After Fulfilling 30,000 Wishes, DigitalWish is Just Getting Started

Digital Wish is the edtech DonorsChoose. They have fulfilled more than 30,000 classroom wishes, mostly 1:1 classroom deployments with Dell netbooks.
A letter-writing and fundraising campaign for her children in 2006 captured Heather Chirtea’s interest. As the president of educational software publisher, Heather knew there had to be a better way to match wishes and donors.
As of last week, it took just four weeks from the time a wish was posted to the time when computers were delivered. They’ve been studying one-computer-per-child initiatives and tech integration.
They are “working to streamline every step in the process of classroom technology integration and craft step-by-step models, useful automation tools, videos, downloadable resources, and instruction so that schools nationwide can replicate the same processes that have been successful in our schools.”
But over the last year Heather and her team have seen the sector shifting with more mobile devices, bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies, and content sharing. In addition, Digital Wish has seen a demand for teacher-generated and -curated content.
To meet this demand, Digital Wish has created an eBook Builder that makes it easy for educators to author, share, edit and distribute learning materials for the classroom — much like iBooks.
Digital Wish is currently working on a content sharing strategy and app marketplace ( in beta) that we’ll tell you more about next month. We think the community of 60,000 educators is in for a treat — and likely to get bigger fast.
This blog first appeared on EdWeek.