Putting Technology In Everyone’s Hands

This is the first in a series of blog posts I’m going to write about some cool things Microsoft is doing around education.

We all know about the box-top redemptions and various fund-raising exercises that schools use today. If you’re like me though, you may find these things frustrating because you have no way of knowing how much money this actually raises for the school or how that money is spent. Just by using Bing as your search engine, you’ll earn reward points that can be exchanged for all kinds of things, but one option is to contribute towards getting tablets for schools.

You need to sign up for Bing Rewards with either a Microsoft account or a Facebook account. You can then donate your reward points to your school. Once your school has accumulated 30,000 points, they get a Surface RT tablet! These aren’t just toy tablets, but tablets that provide the number one productivity suite – Microsoft Office. You are no longer tied to your desktop to write papers and build presentations.

You get a point for every 3 Bing searches, but there are also daily opportunities to earn more points by learning more about Bing and other topics on the internet.

Getting 30,000 points may seem intimidating, but teamwork counts here. Let’s do some arithmetic. Even though you can get points other ways, the majority of your points will probably come from searches, let’s just focus on that. You are limited to 30 points a day for searches, so…

30,000 points / 30 points per day = 1,000 days. That means you’d have to search every day for three years before you got one tablet!

But there are hundreds of kids in most schools and approximately double as many parents! So, if one classroom has approximately 25 kids, then you also have approximately 50 parents.

50 people * 30 points per day * 20 days = 30,000 points! That’s a free tablet in just 20 days!

If those same people continue for one year…

50 people *30 points per day * 365 days = 547,500 points OR 18 Surface tablets! We almost have enough for the whole class!

Oh, and by the way, you get 200 credits for every friend you invite to Bing! So, don’t just tell people about the program – invite them to it!

Learn more about Bing Rewards. You can order free posters and flyer here as well.