special needs teachers, librarians and district instructional technologists.

Enthusiastic Adoption by the Education Community

• Teachers are finding creative ways to incorporate Wonderopolis into their classroom - and sharing ideas with each other through personal blogs. We estimate that 85% of blogs that talk about Wonderopolis are teacher blogs.

• Teachers are also sharing it with parents of their students, and hearing from parents how Wonderopolis has ignited a conversation at home about what their kids learned that day.

content dialogue

Create a context of wonder to help engage families, and teachers in a new conversation.

Launch Strategy

Engage people with a connection to children, and educators, media folk, Mommies and dads, and teachers offline.

Phase I (Oct 2010 - Sep 2011), our primary goal was to launch the site and ignite a conversation by engaging users in two-way dialog on Wonderopolis.org and accompanying Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Continue to engage families in learning during the summer months. Camp What-A-Wonder: Once a week during the summer, Wonderopolis.org transformed into a virtual camp environment

During Phase II (launching currently),our goal is to translate excitement around Wonderopolis into a community that will live online and offline. Five leaders will be recruited and trained to help create and grow this community, and lead America’s families and teachers in wonder.

Results

• In its first month, Wonderopolis attracted over 18,500 visitors.

• Between January-August 2011, the number of monthly unique visitors grew by 670%.

• Wonderopolis has enjoyed numerous (unsolicited) favorable reviews in 100+ online publications and blogs. Recently, Time Magazine named Wonderopolis one of 2011’s 50 Best Websites. EducationWorld.com gave Wonderopolis 5 stars for its high-quality information and ability to bring fun into the classroom.

• A recent study of online educational resources found that 54% of teachers who knew about Wonderopolis reported having visited or used it in the last three months.

• Comments to Wonderopolis.org have risen to over 500 comments per month.

• A key goal was to drive traffic to the Thinkfinity Verizon Foundation community. Of Thinkfinity’s 10 content providers, Wonderopolis drove the highest percent of their site traffic to the Thinkfinity community.