Dream Up a Cool Invention
Wouldn’t It Be Cool If ... is a new contest from Time Warner Cable’s Connect a Million Minds and i.am FIRST for youth aged 10–15. Entrants are asked to dream up a cool invention idea that makes life more awesome and demonstrate how science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) can make their ideas a reality. Parents who visit the contest’s website can download a free guide that includes tips on how to talk about, brainstorm and create cool ideas with their children. Teachers will find a free, downloadable guide with educator-created plans for easy activities that integrate the excitement and star power of Wouldn’t It Be Cool If into their ongoing math and science curriculum. The site also offers a free, downloadable guide with activities and projects to extend the competition into an after-school program.
Deadline: Contest opens on February 21; visit website for details
Click Here for More Information
Click Here for Parents' and Educators' Resources

Generate Passionate Engagement with Books
Each year the National Book Foundation awards a number of prizes of up to $2,500 each to individuals and institutions—or partnerships between the two—that have developed innovative means of creating and sustaining a lifelong love of reading. In addition to promoting the best of American literature through the National Book Awards, the foundation seeks to expand the audience for literature in America. Through the Innovations in Reading Prizes, individuals and institutions that use innovative methods to generate excitement and a passionate engagement with books and literature will be rewarded for their creativity and leadership. All United States citizens and American institutions are eligible for this prize. Examples of targeted individuals include teachers, librarians, after-school and community center staff and technology specialists. Important criteria are creativity, risk taking and a visionary quality as well as a novel way of presenting books and literature. Details about the complete nomination process appear in the application form, which can be downloaded from the foundation’s website.
Deadline: February 21, 2012 for nominations
Click Here for More Information

Encourage Curious Minds
The Google Science Fair is an online science competition seeking curious minds from the four corners of the globe. The 2012 Google Science Fair is an opportunity for students aged 13–18 to ask questions and use science to search for answers. Prizes include a scientific trip to the Galapagos Islands with National Geographic Explorer, scholarships and real-life work opportunities in science centers of excellence, such as CERN in Switzerland.
Deadline: March 30, 2012
Click Here for More Information About Google Science Fair

Plus: This year Scientific American is helping to expand the Google Science Fair honors by sponsoring a $50,000 Science in Action award for a project that addresses a social, environmental or health issue to make a practical difference in the lives of a group or community. Volunteer mentors will help foster the continued development of that winning project for a year.
Click Here for More Information About Science in Action Award

Win a 21st Century Classroom
CDW Government (CDW-G) and Discovery Education’s 2012 Win a Wireless Lab Sweepstakes will award three grand-prize 21st-century classroom technology packages, which will include 20 tablet or notebook computers, an interactive whiteboard, student response system, printer, document camera and $5,000 Discovery Education digital media grant. The total value of the wireless lab is $40,000. All K–12 educators employed at accredited public, private or parochial schools in the United States are eligible to enter the sweepstakes. CDW-G and Discovery Education will also provide on-site training at each winning school. Public and private school employees are eligible to enter the sweepstakes once a day.
Deadline: May 3, 2012
Click Here for More Information

Plus: CDW-G and Discovery Education are offering educators the opportunity to increase their daily entries by spreading the word via Twitter and Facebook. Through the Win a Wireless Lab website, entrants can submit 30-second videos and written essays that describe how their school is encouraging people to enter the sweepstakes and how they will use the technology. CDW-G and Discovery Education will post selected videos to the Win a Wireless Lab Facebook page, and entrants will be included in a special drawing for additional prizes, including a Kindle Fire.
Click Here to Visit Website

Talk About Responsible Citizenship
Choosing to Participate focuses on the civic choices—both large and small—people make about themselves and others in their community, nation and world. As teachers and students explore the readings in this collection, they will come to understand that the choices people make may not seem important at the time, but little by little they shape us as individuals and responsible global citizens. The stories in this collection focus on individuals and groups—the famous and the not so famous—wrestling with a question that many young people ask, How can I make a positive difference in the world? This resource is a valuable addition to units on civics, government and United States history. A translation of this resource is also available to educators teaching in a Spanish-speaking setting. Find three free lesson ideas to accompany the reading online: “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” “From Sympathy to Action,” “Not in Our Town.” Accompanying video/audio links add a multimedia component to each reading, and Connection Questions stimulate classroom conversation. Download or purchase the resource book from the Facing History and Ourselves website.
Click Here to Download Free Resource [English]
Click Here to Download Free Resource [Spanish]

