IndieGoGo Crowdfunding Campaign Seeks Starting Goal of $50,000 to Spread Early Literacy Skills to One Million Preschoolers Through Storybooks, eBooks, Smartphone Apps, and Ed-Tech Website

Teaching Preschoolers Pre-Reading Skills Improves Academic Development, Promotes Lifelong Learning, Increases Family Engagement, and Instills Confidence and Perseverance When Faced With Challenges

By Robert Hoskins

Toronto, Ontario – Ruth Rumack’s Learning Space (RRLS) launched a $50,000 IndieGoGo Crowdfunding campaign that will pre-sell a set of five Alpha-Mania early childhood learning storybooks and other perks that will make teaching pre-reading skills fun for children, parents, teachers and caregivers. The Alpha-Mania storybooks are the result of teaching early literacy programs to thousands of young children over the past 16 years. Click here to watch the video.

Ruth Rumack’s Alpha-Mania Crowdfunding Campaign to Promote Early Childhood Literacy

All five of the Alpha-Mania books are written and ready to publish. The goal of the crowdfunding campaign will be to pay for large publishing production runs of the Alpha-Mania storybooks, and then digitize the materials and turn them into eBooks and Smartphone apps, and eventually expand the program to an online educational web series and website where caregivers, parents and teachers will be given access to a full library of ed-tech early literacy games and reading resources. The plan is to make ed-tech materials easy to download and use on a wide variety of Smartphones, iPads, tablets and other types of eLearning devices.

Over the years, the Alpha-Mania pre-reading program has given thousands of young children a head start in developing their early literacy skills at RRLS as well as numerous established daycares, preschools, and nurseries throughout Canada. The plan is now to expand the RRLS learning experience and share it with a global audience.

“Using the power of crowdfunding, we would like to not only pre-sell these lifelong learning materials to people and schools that can afford them, but also use a significant portion of the fundraising campaign’s proceeds to ship storybooks to educational centers where they will have the greatest impact,” says Ruth Rumack, RRLS’ Founder and Director of Education. “Regardless of a child’s living environment, many parents are simply not aware of the tremendous benefits that all children receive from learning phonological awareness at an early age.”

“Printing and shipping storybooks to customers is very expensive and time consuming,” adds Evan Brooker, RRLS’s CEO. “But once we raise enough money to digitize our materials and turn our pre-reading games and interactive activities into Smartphone, tablet and laptop apps, we can sell and distribute them worldwide for a fraction of our current costs. Instead of educating thousands, our goal is to raise awareness and teach millions of people the benefits of engaging their children with early literacy skills in order to build a strong foundation for reading and problem solving before they enter kindergarten.”

Crowdfunders who donate to the Alpha-Mania crowdfunding campaign will receive many valuable perks/rewards that will be sold in singles, multi-book packaged deals for small schools and will provide large school districts discounts when materials/training classes are purchased using licensing agreements.

Students, parents, teachers and schools who contribute money to the crowdfunding campaign can choose between unique perks such as attending the launch party, chatting with the author, or naming a character in one of the upcoming stories. Check out the crowdfunding campaign for more details.

Please buy one of the following Alpha-Mania perks to raise awareness for the benefits of teaching preschoolers early childhood learning skills:

• Alpha-Mania eBooks for Smartphones and Tablets
• Alpha-Mania Printed Storybooks for Parents
• Alpha-Mania Book, Tote Bag & T-Shirt
• Alpha-Mania 5-Book Story Book Series
• Alpha-Mania Skype Chat with Author
• Alpha-Mania Name a Character
• Alpha-Mania Family Portrait and Summer Camp in Toronto
• Alpha-Mania Training Classes for Teachers
• Alpha-Mania License for Daycares, Preschools & Kindergartens
• Alpha-Mania Mass Volume Book Deals for Large Schools

Early childhood learning years are critical for preschoolers because research shows that children gain a tremendous advantage in their ability to learn when they are taught to develop, not only academic skills, but also non-cognitive social and emotional skills and behaviors that lead to their long-term success.

There are many non-cognitive skills that are critical for an individual to strive for and succeed in when reaching long-term goals. Researchers have found that habits such as tenacity and perseverance can have just as strong an influence on achievement as intellectual ability.

What attitudes do children have about learning? Do they feel like their abilities in a subject are fixed — “I’m just not good at reading!” or do they recognize they can grow — “I can learn to read, but I need to learn some Alpha-Mania strategies to figure out tricky sounds and words in order to master the fun puzzle of reading.”

