Helping Students Learn and Families Connect in Times of Crisis

As uncertainty continues to grow due to the outbreak of COVID-19, so too does the impact on our communities. Cricket recognizes the importance of maintaining healthy human connections with family, friends, and schools in times of crisis.

To best allocate resources and help you stay connected, we are working with our parent company, AT&T, which recently launched a $10 million Distance Learning and Family Connections Fund. Donations from this fund will help provide access to tools that parents, students and teachers need to support at-home learning and stay connected to each other.

Thanks to the first contribution of $1 million from this fund to Khan Academy, customers can access Khan Academy’s online learning resources for free. Available in more than 40 languages, Khan Academy offers educational practice exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard that empowers students to study at home.

Khan Academy also offers free tools for teachers and parents to help them track student progress. Learn more at KhanAcademy.org.

A second contribution from this fund of $560,000 was made to Caribu, a video-calling application that allows family members to read, draw, and play games with one another while in distant locations. Caribu will be available to families across the country and around the world, free of cost, for the next two months.

​Additional Non-Fund Related Distance Learning Resources

• Code.org: Code.org® is a nonprofit dedicated to expanding access to computer science in schools and increasing participation by women and underrepresented youth. Through Code.org, participants can try out fun computer science tutorials, watch videos about computer science concepts, and even build their own projects.
• Commonlit: CommonLit is a nonprofit education technology organization dedicated to ensuring that all students, especially students in Title I schools, graduate with the reading, writing, communication, and problem-solving skills they need to be successful in college and beyond.
• TIME for Kids: TIME for Kids engages students with authentic journalism, inspires them to join the national discourse on current topics, and provides teachers with valuable resources for the classroom. TFK was founded in 1995 and has been a trusted source of news ever since.
• Two Bit Circus: Two Bit Circus serves children in all economic situations by creating learning experiences to inspire entrepreneurship, encourage young inventors, and instill environmental stewardship.
• Scratch: With Scratch, you can program your own interactive stories, games, and animations — and share your creations with others in the online community. Scratch helps young people learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively — essential skills for life in the 21st century. Scratch is a project of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab.
• Sesame Street: Sesame Workshop is the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street and so much more. Their mission is to help kids everywhere grow smarter, stronger, and kinder—and they are at work in more than 150 countries, using the power of media and their beloved Muppets to meet children’s development needs with critical early education, social impact programs, and a large dose of fun.

The above resources are not funded by AT&T’s Distance Learning and Family Connections Fund

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