Complete (and FREE) Back-to-School Survival Guide

August and September bring the excitement of a new school year, filled with new possibilities, to students and teachers. Apperson is offering a free 22-page eBook designed exclusively for educators to kick off the school year. The topics are as wide ranging as they are instructive: tips to help teachers be at their resilient best, ideas for engaging parents, suggestions for classroom and learning materials, test-prep made fun, and a wealth of other content to make this school year the best ever.

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Environmental Curricula Grants

The Melinda Gray Ardia Environmental Foundation supports the development and implementation of holistic environment curricula within a primary or secondary school setting. Grants of up to $1,500 are available for curricula that synthesize multiple levels of learning (facts, concepts, principles); include experiential integrated learning and problem solving; are founded on basic scientific principles, including hypothesis, testing, and experimental design; and incorporate basic ecological principles and field environmental activities.

Deadlines: August 12, 2016, for pre-proposals; August 26, 2016, for full proposals

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Math, Science & Technology Competition

The Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology is a signature program of the Siemens Foundation. Each year high school students nationwide are invited to submit original research projects in mathematics, science, and technology for the opportunity to win college scholarships, ranging from $1,000 to $100,000. Students can compete as individuals or as members of a team. The competition recognizes student research projects that display originality, creativity, academic rigor, and clarity of communication. The research projects should exhibit not only scientific excellence but also collaborative teamwork that is often characteristic of successful scientific and technological endeavors. In 2016 the regional competition rounds will be held in November. Participants will present their projects via a secure cloud-based technology platform to a panel of judges, who will be assembled at regional hosting universities. The regional judging will take place at six leading research universities across the country: California Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The University of Notre Dame, and The University of Texas at Austin. Winners of these Regional Finals will then be invited to present their research in person to nationally renowned scientists and mathematicians at the National Finals in Washington, DC, which will take place at The George Washington University in December.

Deadline: September 20, 2016, at 11:59 p.m. (ET), for entries

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Thank America's Teachers Grants

Inspired by the great work teachers do in classrooms every day, Farmers Insurance wants to thank them for their tireless dedication. Through Thank America’s Teachers, Farmers is awarding grants of up to $2,500 each to full-time K–12 teachers across America, which they can put toward supplies and other day-to-day classroom needs. Before applying, teachers must have received a thank-you through Thank America’s Teachers. The contest has three entry periods and three voting periods. At the end of each entry period, Farmers reviews and judges proposals, and selects the finalists’ entries to be posted online and voted on by the general public during the corresponding voting period. Voting determines the 60 teachers who will receive grants in each period. Interested applicants will find this opportunity on GetEdFunding, a free database sponsored by CDW-G of thousands of funding opportunities for educators.

Deadlines: Third contest period for 2016 will run from August 1 through November 30: contest entries, August 1 through September 30; contest voting, October 1 through October 31; notification of winners, November 1 through November 30

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Virtual Reality Desktops

Educators can transform and accelerate STEM education with the zSpace STEM lab. The lab includes a set of student virtual reality stations and a teacher station, each outfitted with an interactive stylus, as well as educational software covering a wide variety of subjects, from science and physics to engineering. Users can “lift” virtual holographic images from the screen and manipulate them with the stylus. With two or three students at each virtual reality desktop, students can collaborate in teams and use critical thinking skills to solve complex challenges. They can perform highly engaging tasks that are often impossible in the real world—for example, exploring a volcano or experimenting with zero gravity. All zSpace activities are aligned with state and national science standards to support curriculum development and classroom integration. Teachers can browse activities by grade level, standard, or topic.

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Click Here to Preview Curriculum Activities

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Visual Collaboration Tool

Exo U is launching Ormiboard, a front-of-class visual creation, whiteboard, and collaboration tool. Ormiboard lets teachers and students build lessons, activities, and interactive games that can be used in any classroom with displays and/or mobile devices. Teachers can create sessions in which students watch and participate in the lessons, regardless of Internet connection. Ormiboard is available in two editions. The Go edition, designed for teachers, is accessed via a web browser; it is available as a subscription. The Pro edition, designed for schools and districts, is installed software with a perpetual license. It enables complete device integration and collaborative sharing over existing networks via local WiFi (no Internet access required). Currently, educators can create an Ormiboard Go account free of charge. After Ormiboard is officially launched on August 15, the introductory price for Go will be $9.99.