“Growth mindset,” for example, is more likely when students believe they can achieve and when they believe that intelligence is malleable rather than fixed. This also helps develop non-cognitive skills such as perseverance, self-regulation, and effective strategies for enhancing student motivation and engagement.

A large portion of the crowdfunding donations will be used to provide Alpha-Mania to underfunded schools and libraries. Donors will receive the satisfaction of knowing that they helped a small child develop pre-reading skills regardless of their current position in society and give them a head start in developing academic skills that will lead to a lifetime of learning as well as arm them with the confidence, tenacity and perseverance they will need when faced with tough lifetime challenges.

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Yeloworld Crowdfunding Campaign Aims to End International SmartPhone Roaming Rip-offs

By Robert Hoskins

Yeloworld is a startup launched in January 2013 with the objective to end the rip-off that mobile users endure from mobile network operators whenever they make international calls or are traveling abroad and roaming – and as a result do to calling what WhatsApp did to SMS.

Yeloworld #Crowdfunding Campaign Aims to End International SmartPhone Roaming Rip-offs

The idea came from the belief that money should be spent in far more meaningful ways than paying a phone bill. The founders are three serial Tech entrepreneurs, who have been involved with mobile and Internet technologies for most of their careers and have extended experience in running startup companies, managing projects and leading large groups of people, so they decided to tackle the issue and came up with an efficient, low-cost and interesting way to make cheap calls worldwide.

In technical terms, Yeloworld is an OTT calling service using VoIP (Voice over Internet) to initiate the calls and terminating the calls directly on the carrier networks in over 200 countries.

In simpler terms, Yeloworld is an app for iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) and Android phones/tablets that allows users to make very cheap phone calls to any mobile or landline numbers, anywhere in the world, and save a lot of money on international calls.

Yeloworld allows users to call regular phone numbers. This means that the receiving party doesn’t need to own a smartphone, install any app whatsoever or even be online to receive the call, just a regular telephone. Yeloworld allows everyone to call anyone, anywhere, on their “normal” phone (cellphone or fixed landline), regardless of where they are and what type of phone they have.

The apps for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Android are the first set of apps, but to take Yeloworld to the next level, the company now needs funding to rollout more apps to more platforms (BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and even Web Apps), add more features (SMS and more) and ultimately create new jobs.

Yeloworld has started an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to help them reach their potential to help millions of smartphone users around the world save billions of dollars on their phone bills and make a significant impact in the way people communicate in a modern, digitally borderless world.

Life-Spot Kickstarter Crowdfunding Campaign Unveils Universal Gadget Charging Tower

By Robert Hoskins

In today’s world of  iPhones, Androids, Tablets, Kindles and other electronic devices that need to be charged, many kitchen counter tops resemble a a plate of spaghetti.  But with a little luck and plenty of Kickstarter donors, Life-Spot plants to roll out a  highly efficient and universal, multi-unit gadget charging station for the home, office and business.

Life-Spot Universal Charging Station for Household Gadgets

With a beautiful, triangular design, Life-Spot allows users to charge up to eight devices at once and each of its storage compartments has a unique, retractable adapter that serves to connect devices easily and safely while keeping the area organized and clutter-free.

With two lightning ports, two 30pin dock connectors and four micro USB ports, Life-Spot can charge anything from phones to tablets, e-readers, iPods, cameras, headsets and other Bluetooth devices, GPS systems, battery packs and more. Life-Spot can also be sat on a table, desk, countertop or even mounted on a wall.

Judith and Aaron Altheim, creators of Life-Spot, came up with the idea while hosting their daughter’s birthday party at their house, and found they were surprised about the number of people asking to borrow a phone charger. However, Judith and Aaron only had two chargers which were not compatible with their cell phone models.

“As a married couple, we’ve been working on this project for two years,” says Altheim. “From the first sketch to the functional prototype, we spent hours and hours to ensure the best quality, most efficient and practical product.”

In order for Judith and Aaron Altheim, creators of Life-Spot, to bring the product to market, they need to raise $50,000 to cover the costs of manufacturing the charging station. The married couple is currently running a crowdfunding campaign on the most popular platform, Kickstarter, in order to raise the necessary funds.

Currently, Life-Spot has raised over $8,000 on Kickstarter, but still needs another $42,000 to make it to production. If you’d like to support this project, visit http://bit.ly/Life-SpotKS to learn more, or make a donation in exchange for one of the first products when it hits the market.