Flex Students’ Vocabulary Muscles
On May 1, 2012, Scholastic is hosting a live WordGirl Definition Competition. During the live webcast, classrooms can play along by submitting their responses to the questions about word usage and definitions. Some participating classrooms will be called in to participate live over the web. The competition will feature three rounds of questions. By registering for the Definition Competition, your class and school will automatically be entered into the WordGirl Definition Competition Sweepstakes for a chance to win books and other prizes. In addition, when you register for the event, you’ll be sent a pre-competition preparation kit.
Deadline: April 26, 2012 for registration
Click Here for More Information

Promote Creativity in the Classroom
The Kids in Need Foundation, a national nonprofit organization that provides free school supplies to economically disadvantaged schoolchildren and underfunded teachers, has announced the second year of a teacher grants program sponsored by Elmer’s. As a result of this educational partnership, teachers nationwide can visit the Kids in Need Foundation’s website to apply for an Elmer’s Teacher Tool Kit grant ranging from $100 to $500. The grants will be given to teachers who wish to conduct classroom projects selected from a catalog of more than 500 projects currently in the Kids in Need Guide to Award-Winning Projects. This year approximately 250 grants sponsored by Elmer’s will be provided to teachers nationwide.
Deadline: April 30, 2012
Click Here for More Information
Click Here to Access Catalog of Projects

Join the Campaign Against Bullying
Earlier this year, journalist Nicholas Kristof reported on Lady Gaga’s campaign against bullying and learned that increasingly the US Department of Education sees bullying as a serious problem. So he’d like to consult the real experts—American teenagers—by holding an essay contest for young adults aged 14 through 19. He is encouraging young people to apply by writing an essay of up to 500 words about bullying or how to address it. He is holding the contest in partnership with The New York Times Learning Network and Teen Ink magazine. Teen Ink will select the finalists, and then Kristof will choose the winners. There’s no real prize, although Kristof will publish excerpts from the best essays in his column or blog. Some winners will also be published on the Learning Network site and in Teen Ink.
Deadline: April 30, 2012
Click Here for More Information

Demonstrate Culturally Responsive Teaching
Teaching Tolerance is accepting applications for its 2012 Excellence in Culturally Responsive Teaching award. This award recognizes educators who are adept at fostering productive, caring relationships with students and their families, building on students’ prior knowledge and providing equitable access to learning opportunities for all students. Successful candidates will have a record of success meeting the needs of students from diverse racial, ethnic, cultural and linguistic backgrounds. All preK–12 teachers within the United States are invited to apply. An expert panel of teachers and scholars will select the five awardees. The five winners will receive $1,000 and be videotaped in their classrooms as models of effective practice.
Deadline: April 30, 2012
Click Here for More Information

Experience the Beauty of America
Rand McNally and USA TODAY have announced an essay contest, “America the Beautiful,” for students in grades 7–12, who can win a $10,000 college scholarship, a NOOK Tablet, publication in a ebook and a trip to Washington, D.C. Teachers can win a NOOK Tablet and $5,000 worth of products for their schools. The challenge for students is to describe the one place in the United States that truly inspires them. It can be their hometown, or a place where they experienced a special memory, or a landmark in our country that inspired them.
Deadline: May 14, 2012
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As a recipient of The Big Deal Book of Technology eNewsletter, you are invited to tell us about your participation in the purchasing decision process, the equipment you plan to use in the years ahead and the publications you read. (The survey should take no longer than five minutes to complete.) Surveys submitted IN FULL by the deadline date will be entered in a random drawing to win a $50 American Express Gift Card. We’ll be giving away two gift cards for every 100 completed surveys received.
Deadline: April 30, 2012
Click Here to Activate Survey