Develop Rich Digital Learning Experiences
The Digital Textbook Playbook is a guide to help K–12 educators and administrators begin building rich digital learning experiences for students in districts across the country. The playbook offers information about determining broadband infrastructure for schools and classrooms, leveraging home and community broadband to extend the digital learning environment and understanding necessary device considerations. It also provides lessons learned from school districts that have engaged in successful transitions to digital learning. The Digital Textbook Playbook was developed by the Digital Textbook Collaborative, a joint effort of industry stakeholders, school officials and nonprofit leaders to encourage collaboration, accelerate the development of digital textbooks and improve the quality and penetration of digital learning in K–12 public education. The collaborative was convened by the Federal Communications Commission and the United States Department of Education and builds upon the FCC’s National Broadband Plan and the Department of Education’s National Education Technology Plan. Read the playbook online or download a PDF version at no charge.
Click Here to Access Free Resource

Meet Animals Shaped Like Letters
Alphabetimals is an interactive online flipbook featuring animal sounds and the pronunciations of animal names. The Alphabetimals characters can spell out any word that you would like. Just type the word in the word box, and it will appear as alphabet animals, which you can print out and use as flashcards. Also, on the Alphabetimals Facebook page, you’ll find free cutout flashcards and an alphabet poster, which you can download and print.
Click Here to Access Free Resources

Tell Stories in 3-D
ZooBurst is a digital storytelling tool that lets anyone easily create his or her own 3-D pop-up books. Using ZooBurst, storytellers of any age can create their own rich worlds in which their stories come to life. ZooBurst books “live” online and can be experienced using nothing more than a web browser running the Adobe Flash plug-in. Authors can arrange characters and props within a 3-D world that can be customized using uploaded artwork or items found in a built-in database of more than 10,000 free images and materials. Once constructed, books can be inspected from any angle from within a 3-D space. In addition, authors can choose to make items “clickable,” allowing readers to learn more about individual characters within a story. Each character can have its own “chat bubble” that pops up when that character is clicked. Authors can also record their own voices using the ZooBurst audio recorder to have their characters really speak when clicked. A classroom management feature lets teachers set up protected, safe spaces for their students. Teachers can assign usernames and passwords to their students without having to input any sensitive or personal information and can manage and moderate student work in a protected environment.
Click Here to Access Free Tool

Create Collaborative Outlines
Knowcase is a free tool for recording ideas and creating outlines. To get started using the tool, just click create and then start typing. Each time you press enter or return, a new element of your outline is started. To rearrange the sequence of elements on your outline, just drag them into a new order. Knowcase outlines can be made private or public. There are two public settings—one that allows people only to view the outline and another that allows others to edit the outline. Knowcase can also be used on iPhones and iPads.
Click Here to Access Free Tool

Celebrate the “G” in Engineering
National Engineers Week is February 19–25, 2012, and Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day enters its second decade of outreach on February 23, 2012. For the past 11 years, women engineers have introduced more than 1 million girls and young women to engineering. More than just one day, Introduce a Girl to Engineering is a national movement that shows girls how creative and collaborative engineering is and how engineers are changing the world. Visit the 2012 Girl Day website to see a roster of events and request a kit. Then visit the Engineer Your Life website and learn some effective ways to talk to girls about engineering.
Click Here for More Information on Engineers Week
Click Here to Visit Girls Day Website
Click Here to Visit Engineer Your Life Website

Step Up to the Challenge
With a world population of 7 billion, finding ways to provide for all of us requires the most innovative and creative thinking from the world’s best minds. Women in engineering and technology will step up to the challenge during the 8th Annual Global Marathon For, By and About Women in Engineering and Technology. Originating from a different part of the world each day, this free, virtual conference is the only event of its kind connecting women in engineering and technology worldwide across a diverse range of disciplines, experience levels, ages, interests, backgrounds, cultures, industries and employers. Each day features a live, hour-long webcast discussing such issues as clean water, clean energy, food and entrepreneurship. Prominent panelists from all parts of the world will offer a picture of what tomorrow can look like (dreams), projects and plans on how to achieve a better tomorrow (ideas) and concrete steps participants can take today (actions). The Global Marathon for 2012 will take place from March 5 through March 12. Register now to participate in the virtual conference.
Click Here for More Information

