Take the Design Challenge, Make a Game Out of Learning & More

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Save Your Budget Without Compromising Your Security

Free from threats, free from malware, and free from a price tag. Protect students, teachers, and staff with Avast for Business, the latest offering from the world’s #1 antivirus provider. There are no complex consoles to install or set up. Intuitive, cloud-based controls let you manage cutting-edge endpoint protection on all your school devices, anywhere, anytime.

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Explore a Local or Regional Tradition

Cricket Media and Global Learning Network have launched the Second Annual Global Folklorist Challenge, produced in partnership with the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. The challenge, now open to youth aged 8 to 18 worldwide, asks participants to explore a local or regional tradition through the eyes of a community tradition bearer and create a video or slideshow to share the story. Cultural traditions that students might explore include dance, games, handicrafts, cooking, storytelling, customs, distinctive jobs, and more. Comprehensive supporting materials reinforce real-world folklorist skills by defining terms; providing examples, tips, and organizational tools; and walking students through professional interview and story-shaping processes. In addition, students can have their questions answered by Smithsonian experts. Accompanying teacher materials include lesson plans, global collaboration opportunities, a standards-alignment chart, and a scoring rubric. The challenge reinforces a range of 21st century skills, including the use of digital technologies, as well as US and international social studies, language arts, and interdisciplinary curriculum standards. Winners will be chosen by a panel of Smithsonian and Cricket Media judges. Student winners whose entries best demonstrate the folklorist process of investigation and reporting will be given a publishing opportunity in Cricket Media’s Faces magazine, a digital camera, and more.

Deadline: November 30, 2015

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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

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Highlight Political Courage in Everyday Life

For 26 years, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation has been honoring the nation’s most courageous public servants with the Profile in Courage Award. Now you can nominate someone in your own life who has exemplified political courage—people such as principals who have taken principled stands for their students and teachers, business owners who have chosen to do what is right for their communities rather than what is easy, and friends and neighbors who have stood up for others when no one else would. Fill out the online form to tell about these individual acts of courage in taking a political stand, and the JFK Library might feature the story on Facebook or Twitter.

Deadline: Ongoing

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Supplement Your Stretched Budget

GetEdFunding is a free website sponsored by CDW•G to help educators and institutions find the funds they need in order to supplement their already stretched budgets. GetEdFunding hosts a collection of thousands of grants and other funding opportunities culled from federal, state, regional, and community sources available to public and private, preK–12 educators, schools and districts, higher education institutions, and nonprofit organizations that work with them. GetEdFunding offers customized searches by six criteria, including 43 areas of focus, eight content areas, and any of the 21st century themes and skills that support your curriculum. After registering on the site, you can save the grant opportunities of greatest interest and then return to them at any time. This rich resource of funding opportunities is expanded, updated, and monitored daily.

Click Here to Search for Funding Opportunities

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Discover Device-Charging Solutions for Every Classroom

For more than two decades, with the help of customers and technology users, LapCabby has been making portable storage carts and charging solutions for laptops, tablets, e-readers, Chromebooks, and netbooks. They’re the smart way to keep your tech safe, charged, and in one secure place. LapCabby is always expanding the product range to fit the current needs of classrooms. The cord management system, bright colors, and unique safety features make LapCabby the ideal charging solution for every school.

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Try New Products for Free

Global Educator Institute (GEI) is a new organization with the mission of evaluating educational products and improving education. The goal is to pair great products with great teachers, who then test them with their students for at least six weeks and provide GEI with valuable feedback and recommendations. Teachers have a voice in determining which products are elevated to becoming endorsed and receive the GEI Seal of Endorsement. If you are a teacher, or know of anyone who is, please take five minutes to sign up and create a confidential profile.

Click Here to Learn More and Sign Up to Be a Member

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Put a “Zing” into Students’Reading

The new ebook platform Zing offers thousands of free trade-book titles that students will want to read, including award-winning book and series titles from well-known authors, Spanish leveled books, and short texts, poems, and articles. On Zing you can browse for books by topic, language, or reading level and access the books anywhere—on desktops, laptops, tablets, and interactive whiteboard. Customizable teaching points within the books support students in developing the skills and strategies they need in order to comprehend the texts. In the Zing reader, students will find a built-in dictionary and tools for taking notes while they read. Zing also enables student progress monitoring and reporting to provide actionable data for teachers and schools.