Evaluate Progress in Technology Use
For the fifth year, administrators and faculty members from K–12 and postsecondary educational institutions have the opportunity to take a short, online survey to evaluate their current technology use. Educators can use the 20 benchmarks in the Software & Industry Information Association’s (SIIA) Vision K20 survey to evaluate their current implementation of technology and also establish goals for the future with the “ideal implementation” component of the survey. Focusing on goals outlined in the Vision roadmap, including 21st century tools, accessibility, differentiated learning, assessment tools and enterprise support, institutions—schools, districts, two-year colleges and four-year universities—will be able to use the Vision’s benchmarks to monitor their progress. They can also complete the survey periodically as they work toward the Vision for K–20 in education. All educators who complete the survey are entered in a drawing for free iTunes or Starbucks gift cards.
Deadline: May 24, 2012
Click Here to Participate in Vision K–20 Survey
Click Here to Learn More About Initiative

Search and Pin Information
instaGrok is a new way to search and pin information. Students can use instaGrok to search a topic and quickly get lists of facts and links to information on that topic as well as videos, images and quizzes on the topic. If they want to refine or alter their search, students just click on another term in the web of search terms. If the results they’re getting are too difficult to comprehend, or too basic, they can use the difficulty slider to change the results. When they find materials that are useful for their research, they can pin them or add them to their instaGrok journal. They can add notes to those links in their journal as well.
Click Here to Access Free Tool

Connect with Authors—Virtually
Skype an Author Network is a directory of writers willing to arrange virtual visits with classrooms. The mission of the Skype an Author Network is to provide K–12 teachers and librarians with a way to connect authors, books and young readers through virtual visits. Authors’ names appear in alphabetical order on the scrolling navigation to the left of the homepage. It is up to you to identify and contact the authors to set up a virtual visit via Skype. If you’re not familiar with Skype, visit the Skype Overview page.
Click Here to Visit Website

Scholastic Teacher Express offers access to 10,000+ teaching resources—all just a click away. The teaching resources include activities, practice pages and lesson plans—starting at just $0.99. You can purchase the whole e-book or just the e-pages you need. The PDFs are available instantly; there’s no wait, or hassle, or special equipment needed. Just print or project to your whiteboard. Shop now and save 30 percent, using promo code BigDealApr16.
Deadline: Offer valid through April 30, 2012
Click Here for Instant Access to Teaching Resources

Start Your Día Celebrating Reading
El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Children’s Day/Book Day), is a celebration every day of children, families and reading that culminates yearly on April 30. The celebration emphasizes the importance of advocating literacy for children of all linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The free, downloadable Resource Guide on this website is intended to help librarians interested in creating Día programs and celebrations in their public or school library. The guide contains program models and resources for many types and sizes of programs; and for the librarian who is new to Día, or has been celebrating for some time.
Click Here to Visit Website

Plus: If you’re interested in discovering recent books from cultures around the world, check out the latest Día booklist brochure. Provided as a free, downloadable PDF file, the brochure includes suggestions for children’s books available in several languages, as well as resource websites and literacy tips. Select the version based on local preferences that includes literacy tips in English and Spanish; and now available in Chinese. Additional titles are featured in the booklist addendum.

Explore the Power of Language
Poetry Everywhere provides 38 videos, as well as essays and lessons, to help students explore the power of language and build reading and writing skills during National Poetry Month (April) and year-round. The videos feature seminal voices of poetry, past and present, from Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson to Seamus Heaney, Marie Howe and Yusef Komunyakaa.
Click Here to Visit Web site

Plus: Digital poems are born from the combination of technology and poetry, with writers using all multimedia elements as critical texts. Sounds, images, movement, video, interface/interactivity and words are combined to create new poetic forms and experiences. On this website, digital poet Jason Nelson explains the medium of digital poetry and demonstrates how it can be used in your classroom. One suggestion is to take a traditional rubric for a poem and add a column for modalities. Show some models of exemplary work and let students’ creativity take it from there.
Click Here to Visit Website
Click Here to Access Templates for Rubrics

