“Seed” Your Special Projects
Are you working to start a community action project or program? Do you need money to put your ideas into action? If you answered, “yes,” you are eligible to apply for a Do Something Seed Grant. A $500 grant is awarded every week to help young people jump-start a program or realize their ideas for the first time. The grants are for all types of action projects around causes that are important in your community. You will be notified two to three months after submission of your application.
Deadline: Rolling
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Boost Your Classroom Resources
DonorsChoose.org, an online charity, matches classroom needs with anonymous benefactors. Most of the classrooms are in low-income communities. Requests range from pencils for a poetry writing unit, to violins for a school recital, to microscope slides for a biology class. Since the program’s inception in 2003, more than $73,492,429 has been raised, over 4,438,460 students have been helped and more than 178,833 projects have been brought to life. Your classroom could be next!
Deadline: Ongoing
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Support Your STEM Initiatives
The Lockheed Martin Corporation provides grants for K–16 math, science and engineering educational initiatives. These programs include the Lockheed Martin Space Day education initiative, MATHCOUNTS, National Engineers Week and employee-mentoring programs, nationally and in local communities. Lockheed Martin dedicates most of its education funding to these activities; on occasion it considers local programs that support these priorities. Grant recipients must be located or operate in a community where Lockheed Martin has employees. All applicants must take a quiz to determine whether they are eligible for funding.
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Take a Creative Approach to Filmmaking
Adobe Youth Voices, PBS and POV are searching for the next generation of documentary filmmakers. Project VoiceScape welcomes good ideas, films-in-progress or completed short films made by aspiring filmmakers in grades 7–12. Fifteen young people will be selected for Project VoiceScape and will be honored in Fall 2011 at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. All subjects, styles and opinions are welcome. The film projects should get people talking, take a fresh and creative approach to filmmaking, express a clear point of view, address issues Americans are talking about, take a thoughtful approach to the topic, showcase the lives of people rarely seen on television and examine issues that are important in students’ communities. The 15 young filmmakers selected for Project VoiceScape will receive $2,000 to complete their short documentary; streaming of their film on POV’s Web site; one-to-one mentoring by award-winning documentary filmmakers; outreach, publicity and fundraising training from experts at POV; and possible broadcast in the POV Short Film Showcase.
Deadline: February 15, 2011 for submissions
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Discuss Name-Calling and Bullying
No Name-Calling Week, a week of educational and art activities aimed at stopping name-calling and bullying in schools, took place during the week of January 24–28. The Creative Expression Contest is an opportunity for students to submit essays, poetry, music, original artwork or other pieces that convey their experiences and feelings about name-calling and their ideas for putting a stop to verbal bullying in their schools and communities. This year there is a new High School category to the contest for short-film submissions that focus on anti-LGBT name-calling and bullying in school. The contest is open to all individual K–12 students. Students may work in groups as long as an entry form is submitted for every student that worked on the artwork.
Deadline: February 28, 2011 for entries
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Plus: The event’s Web site includes free information and resources for students as well as free, downloadable lesson plans and bullying resources for teachers.

Exercise Creative Imagination
K–12 students in the United States now have a chance to design Google’s famous homepage logo and win a scholarship as well as a technology grant for their school. Google has launched the fourth annual Doodle 4 Google contest with the theme “What I’d like to do someday.” The winning Doodle will be displayed on Google’s homepage; its creator will receive a $15,000 scholarship, and his or her school will receive a $25,000 technology grant.
Deadlines: March 2, 2011 for registration; entries must be postmarked by March 16, 2011
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Win a 21st Century Classroom
CDW-G and Discovery Education have opened the ninth annual Win a Wireless Lab Sweepstakes, which will provide a $50,000 21st-century classroom to three grand-prize winners. Each classroom includes 20 notebook or tablet computers, an interactive whiteboard, student response devices, projector, document camera and more. Educators and school employees at public and private schools can enter once per day. From the entry page, participants can Tweet about the contest to earn an additional entry. New this year, the sweepstakes will capitalize on Twitter and Facebook to notify followers of special prizes awarded on select days throughout the contest period. To find out about these promotions, educators should follow @WinWirelessLab on Twitter and become a fan of Win a Wireless Lab on Facebook.
Deadline: May 2, 2011
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Celebrate the Moving Image
Moving Image Source is a unique resource for introducing students to Internet research and for teaching them about the history of film, television and digital media. The site features a research guide to more than 400 of the best film- and media-related resources on the Web, as well as original articles; dialogues with creative figures in film, television and digital media; and an international calendar of events.
Click Here to Access Free Resource

Make Chemistry Relevant to Everyday Life
A new online series developed by the education arm of NBC News offers free videos and resources for chemistry teachers that aim to show students the subject’s relevance in everyday life. The series, called Chemistry Now, has 31 weekly lessons. At present only three are available, but NBC Learn plans to release a new segment every week of the school year. The project, which was created in collaboration with the National Science Foundation, covers a variety of topics ranging from the chemical breakdown of all the components of a cheeseburger to the chemistry of fear. Each series contains several one- to six-minute videos, charts, related news stories and lesson plans created by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA). The site also features profiles of scientists making chemistry breakthroughs.
Click Here to Access Free Resources

