The results are in. And not a moment too soon for squads that have submitted their projects for the DIY Competition and applied for Mouse Squad of the Year 2009. Without further ado, here are the results:

Mouse Squad of the Year Winners

• First Place: Access GED High School
• Second Place: Bronx Writing Academy Middle School
• Third Place: W.C. Bryant High School

DIY Competition Winners

• Grand Prize: W.C. Bryant High School for the "VistaDummies" Website (http://www.wcbryanths.org/competition/)
• Second Prize: Access GED High School for the "Jay Lego Presents: Ubuntu Email Server" Video (video link coming soon)
• Runner Up: Edison High School for their "Printer Setup & TroubleShooting" Tutorial Video (video link coming soon)

Why They Won

Mouse awards Squads nationally who best embody the key principles of our experiential learning cycle.

Our Mouse Squad of the Year winners are among our most effective and active Mouse Squads. They give back to their schools and to the greater Mouse Squad community by attending Team Trainings and Unplugged Events, getting Mouse Squad certified, participating in Mouse Corps and the DIY project, and using CaseTracker to support technology at their schools for hundreds of students and teachers. Stay tuned for a Wire article highlighting the amazing work of our Mouse Squad of the Year winner and the runners up.

In addition to the Mouse Squad of the Year Award, Mouse has offered additional opportunities for Squads to demonstrate their skills, knowledge, and passion, through network-wide projects. The first annual Do It Yourself project was judged on the following criteria:

• Usability: how user-friendly is your teaching tool. Does all navigation work properly? Does it work on multiple browsers? Is it clear how to use it?
• Creativity: have you presented the content in a fun and engaging way? Have you used the medium in which your project was executed to its fullest potential?
• Practicality: does your D.I.Y. help people to do practical things (address real problems) by themselves?
• Impact: how well does your D.I.Y. tie to a need in your school or community? Does it help one person solve a big problem... or many people to solve a small problem?

All Squads who submitted for this year's DIY competition proved that the creativity and skill of our members is second to none! We want to thank each of this year's participants for their hard work, and encourage them, and everyone in the Mouse Squad network, to start planning with your coordinator for next year. Each year, through DIY, Mouse will award the most creative and innovative Squads for their design and development work on DIY multimedia tools.

Stay tuned on mousesquad.org for new and updated Knowledge Base pages, that feature this year's top D.I.Y. projects.

We will be in touch with each of our winning squads about prizes soon.