Click Here to Access Free eBook Portal

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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. With Zoom In!, students closely read authentic primary documents, compare their perspectives, and write their own historical arguments. Interactive supports are embedded in 18 content-rich units, guiding students as they read, discuss, and write about compelling questions in US history, such as “Would you vote to ratify the US Constitution?” and “Why did Lincoln really issue the Emancipation Proclamation?”

Click Here to Sign Up for Free Digital Learning Resources

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Personalize Literacy Instruction Across Subjects

What if there were a way to get all your students quickly up to speed on the building blocks of critical thinking, close reading, and academic writing? With ThinkCERCA’s CERCA Starter literacy toolkit, educators can do just that. CERCA Starter contains 30-minute lessons designed to introduce students to the basic concepts behind argumentation. From “Why We Make Arguments” to “How to Make Claims,” CERCA Starter’s free lessons are designed to introduce students to standards-aligned literacy concepts and vocabulary. These lessons also come with built-in leveling assessments to provide teachers with insights into their students’ literacy skills at the beginning of the school year. Teachers can sign up online for a free ThinkCERCA account.

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Meet Standards with Rich Content and Close Viewing

Facing History and Ourselves, in partnership with the Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC), will host three free webinars to introduce several new teaching strategies to help meet literacy standards. The webinars are titled “Close Viewing: ‘Reading’ a Film for Evidence and Understanding” (October 15, 3 p.m. ET), “Close Reading: Deconstructing Historical Texts” (November 19, 3 p.m. ET), and “Socratic Seminar: Facilitating Discussions That Lead to Deeper Thinking” (December 17, 3 p.m. ET). Register today for one, two, or all three free one-hour webinars.

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Plus: Check out Facing History’s Mini-Task Collection and other back-to-school resources in LDC’s CoreTools library, featuring high-quality assignments that align with statewide education standards.

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Design Meaningful Learning Experiences

Traditionally, teachers plan a lesson and then, with the support of a special educator, the lesson is adapted to meet the needs of students with disabilities. On October 19, 2015, at 4 p.m. (ET), the Amazing Resources for Educators community on edWeb.net will host an interactive, collaborative webinar titled “Designing Options for Every Learner: Universal Design for Learning,” sponsored by Quill.com. Participants will work together to use the principles of Universal Design for Learning to redesign a traditional paper-based lesson into an authentic, meaningful learning experience that engages a spectrum of abilities and interests. The webinar will be useful for any educator, including teachers, media specialists, administrators, technology resource teachers, related service staff, and parents. The session will be recorded and archived in the Amazing Resources community for members to access after the event.

Click Here to Join Amazing Resources Community

Click Here to Register for Free Webinar

Click Here to Visit Quill Website

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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.

Click Here to Join GetEdFunding Community

Click Here to Register for Free Webinar

Click Here to Visit GetEdFunding Website

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Engage in Design Thinking

Stanford University’s Institute of Design (d.school) offers a virtual course in design thinking. Using video, handouts, and facilitation tips, d.school takes participants step by step through the process of hosting or participating in a 90-minute design challenge in which they will be guided through a full design cycle. In this fast-paced project, participants pair up to interview each other, identify real needs, and develop a solution to redesign the experience for their partner. No previous design experience is required. Participants may choose to pair up with one other person or gather in a large group. Through this experience, they will take away some of the basic principles of design thinking and start to adapt them into their personal and professional routines. The virtual program is divided into three sections: Gear up! How to kick off a crash course; Go for a ride! Virtual crash course video; Chart a new course: Putting design thinking to work).

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Watch and Learn with the Touch of a Finger

Students can now access PBS and PBS KIDS learning resources on tablets through the official PBS Student app, available for free for the iPad. The PBS Student app is the ideal platform to watch and learn with videos, games, and images from PBS and PBS KIDS content, including resources from NOVA, DANIEL TIGER’S NEIGHBORHOOD, and the Ken Burns collection, anytime, anywhere. Designed specifically for K–12 students, the app provides access to thousands of resources covering all subject areas, from mathematics and science to English and social studies.

