2. Geno
CHURCH
Inspiration Officer -

3. Emily
K k
ir patrick
Vice President - National Center for Family Literacy

5. 14
% 14% of the adult population unable
to adequately manage daily task
that require reading skills beyond
a basic level

6. 40
% 40% of 4th graders, many of
whom are part of these families,
also unable to read at a basic level.

7. Create a
The game-changer
Challenge
in literacy
improvement
efforts.

8. What we Learned

9. 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.

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

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

13. • 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

14. Pivot
The Opportunity:
OPp tunit
or y From an academic
approach to an
engaging experience

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

19. • 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.

20. content dialogue

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

28. L
aunch Strategy

29. 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
Engage people with a
accompanying Facebook and
connection to children,
Twitter accounts.
and educators, media folk,
Mommies and dads,
and teachers offline.

33. 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

35. 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.

37. Results

38. • 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.

39. • 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.