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Active Learning Platform

The research-driven educational company ActivEd has made available a kinesthetic learning platform called Walkabouts, which transforms math, language, and literacy standards into short, movement-rich classroom activities for preK–grade 2 children. The platform makes it easy for teachers to create on-demand lessons that bring fundamental concepts to life through multisensory activity. The online, active learning adventures are different every time children participate in them. Teachers can view a sample at each level on the Walkabouts website.

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Courses Focusing on Digital Literacies

KQED Teach, a new online learning platform, supports educators’ growing media literacy needs by helping them develop the media skills necessary to bring media production to their learning environments. KQED Teach courses are free and self-paced so that educators can learn what they want, when they want. The courses are designed around a simple learning cycle: Participants make a variety of digital media and gain confidence in the role of producer. They share their projects and discuss their experiences integrating their new skills into the learning environment. They then level up and repeat the learning cycle. The courses focus on key digital literacies, including participation in online communities, the ability to decipher and manipulate digital imagery in a variety of forms, and competence in both making original media and sharing it with audiences that matter.

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Webinars Supporting Empowerment of Girls

Girls Thinking Global (GTG) is an online professional learning community for educators to connect and converse about ways to support and nurture leadership qualities in adolescent girls and young women around the world. The community hosts a series of webinars on edWeb.net that enable sharing of stories and ideas and collaborating across all kinds of boundaries. Participants in these webinars learn how this kind of collaboration and conversation can lead to initiatives that will make a difference in girls’ lives. The goal is to empower and educate adolescent girls and young women globally and increase the development of leadership skills for girls everywhere. The community has many voices speaking out on these issues: girls and young women; teachers, administrators, and educators at all levels; organizations providing services and educational programs; and parents and community leaders.

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One Book Connecting the World

The Global Read Aloud program uses social media to improve student learning. Over a six-week period, classes all over the world read the same book. Using Twitter, Skype, Write About, Edmodo, or another social media platform, students connect and engage with other classes from every corner of the globe to discuss the book. The 2016 Global Read Aloud will take place between October 3 and November 11.

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Virtual Argumentative Experiences

The Virtual Debate project began as a way to infuse technology into an authentic argumentative 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, digital detox, competitive sports, and social media in schools. After selecting a topic, the two classes face off in a coin toss through Google Hangouts to decide the pro and con sides. Students then conduct research; they can also contact subject experts to help them formulate arguments. Teachers who want to participate in the Virtual Debate will find minilessons, anchor charts, and other resources on the project’s website. Experts from around the country judge the final debate, which is recorded using Google Hangouts On Air so parents can tune in and see their child’s work. Teachers can sign up and join the Virtual Debate project at no charge, or they can connect with colleagues through Twitter to start their own virtual debate.

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Storytelling with a Twist

StoryTimed is all about writing stories together. Students can contribute to two types of stories on this website. A Closed Book story is storytelling with a twist—students know only as much as they can derive from the last contribution. With Open Book stories, students have full visibility of the entire story from the start. While browsing open stories, students have the option to read all previous contributions. For both story types, students have a short amount of time to make their contributions using a limited number of words. They can contribute as much or as little as they wish, but the idea is to continue the theme and feeling of the story within the time and word constraints.

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3D Modeling Tool

Lifeliqe, a learning and productivity platform for interactive 3D, virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR), offers Lifeliqe Creator, giving educators the power to create and publish interactive presentations and ebooks that integrate 3D models instead of 2D images. Users of the Lifeliqe Creator app can explore objects with interactive 3D views, zoom deep into the structure of the objects, experience AR, view supplementary text on a subject, and change the language for a bilingual view in English and Spanish. The Lifeliqe app is available for free download on the iTunes App Store and the Windows store. In-app purchases start at $14.99.

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Plus: Featuring content from its sister company, Corinth Classroom, Lifeliqe offers K–12 educators more than 1,000 interactive, lifelike 3D models accessible on tablets, PCs, or interactive whiteboards, and in VR. Lifeliqe’s models are focused on STEM subjects, including human, plant, and animal biology; geology; paleontology; physics; geometry; and chemistry. Users can choose a monthly or annual subscription; an initial one-month trial is free.