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Bring About Change, One Grain at a Time

Sproutster is a free iPad game from Dreamkind that focuses on feeding children around the world. In the game, students help the Sproutster character grow rice to feed friends in different countries. Students grow their rice plants by catching falling letters in a bucket to spell three- to five-letter words. When they catch 10 words and a sun drop, their rice plant grows to its full size, and they can feed all their friends in that country. Students and Sproutster then move to a new adventure in another country. Students can journey to India, Egypt, Japan, China, and many other countries. As students move from country to country, the game becomes more challenging. Dreamkind donates all of the proceeds from advertising to the United Nations World Food Programme to buy rice. For each plant that students grow by playing Sproutster, Dreamkind donates 30 to 50 grains of rice to the World Food Programme.

Click Here to Download Free App

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Trace Space Back to You

NASA @ Home and City is a virtual tour of NASA-related science that is all around us. Students visiting NASA @ Home and City can rotate buildings and take a look inside to discover everyday items, the development of which has been influenced by space exploration. Each item within a building has a narrated explanation of how that item was influenced by NASA technology. For example, students can take a look inside the bathroom of a house to learn how technology used at NASA has had an impact on the development of cosmetics and toothpaste. Beyond the explanations, students can explore NASA @ Home and City’s Spinoff Archives, where they can read more about each of the elements they see in the virtual buildings. After going through the virtual tours and reading the Spinoff Archives, students can take the Spinoff Challenge to assess what they learned in NASA @ Home and City.

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Present “Tough Engineering” Concepts in a Logical Way

LearnEngineering offers dozens of short interactive video lessons about machines, materials, and energy. The site is organized into three primary sections: electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and civil engineering. Each category includes subcategories and topics for further exploration. The topics are explained in interactive videos along with diagrams and text. See, for example, the video and diagrams on wind turbine design or the lesson on refrigeration technology to get a sense of what LearnEngineering is all about.

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Click Here to Access Wind Turbine Lesson

Click Here to Access Refrigeration Lesson

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Share Your Writing Life

The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the National Writing Project, The New York Times Learning Network, and The Teaching Channel invite you and your students to join in the National Day on Writing, Tuesday, October 20, 2015, to celebrate writing and think about why you do it. You can write something new or choose a piece you have already written; then share your piece with others by participating in a Tweetup using the #WhyIWrite hashtag. Remember that writing includes more than a pencil or pen. Your piece can be something spoken, drawn, texted, or recorded. NCTE’s website provides tips for writers, as well as resources for writing, and suggests how new technologies can expand the possibilities for composing in multiple media. Listen to authors such as Pat Mora, Katherine Paterson, and Nancie Atwell speak about the importance of writing and reflect on their reasons for writing. Also find events taking place around the nation, as well as ideas for hosting an event in your community.

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Join a Virtual Excursion in 3D

Google will soon be rolling out a new service, called Expeditions, which could take virtual field trips to a whole new level—and the company is accepting requests from educators to pilot the technology in their classrooms this year. Using Google’s Cardboard, a simple viewing device made out of folded cardboard, with an Android phone, students can experience a virtual excursion as an immersive, three-dimensional event. The Google kits available to schools contain the company’s cardboard viewers, along with Asus smartphones to be used as virtual field-trip screens for students. Teachers use an app to guide the trips and can pause excursions when they want to ask students questions. So far, in collaboration with teachers, Google has developed about 100 trips—including virtual visits to the Great Wall of China, Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and El Capitán, a rock formation in Yosemite National Park—that have been tried out by math, science, social studies, language arts, and other classes. The company has larger ambitions to use Expeditions as a tool to take students on simulated tours of colleges or to help them explore career options by virtually shadowing professionals throughout their workdays. During the 2015–2016 school year, the Expeditions pioneer program will be visiting schools to set them up with the materials needed for taking students on more than 100 virtual field trips. Visit the Expeditions website to find out whether the program will be near you and to register your school for a visit.

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Click Here to See Expeditions in Action

Click Here to Access Interest Form

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Promote Understanding Across Global Cultures

The Center for Children’s Literature at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin, has launched a website devoted to new international children’s books. OmniLibros is an annotated bibliography designed to help teachers, librarians, reading resource staff, and parents select English language books that promote understanding across global cultures. Each featured book has been translated into English, published outside the United States, or set in another country. The site offers multiple ways to search, including by age level, keyword, country, and awards won. Many of the authors have received prestigious honors, such as the Astrid Lindgren or Hans Christian Andersen awards, or a place on the IBBY Honour List. Each book is available in many US libraries. The titles also are part of the Center for Children’s Literature collection and can be checked out through interlibrary loan.

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