Bookmark Innovation
The Discover Engineering website provides free, downloadable full-color bookmarks with science activities printed in English/Spanish or Chinese/English. The English/Spanish bookmark activities involve students in using the sun’s energy to turn saltwater into freshwater; recording the amount of water used at home over a one-day or one-week period; and engineering their own “flying tube.” One of the Chinese/English bookmarks has students compare their walking, running, bike-riding travel times to the Wright brothers’ flying times. Another has students engineer a bigger, stronger, taller “skyscraper” using a weak material, such as a newspaper.
Click Here to Access Free English/Spanish Science Bookmarks
Click Here to Access Free Chinese/English Science Bookmarks

Explore Science in Everyday Life
The Science Museum in London has launched Futurecade, an online suite of games that allows students to explore the impact of science and technology on their everyday lives. Futurecade’s four games—Bacto-Lab, Robo-Lobster, Cloud Control and Space Junker—are based on scientific research happening today. Use them as a stimulus to engage students in a fun, interactive way and get them thinking about how technology might impact their future. The games aren’t intended to teach the science; rather they’re designed to provoke questions around the science so that you can use them in the classroom to generate discussion. Download the free teacher briefing notes for lesson ideas and tips for using the games in the classroom. Also download the free background science notes to become familiar with the science portrayed in the games and help develop classroom discussions around the wider issues.
Click Here to Access Free Games
Click Here to Access Free Resources

Discover the Science Behind Hockey
NBC News’ educational arm, NBC Learn, and the NBC Sports Group have teamed up with the National Hockey League (NHL) and National Science Foundation (NSF) in releasing Science of NHL Hockey—a 10-part video series exploring the science behind the fastest game on ice. This collaboration between NBC Learn, NBC Sports and NSF uses the universal appeal of hockey to drive an understanding of complicated scientific concepts. Students and teachers see how the principles of science enable players to perform actions such as quickly stopping on ice, passing the puck to a teammate, shooting a slap shot and making a great save. The science is broken down by capturing the athletes’ movements with a state-of-the-art, high-speed Phantom camera, which has the ability to capture movement at rates of up to 10,000 frames per second. These visuals allow for frame-by-frame illustrations of specific scientific principles, such as Newton’s Three Laws of Motion, kinematics and velocity. Other video episodes analyze the hockey science behind reflexes and reaction time, statistics, vectors, linear motion, geometry and more. Made especially for students and teachers to use in the classroom, the videos are aligned to lesson plans and national state education standards and are available to the public cost free.
Click Here to Visit Website

Introduce High-Flying Physics
The Big Apple Circus’s jugglers, clowns and high-flying acrobats provide an entertaining and engaging way to introduce basic physics concepts to high school students. Circus Physics is a series of eight short videos, each of which feature footage from the PBS Circus series and interviews with the performers to illustrate the laws of physics at work. For deeper exploration, each video has a corresponding Study Guide for students and an Activity Guide for teachers, as well as raw video clips of performances that can be used for analysis in the classroom.
Click Here to Visit Website

See Chemistry Through the Lens of Everyday Life
The Chemical Education Digital Library (ChemED DL] is a large collection of resources for teaching and learning chemistry. ChemEd DL contains tutorials for students that include 3-D chemical models and explanations of what each part of the model does and how those parts work together. The ChemTeacher section has free, downloadable lesson plans organized by subject. ChemEd DL also features a periodic table that links each element to data and explanations about that element.
Click Here to Visit Website
Click Here to Access Free 3-D Chemical Models
Click Here to Access Free Lesson Plans
Click Here to Access Free Period Table

Celebrate African Americans in Science
The American Chemical Society’s website commemorating Black History Month honors the inspirational achievements and contributions of African American scientists. Students will learn about famed agricultural chemist George Washington Carver, blood bank pioneer Charles Drew and lesser-known scientists, such as Lloyd August Hall who invented a number of ways to preserve food and amassed numerous patents used today.
Click Here to Visit Website