Click Here to Access Corinth Classroom Lite App (Windows only)

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Interactive Coding Lessons

Apple’s innovative Swift Playgrounds app brings coding to life with an interactive interface that encourages students and beginners to explore working with Swift, Apple’s easy-to-learn programming language used by professional developers to create world-class apps. Swift Playgrounds includes Apple-developed programming lessons that engage students in writing code to guide onscreen characters through an immersive graphical world, solving puzzles and mastering challenges as they learn core coding concepts. Students can modify and build on this code to make it their own by adding graphics and touch interactions. This free app also features built-in templates to encourage students to express their creativity and create real programs that they can share with friends using Mail, Messages, or AirDrop, or by posting to the web. Swift Playgrounds is presently available with the iOS 10 public beta. The final version of Swift Playgrounds will be available in the App Store for free this fall. Swift Playgrounds is compatible with all iPad Air and iPad Pro models and iPad mini 2 and later running iOS 10. The Swift Playgrounds website presents videos, images, and demos.

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Learn-to-Code Program

Vidcode is aimed at teenage girls who are often left out in coding and computer programming technology. This tool puts together creativity, social media, and self-expression, allowing students to upload photos and videos and turn them into music videos, memes, and animations. Through these experiences, students learn that the code is what makes each action take place. On a split screen, instructions appear on one side and helpful hints are on the other side. Students have the option to link their finished projects to their social media accounts and share them with friends and family.

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Droid That Drives and Draws

Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have developed Root, a miniature robot that drives and draws on classroom whiteboards to encourage social learning and freeform creativity. Robot, environment, and students all react to one another, stimulating students to come up with diverse solutions and challenges together. Chock full of electronics—magnets, accelerometer, gyroscope, wheel encoders, multicolor LEDs—the pint-sized droid moves with ease, recognizing and responding to colors, light sources, and the physical world. Square, the accompanying programming platform, lets students work at three levels: simple graphical blocks, sophisticated interconnections, and full text coding. Root is designed to fit into every classroom based on the tech ecosystem already available—wireless Internet, shared tablets, and magnetic whiteboards. The Root Robot website displays videos of some activities that Root can perform. The robot will be available in early 2017 for $199 (price is subject to change). In the meantime, educators who sign up to the institute’s mailing list will get updates on the project’s progress and will be given the option to beta test both Root and Square.

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Africa Through the Eyes of Youth

Our Africa, a web resource developed by SOS Children, features an extensive and growing collection of free videos that bring viewers right into worlds of children living in countries in Africa. In addition to providing unique insight into Africa, the website offers free curriculum resources that teachers can readily use in the classroom. These classroom and homework resources include scenarios that let students use the information and videos on the site to investigate issues such as Agriculture & Famine, Geography & Wildlife, Games & Sport, Climate, Foods, Health, and more. Visitors to the website can browse the learning resources by country (Botswana, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Malawi, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa, and Zambia) or by topic (from climate and agriculture to tourism and communications).

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Click Here to Access Free Curriculum Resources

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Art and Culture in Three Dimensions

Field trips to museums are becoming increasingly rare in public school classrooms. Google Arts & Culture gives students that chance when it isn’t in the budget. Google Cultural Institute has partnered with more than 1,000 museums, archives, and other organizations worldwide to bring their collections and stories online. The Google team took professional photographs of artwork in museums all over the world, including close-ups. Students can see brushstrokes in detail, as well as some of the aspects of older art that aren’t always visible to the naked eye, such as elements that have been painted over. By clicking on a little yellow figure (known as Pegman) at the bottom of the webpage, students can dive into the 3D world of the museum space and get a view of other paintings on display in the same gallery. If they are logged into a Google account, students can also create a gallery of art and even arrange works on a timeline. Arts & Culture is accessible in a web browser or on a mobile device.

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Click Here to Visit Google Play

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Plus: Part of Google Arts & Culture, the World Wonders Project lets students explore famous sites around the world, such as the archaeological areas of Pompeii in Italy or the haunting Hiroshima Memorial Dome in Japan. Visitors to each site can view videos and explore the area in 3D when they click on Pegman. They can zoom out to see a world map and choose locations all over the world.

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