Big Deal Media

VSTE partners with Big Deal Media to bring you the best in online resources, grant and competition opportunities and more. In this edition, you can  Take the Design Challenge, Make a Game Out of Learning & More.

Here are just a few highlights from this edition. Click the link below to find lots more:

Tomorrow: Collaborate to Increase a Grant’s Impact

At 5 p.m. (ET) on October 20, 2015, the GetEdFunding community on edWeb.net will host a webinar titled “How to Multiply the Impact of Your Grant: Divide the Work By Collaborating with Other Institutions,” sponsored by CDW•G. In this webinar, two grant writers who have won major grants to help fund “big ideas” for their institutions will share what they learned in the process. Teachers, district administrators, university faculty, nonprofit leaders, and others interested in collaborating on grants will benefit from the ideas and strategies in this session. The webinar will offer ideas for collaborating with educators in other institutions or nonprofits to increase the impact of a grant. Participants’ questions will be answered during this live, interactive session, and the webinar will be recorded and archived in the GetEdFunding community for members to access after the event.

Bring 3D Printing into the Classroom

Can your school use a 3D printer? K–12 and higher education campuses have an opportunity to win a 3D printer and a $5,000 grant, thanks to a new contest sponsored by Stratasys in partnership with Campus Technology and THE Journal. Schools interested in participating must submit a 500-word essay outlining what a 3D printer would mean to their campuses.
Deadline: November 30, 2015

Zoom into Pivotal Moments in History

Zoom In! helps students learn US history while also strengthening their literacy skills. Zoom In! was developed by EDC in collaboration with history educators at the American Social History Project, literacy experts, and media designers. Zoom In! complements existing US history curricula and helps students build literacy and historical thinking skills by using primary and secondary sources.

Big Deal Book, October 15, 2015

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VSTE partners with Big Deal Media to bring you the best in online resources, grant and competition opportunities and more. In this edition, you can 5Move with Music, Turn Thoughts into Images, Go Inside the Brain & More.

Here are just a few highlights from this edition. Click the link below to find lots more:

Fuel Young Minds

Educators can enter the CITGO Fueling Education contest offering teachers, student teachers, and PTA/PTO members the chance to win $1,000 in school supplies for their classrooms. Deadline October 18, 2015.

Enhance Students’ Literacy and Technology Skills

On Tuesday, October 6, 2015, from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. (ET), the Shutterfly community on edWeb.net will host a free webinar titled “Creating Multimedia Stories for Learning.” In this webinar, participants will explore ways for students of all ages and content areas to easily create a storybook with text, photos, audio clips, and Doodle drawings using the free Shutterfly Photo Story app for the iPad.

Join a Giant Sing-Along

Performer and teaching artist Dave Ruch from Buffalo, New York, is going all out to put the fun in the fundamentals of online connection during Connected Educator Month. He is setting up a worldwide sing-along for elementary students at 1:15 p.m.(ET) on October 30. Zoom is hosting and donating bandwidth. The lighthearted event, named Largest Online Gathering of K–5 Classrooms (ever!), will last 15 to 20 minutes as Ruch performs songs and asks students from Los Angeles to Zimbabwe to move and participate with him.

Big Deal Book, October 1, 2015

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VSTE partners with Big Deal Media to bring you the best in online resources, grant and competition opportunities and more. In this edition, you can Deepen Thinking, Engage in Debate, Experience Augmented Reality & More.

Here are just a few highlights from this edition. Click the link below to find lots more:

Connect and Debate Around the World

The Virtual Debate project began as a way to infuse technology into an authentic argumentative writing experience by giving students an audience. To get started with the Virtual Debate, students in two classes agree to engage with one another and select a topic based on their interests and passions. Past topics have included police presence in schools, competitive sports, and digital detox, to name a few.

Grow Students’ Thinking

To help teachers ask questions that encourage student reflection and higher-order thinking, TeachThought has created a list ofquestion stems appropriate for each of the six levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. The question stems can be used for any content area or discipline.

Make Thinking Visible

To help preschoolers develop a flexible understanding of number, researchers at Stanford University’s AAALab createdCritter Corral, a freely available iPad app. The child’s goal is to help return a Wild West town to its former glory by helping the town’s businesses.

Big Deal Book, September 15, 2015

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VSTE partners with Big Deal Media to bring you the best in online resources, grant and competition opportunities and more. In this edition, you can Bring History Alive, Celebrate Literacy, Collaborate Globally & More.

Here are just a few highlights from this edition. Click the link below to find lots more:

Tackle Environmental Issues

The Lexus Eco Challenge is an opportunity for middle school and high school students across the United States to help clean the air, water, and land in their neighborhoods and beyond. Lexus and Scholastic have joined together to create this STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) educational program. Teams of students can enter both of the first two challenges, which are focused on Land & Water and Air & Climate.

Deadlines: The Land & Water Challenge is now open and will close on October 16, 2015; the Air & Climate Challenge will open on October 17 and close on December 11, 2015.

Engage Students with the Art of Poetry

The Academy of American Poets hopes to give teachers in all content areas multiple opportunities to integrate poetry into their instruction with Teach This Poem, a new, free weekly email that features a poem along with instructional resources and ideas for activities related to the selection. The new initiative, which begins September 2, expands on the Academy’s existing Poem-a-Day, an online syndicated series featuring previously unpublished poems, which has been running since 2006. The Academy created the new resource to build upon the lesson plans already available on its website and to give teachers a version of Poem-a-Day for students.

Share the Wisdom of Generations

Since 2003, StoryCorps has given more than 100,000 Americans a quiet booth and a facilitator to record meaningful conversations with one another about who they are, what they’ve learned in life, and how they want to be remembered. Recently, this nonprofit oral history organization announced The Great Thanksgiving Listen. StoryCorps is working with high school teachers across the country to ask students to interview a grandparent or another elder over Thanksgiving 2015, using the free StoryCorps mobile app.

Big Deal Book, September 1, 2015

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VSTE partners with Big Deal Media to bring you the best in online resources, grant and competition opportunities and more. In this edition, you can Practice Argumentation, Diagram Narratives, Explore Beat Making & More.

Here are just a few highlights from this edition. Click the link below to find lots more:

Usher Cells Through Mitosis

How do cells divide to grow new hair, repair skin, or strengthen bones? The Mitosis app, from Inkling Systems, walks students through the process of cell division and explains everything that happens along the way. Students can usher cells through mitosis with their fingers to learn about what happens in each phase of the process.

Develop Computer Literacy

To get more people into computer science and also increase the diversity of those going into the field, Google has rolled out an online destination where anyone can go to find computer science learning opportunities. The new portal on the Google for Education website aims to increase exposure to all kinds of opportunities for one to gain computer science skills—whether through online games, grants, or summer camps—by collecting them in one place and allowing anyone to sort them by age and region for the highest relevance to one’s needs.

Make a School Year's Resolution

Produced by NBC News Education Nation and sponsored by Pearson, the Parent Toolkit is intended to empower parents with practical advice to support their child’s overall development. Pearson and NBC News Education Nation are asking parents, grandparents, other family members, and teachers to relate ways they can support students by sharing their School Year’s Resolution with the Parent Toolkit community, starting on August 3, 12 p.m. (ET), and ending on September 8, 12 p.m.(ET).

Big Deal Book, August 17, 2015, Edition

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