Coach Brittany Staggs wanted her students to get a rigorous workout even on rainy days. The equipment she needed would cost $800.
With the click of a mouse, the School at St. George Place physical education teacher's request for a Wii, dance video games and projection technology was sent to thousands of potential donors. Within a month, the students in the Houston Independent School District were sweating to popular Disney tunes in the cafeteria of the Galleria-area school."It was awesome," a breathless 6-year-old Summer Fahoud told the Houston Chronicle after trying out the technology.Crowdfunding — an increasingly popular way of using the Internet to raise money for everything from starting a company to adopting a baby — is slowly taking root in Houston-area schools. Painfully slowly, some would say.While the largest of the education-centered crowdfunding sites, donorschoose.org, started in 2000, only early adopters have put crowdfunding to work in cash-strapped public schools. Overwhelmed teachers are reluctant to tackle yet another endeavor and often are uncomfortable with the platform, experts said.Read the full story on Business Insider.