Play the “Best Bibliography” Bout
Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a new online game called BiblioBouts to help students cite their research papers. The game turns collecting citations into a competitive event, pitting students against their classmates. Students are rewarded for their research skills and their ability to differentiate between good and bad material. To play, students find sources, which are judged by their peers for relevance and credibility; then they evaluate the worth of sources their classmates find. They gain more points the more sources they assess accurately and the better their own sources are judged.
Click Here to Access Free Online Game

Connect to a MASTERPIECE
Many English and literature teachers are longtime fans of MASTERPIECE on Sunday nights. It’s the longest-running, most-honored drama series on primetime television—known for its high-quality adaptations of classic works by authors such as Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Eliot and James, as well as more contemporary literature and mysteries. In January 2011, MASTERPIECE celebrated its 40th anniversary and, for the occasion, revamped its archive of educator resources with more than 30 title-specific teacher’s guides online, as well as resources for discussing the adaptation of book to film. All the educator resources are free.
Click Here to Access Free Teacher’s Guides
Click Here to Access Free Discussion Resources

Plus: DailyLit.com sends entire books via email or RSS, including many classics that have been featured on MASTERPIECE—in short, customized installments. The site also provides discussion forums.
Click Here for More Information

Take on Current Challenges in Educational Technology
In the face of the most serious economic crisis in generations, K–12 schools across the United States are slashing budgets, and educational technology has become an easy target for cuts. The current crisis presents not just challenges, but also tremendous opportunities to strengthen technology investments, operations, programs, plans, staff and results. Attend the CoSN 2011 Annual Conference, March 14–16 in New Orleans, Louisiana, and learn how you can Master the Moment to successfully meet the current challenges we are all facing. Register now to join with education technology leaders from the public and private sector to address these issues.
Click Here to Register for 2011 CoSN Conference

Keep Abreast of Educational Technology
The Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning (MACUL) will hold its 35th annual conference for educational technology at Cobo Center in Detroit, Michigan, on March 16–18. One of the nation’s largest conferences for educational technology, the event will gather more than 3,000 teachers, administrators and school board members from Michigan, neighboring states and Canada. More than 150 sessions will be presented by national leaders and classroom teachers on best practices and trends in educational technology. “Essentials for 21st Century Teaching and Learning” is the theme of this year’s conference.
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Explore the Humanities with an Expert Scholar
Each year the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Division of Education Programs offers teachers opportunities to study a variety of humanities topics in NEH Summer Seminars and Institutes held in various locations all across the country. Contact the specific projects for program and application information. For example, see titles such as “Abraham Lincoln and the Forging of Modern America” or “The Spanish and Mexican Influences on California, 1769–1984.” NEH Summer Scholars are awarded fixed stipends to help cover travel costs, books, other research expenses and living expenses. Full-time teachers in K–12 schools are eligible to apply.
Deadline: March 1, 2011 for Summer 2012 seminars and institutes
Click Here for Information About Summer Seminars and Institutes

Make Literacy a Part of Black History Month
Join more than a million readers in the 22nd National African American Read-In, scheduled for the entire month of February. Hosting a Read-In can be as simple as gathering with family and friends to share books, or as elaborate as arranging large audiences to hear professional writers read their work. See the Read-In Web site for suggested reading lists.
Click Here to Visit Web Site

See American History Through an African American Lens
The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) houses more than 100 artifacts, documents and artwork spanning some 400 years of history. Select items illustrate the hardships and triumphs of the African American experience. The exhibition honors the lives of famous African Americans, such as Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr, as well as those whose history is not as well known. The collection comprises objects, including slave shackles, photographs and written documents, from the periods of slavery through the Civil Rights.
Click Here to Visit Web Site

Plus: The Teachers section of the NMAAHC Web site includes activities and resources to help guide students in discovery and applying knowledge. The lessons list curriculum connections for history, mathematics, science, English and social studies from kindergarten through 12th grade. All of the educational activities make use of Object-based Learning. Through observation and the use of questions, students make connections to their own experience in order to gain a deeper understanding of the object and the time in which it was used. Activities encourage higher-level thinking skills, as outlined in Bloom’s Taxonomy. The educational activities also make use of Advance Organizers, information given prior to learning to help students organize and interpret new information and to prepare the mind for learning new information. The lessons are designed as a supplemental curriculum; they may be used by either one student or the entire class. The worksheets are available as free PDF files.
Click to Access Free Resources

Provide Individualized Math Practice
Designed for grades 1–6, Britannica SmartMath provides online math practice that adapts to each student’s ability. Unlike traditional math practice, SmartMath builds formative assessment into the learning process. Students who do well see more challenging questions, and students who struggle see progressively less difficult questions until they achieve success. With SmartMath, students spend more time on task because they are working at their own level and having fun, significantly improving their math skills and test scores. Try it out, for free, online.
Click Here for More Information
Click Here to Try Free Demo