Think Before Leaving a Digital Footprint
ThinkB4U is a new series of web safety videos and tutorials from Google and its partners, Common Sense Media, ConnectSafely and the National Consumer League. The site includes three main components that are meant to be explored together. Each location—Home, School, Mall—includes several video shorts about a modern family’s online experiences. Users determine which path the family members take at the critical decision point. These shorts are just snapshots of more complicated issues, but they all attempt to address a fundamental message of taking a moment to think before acting. As users view each video, they can collect interactive objects. An object opens up a quick game about the subject of the video. Once users collect an object, they can access it at anytime during the session. When users scroll down the site, they’ll find complementary messages targeted for each audience—students, parents, educators. These messages strike a quick educational point. To find out more about the subject, users just click the link below the message. This action will open up a popup with tips and advice. Resources linked in the educators’ and parents’ sections of the site point to curriculum and advice provided by the site’s partners.
Click Here to Visit Website

Go on Location
Novels on Location uses Google Maps to help you find fiction works according to their geographical settings. When you visit Novels on Location, you can find novels by clicking on the placemarks that you see or by using the location search bar in the upper right corner of the site. If you want to contribute to Novels on Location, simply enter a location and then enter the title and author of your favorite book set in that location. Your students can contribute to Novels on Location, or you can create your own classroom version of Novels on Location by creating a shared Google Map to which your students make their contributions.
Click Here to Visit Website

Discover What Makes a Great Speech
President Ronald Reagan was known as the Great Communicator. But what goes on behind the scenes in making a great speech? In the Great Communicator Files, students can explore the primary sources from the speech files from three of President Reagan’s most famous speeches: Pointe du Hoc and Remarks at Omaha Beach, both World War II commemorative speeches, and his address to the nation after the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. Free, downloadable Teacher Resources and Documents focus on the speech-making and speech-writing process. Hard copies of the speeches, along with a DVD of President Reagan giving the speeches, are available on request.
Click Here to Visit Website

Experience Life in Colonial Times
Betwixt Folly and Fate is an immersive 3-D role-playing game that places players in 1774 Williamsburg as one of four characters: Chloe, an enslaved house servant; Henry, a free black carpenter; Mary, a midwife’s assistant; and George, a young gentleman. In each role, players face the challenges of daily life in early America while learning about the social classes and customs of the time. As players pursue their characters’ goals, they explore a large portion of eighteenth-century Williamsburg, Virginia, roaming the streets and meeting people in shops, taverns, the courthouse and private homes. The town is populated with dozens of characters, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry. Players may also bargain for goods with shopkeepers and try their skill at several colonial games.
Click Here to Visit Website

Browse K12TeacherStore.com for a wide variety of products published by leading K–12 education companies, all of them delivered digitally. Many of the ebooks can be used on interactive whiteboards and various mobile reading devices. All of the books whose covers you see displayed are on sale at a 15% discount. To stay informed about what’s going on with ebooks in K–12 schools, sign up for the free enewsletter, K12 TeacherFile.

Get a free copy of The Big Deal eBook of Resources for 21st Century Teaching and Learning: From the 3Rs to the 4Cs. Explore this collection of resources to help students move beyond the 3Rs and embrace the 4Cs—Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking and Creativity—the 21st century skills cited by industry as keys to innovation and invention in an increasingly challenging global economy.

Sign up at The Big Deal Book Web site for hELLo!, a free quarterly ELL e-newsletter that includes a wealth of information on interactive resources for students, teachers, librarians, principals and others involved in the education of English language learners.

Download a free eBook of the popular print edition of The Big Deal Book of Technology for K–12 Educators. Explore the many opportunities to fund your special programs, access timely reports and articles, locate free and inexpensive resources and identify engaging interactive Web sites.

Join The Big Deal Book of Technology’s “Amazing Resources for Educators” community on the edWeb to get more frequent updates on grant deadlines, free resources and hot new sites for 21st century learning. And, of course, you can share any great new resources that you’ve unearthed!

Browse the new Big Deal eBookstore, in partnership with K12TeacherStore.com! Find thousands of titles from your favorite educational publishers.

Explore the Web Wednesday feature on www.bigdealbook.com. Here you’ll find new interactive experiences and resources that incorporate 21st century themes and skills into the study of core subjects.