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 Make It Multicultural, Slow the Summer Slide, Unleash Creativity & More.

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

Personalize SAT Practice Online

Official SAT® Practice for the redesigned SAT has gone live on KhanAcademy.org, making free, personalized online practice available for all students. Unlike traditional high-priced test prep that focuses on strategies for taking the test and quick cramming, Official SAT Practice supports and reinforces what students are learning in classrooms by helping them focus on the knowledge and skills essential for college readiness.

Incorporate Mapping Activities into the Curriculum

Hosted by the Science Education Research Center (SERC) at Carlton College, the Teaching with Maps website providesK–12 cross-curricular lessons and activities on integrating visual learning, spatial thinking, and quantitative skills. Educators can browse or search activities by category (K–8, 9–12, AP/IB/Honors) and refine results by resource type, subject, and grade level. Links provide collections of lessons in climate and energy, earth science, geoscience data, Mars, microbes, and more. A section for professional development includes teaching strategies.

Inspire Students to Think Critically and Creatively

The Denver Art Museum’s Creativity Resource for Teachers offers fresh ideas—written by visual arts, language arts, and social studies teachers—to inspire students to think critically and creatively. Among the featured activities are “Capturing Images Through Words,” in which students closely examine an image of Georgia O’Keeffe’s Petunia and Glass Bottle and then use words to capture what they see. The teacher then uses those words to write a poem about the painting.

You can browse the June 15, 2015, edition of the newsletter and access the archives here.

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 Promote Inquiry, Celebrate Diversity, Preserve History & More.

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

Preserve America’s War Stories

Students and youth groups throughout the United States have contributed significantly to the Veterans History Project of the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center. The Center collects, preserves, and makes accessible the personal accounts of American war veterans so that future generations may hear directly from veterans and better understand the realities of war. Students in grades 10 and above are encouraged to participate.

Peruse the Landscape of Language

Langscape is an interactive online map that allows users to discover the languages spoken at any point on the globe and then uncover resources for learning about them. The goal is to increase understanding of language diversity through visualizationand aggregation of knowledge, and to support the application of linguistic and geographical data in research, education, technology, government, and beyond.

Keep Parents in the Loop

Social learning network Edmodo has launched the Edmodo for Parents app, allowing parents to track their child’s work and learn how they can help meet learning goals. Available for free in the iTunes and Google Play stores, Edmodo for Parents provides a simple and intuitive way for parents to stay in the know on their child’s learning activities, better support their academic efforts, and receive important announcements and updates from teachers for optimal learning outcomes.

Learn more about these and other great resources in the June 1,  2015, Edition.

Access the archives here.

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 Fuel the Creative Process, Tap Digital Media, Close the Gap & More.

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

Inspire the Next Generation of Cyber Stars

The GenCyber program provides summer cybersecurity camp experiences for students and teachers at the K–12 level. The program’s goals are to help all students understand correct and safe online behavior, increase diversity and interest in cybersecurity and careers in the cybersecurity workforce of the nation, and improve teaching methods for delivering cybersecurity content in K–12 computer science curricula. GenCyber camps are open to all student and teacher participants atno cost. Funding is provided jointly by the National Security Agency and the National Science Foundation.

Experience Mobile App Design

MIT App Inventor is a free blocks-based programming tool that allows everyone, even novices, to start programming and build fully functional apps for Android devices. Newcomers to App Inventor can have their first app up and running in an hour or less and can program more complex apps in significantly less time than with more traditional, text-based languages. Initially developed by a team from Google Education, App Inventor runs as a web service administered by staff at MIT’s Center for Mobile Learning—a collaboration of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the MIT Media Lab. MIT App Inventor supports a worldwide community of nearly 3 million users representing 195 countries worldwide. An open-source tool, App Inventor seeks to make both programming and app creation accessible to a wide range of audiences.

Turn Data into Action

CoSN, in partnership with AASA and Gartner, Inc., has released the Closing the Gap Professional Development Toolkit to provide educators with a curricular plan and set of resources needed for using educational data to improve instructional practice and student outcomes. The toolkit offers a step-by-step curriculum and a cadre of professional development resources designed for district and school leaders to facilitate their training of other district and school leaders. The curriculum and other resources will help you to transform your school into a data-driven learning environment.

Learn more about these and other great resources in the May 15, 2015, Edition.

Access the archives here.

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 Blend Movement and Programming, Put Math to Work, Reimagine Art & More.

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

Northrop Grumman Foundation has launched an online contest to encourage today’s students to become tomorrow’s innovators by creating classrooms and science labs that inspire. The Fab School Labs contest is open to public middle schools. The foundation will make five grants of up to $100,000 available to five winning schools to fund a school lab makeover. Deadline: June 12, 2015

Algebra teachers should show students both correctly and incorrectly solved problems and have students discuss them, according to a new algebra practice guide published by the United States Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences. The guide, prepared by Mathematics Policy Research and released as part of the What Works Clearinghouse, includes three specific, evidence-based strategies for teaching algebra.

Free Webinar: On May 14, 2015, from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. (ET), the Amazing Resources for Educators community on edWeb.net will host afree webinar titled “Can We Skip Recess to Work on Our Project? How to Inspire and Engage Your K–5 Students with STEM.” In this webinar, sponsored by Project Lead The Way (PLTW), the presenter will discuss why early access to STEM is critical, particularly for girls and underrepresented minority students, and what works to engage students in STEM subjects and give them confidence to continue pursuing the disciplines after elementary school.

Learn more about these and other great resources in the May 1, 2015, Edition.

Access the archives here.

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 Make Learning Authentic, Use Assessment to Inform Instruction & More.

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

As we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War,  the Civil War Trust and History are sponsoring a series of essay contests for students in grades 4–12. The essay theme is 1864–65: Bringing the War to a Close: The final days of the Civil War were filled with human drama. Old ways were dying and new horizons were imminent. Essays should incorporate ideas such as these with the importance of preservation and the study of history.  Deadline: May 1, 2015

The 2015 Google Science Fair is now open. This annual event asks 13- to 18-year-old students to carry out a test or experiment on a subject they’re passionate about and submit their projects online. This year submissions will be accepted in 14 languages from students all over the world. To help students develop project ideas, the Google Science Fair website provides anidea springboard, which asks students to complete the phrases “I love …,” “I’m good at …,” and “I want to explore ...” From students’ responses to these questions, the idea springboard generates a collection of videos and websites that may spark project ideas in their minds. Twenty finalists will be selected to go to Google’s headquarters to show their projects to the judges.  Deadline: May 18, 2015, at 11:59 p.m. (PT), for submissions

Free Webinar: Educators can help students become more actively engaged in projects by making technology tools a seamless part of the learning process. On April 23, 2015, from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. (ET), the Amazing Resources for Educators community onedWeb.net will host a free webinar titled “Differentiating Instruction with Technology: A Framework for Success.” In this webinar, sponsored by Quill.com, the presenter will describe ways to differentiate instruction in the K–12 classroom using technology.

Learn more about these and other great resources in the April 15, 2015, Edition

Access the archives here.