Plus: Check out insideBritannica, a free monthly newsletter that includes tips to help librarians, teachers and students make use of the many educational resources in Britannica Online. Read previous editions of insideBritannica and learn more about this resource.
Click Here to Sign Up for Free Newsletter

Power Up STEM Learning
Globaloria is a social network for learning how to make educational Web games. Students learn how to imagine and implement Web games, produce wikis, publish multimedia blogs, work in teams and openly post, share and exchange ideas, code, questions and progress using the latest learning methods and communication technology.
Click Here to Visit Web Site

Plus: In the Globaloria Game Competitions, students create and present games on civics and STEM topics. Expert judges select the winners, who receive laptops with Flash. The STEM game competition is chaired by U.S. Senator Jay D. Rockefeller; the Civics game competition by Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Check the Globaloria Web site in the spring for 2011 registration dates.
Click Here for More Information

Solve Real-World Problems Using Algebra
Hip-hop duo DobleFlo, Season 2 Project Runway winner Chloe Dao, and Julia Detar, developer of popular video games played on Facebook, inspire teens to solve real-world problems using algebra in Get the Math, a new multimedia project from THIRTEEN and the team behind the PBS series Cyberchase. Premiering on THIRTEEN Sunday, February 20, from 11:30 a.m. to noon and airing nationwide on public television (check local listings), Get the Math combines entertaining reality-style TV and online challenges to help middle and high school students see the relevance of math in exciting careers and develop algebraic thinking skills. Drawing on conventions of popular reality shows, Get the Math features profiles of dynamic young professionals who share how they regularly use algebra in their work and then pose challenges connected to their jobs to two teams of teens. Online viewers can tackle the challenges using interactive tools and hints, and they can compare their strategies to solutions used by student teams in the video. Viewers can then deepen their understanding of the algebra concepts explored through additional interactive challenges.
Click Here to Visit Web Site

Reveal the Wonders of Mathematics
The Museum of Mathematics (MoMath) is being developed to illuminate the patterns and structures all around us. The museum’s exhibits and programs are intended to stimulate inquiry and spark curiosity. MoMath is currently under construction, with cool new exhibits being designed every day. Get a taste for the spirit of the museum with the Math Midway, hands-on traveling exhibition that highlights the engaging and playful nature of mathematics. The Math Midway is making appearances at science and technology centers across the country.
Click Here to Visit Web Site

Plus: The Museum of Mathematics has partnered with Make Magazine to produce Math Mondays, a weekly column on Make: Online featuring fun, experiential, puzzling items that explore different aspects of mathematics.
Click Here to Visit Web Site

Discuss the Evolution of New Technology
edWeb.net’s Exploring eBooks for K–12 is a forum where educators and industry executives can connect and collaborate together to discuss the evolution of this new technology and its potential for use with students and in the classroom. Anyone involved in education is invited to join the Exploring eBooks for K–12 community.
Click Here to Join eBooks Community

Fetch and Square the Facts
Google Squared allows you to fetch and organize facts from across the Web. Google Squared automatically constructs a table of facts about any category you specify.
Click Here to Visit Web Site

Share Books That Shaped Your Life
You Are What You Read is a social networking site sponsored by Scholastic. Users post the five books that had the biggest impact on their lives, connect with others through these shared “Bookprints” and learn about new titles. Participating notable people include Bill Gates, Eva Mendes, Damien Hirst, Tony Hawk, Jodi Picoult, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Malcolm Gladwell and former President George H. W. Bush.
Click Here to Visit Web Site

Live and Learn with Technology
Digital Media: New Learners of the 21st Century, a one-hour PBS documentary produced by National Productions and Mobile Digital Arts, explores how exceptional instructors are increasingly using digital media and interactive practices to ignite their students’ curiosity and ingenuity, help them become civically engaged, allow them to collaborate with peers worldwide and empower them to direct their own learning. The documentary also dives into cutting-edge educational and cognitive research to explore how increasingly powerful forms of digital media impact today’s learner. Viewers meet some of the country’s most noted educational experts and thought leaders in the digital education realm. The documentary premiers nationwide on February 13, 2011; check your local listing.
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Get the Youth Perspective on National Issues
The PBS NewsHour has launched Student Reporting Labs, a program connecting students with professional mentors at their local public broadcasting station to produce original news reports with youth perspectives on important national issues. The Web site includes a collaborative space where students interact with professional journalists as well as peers from around the country who are working on the same topic. Developed by the Media Education Lab at Temple University, the curriculum features 15 lesson plans that emphasize finding, analyzing and evaluating the quality of information provided by any source.
Click Here to Visit Web Site

Accelerate Understanding of Economic and Science Concepts
SageSim LLC, an online economic model technology consulting firm, has unveiled SageSim Labs, a Web site that provides high school teachers with free economic model packages to help students learn key business and economic concepts. Lab titles include Supply and Demand, Skateboard Shop, Queuing, Smoothie Bar, Skateboard Products, Medical Clinics and Stock Investments. SageSim Labs are also being developed for physics, science and math/statistics.
Click Here to Visit Web Site

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