Support Children with Special Needs
April is also World Autism Awareness Month. On TeachTown’s website, you can explore the latest research on autism and learn the best practices for using technology with special needs children. You can also read educator and student stories, download activities and watch demos of two TeachTown curriculum-based instructional programs: TeachTown: Basics, computer-aided instruction (CAI), and TeachTown: Social Skills, animated video modeling. Both programs are set in a colorful and immersive community where animated characters take students on an educational journey complete with rewards and educational games. Students learn and practice fundamental skills in math, language, communication and behavior, and social and emotional development. Assessments and student progress reports guide the development of Individual Education Plans (IEPs) and complement teachers’ instruction through consistent delivery of skills measured in standardized tests.
Click Here to Visit Website

Plus: Visit the TeachTown website and sign up for the free enewsletter featuring more educator, parent and student videos, along with free activities and resources. Parents and teachers can also download supplemental curriculum tools in the Fun Stuff section, a portal that houses visual schedules, character puppets, flashcards, token boards and the character expression pages. Call 800-283-0165 to request a quote or talk with an education specialist.

Provide Practice in Making Eye Contact
The Eye Contact – Zoo app is designed for children affected by autism or Asperger’s syndrome. Through repeated practice, children learn to make eye contact by habit and cope more readily with real-life situations. The app is available for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. Download the app in the iTunes App Store for $2.99.
Click Here to Download App

Discover the Surprising Side of Color
When is yellow yellower than yellow? What color is a whisper? What’s missing from the palette of Renaissance painters? Students can explore the surprising side of color with Color Uncovered, an interactive book for the iPad, featuring illusions, articles and videos developed by the Exploratorium. A broad spectrum of colorful surprises focuses on the art, physics and psychology of color. There are also a few color activities students can conduct on their own using the iPad and simple items they have at home. Download the app, at no charge, in the iTunes App Store.
Click Here to Download Free App

Help the Lorax Regrow Forests
Dr. Seuss’s 1971 classic, The Lorax, was recently released as a motion picture. With the Lorax Garden app for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, students can help the Lorax regrow the world’s Truffula tree forests. Students can design their own trees and flowers, see them grow right before their eyes and share with friends and family beautiful postcards they create. A world map shows how many forests students have regrown and how many still need their help. The app includes 3-D artwork inspired by Dr. Seuss’s illustrations as well as whimsical music and sound effects. Download the app in the iTunes App Store for $0.99.
Click Here to Download App

Learn About Dollars and Sense
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has released its first economic education and personal finance application for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. The Econ Ed Mobile app allows students and educators to gain an understanding of how inflation and cost of credit can affect spending and saving decisions. With the app, students can investigate the cost of goods and services purchased in one year compared with another year; use interactive graphs to compare inflation rates at various points in our nation’s history; examine how interest rates, monthly payments and time can affect the overall cost of using credit; and play two challenge games to see how well they can estimate the cost of credit and the price of goods and services over time. Download the app, at no charge, in the iTunes App Store.
Click Here to Visit Website
Click Here to Download Free App
Click Here to Access Free Lesson Plans

Consider the Impact of Science and Technology on Warfare
Throughout history, warfare has spurred scientific and technologic innovations. Conversely, science and technology have always made substantial impacts on the field of war. World War II is no exception. The National WWII Museum’s Science and Technology of World War II web page presents information, lessons and activities about the science and technology of that time to give teachers and students an opportunity to broaden their understanding of WWII history.
Click Here to Visit Science and Technology Web Page
Click Here to Visit Museum Website

Bring STEM to Life in the Classroom
PBS’s NOVA Education website houses a collection of NOVA resources for bringing science, technology and engineering to life in educational settings. This free digital library (tied to teaching standards) includes video, audio segments, interactives and much more. For example, in one interactive, students assemble a virtual DNA fingerprint and use it to identify the culprit in a hypothetical crime. In another interactive, they learn about properties of materials such as toughness, hardness, malleability and flexibility and then play a game to identify ten mystery materials using videos and clue cards. And in still another, they learn about eight of the latest solar technologies and then investigate how these technologies can provide environmentally friendly solutions.
Click Here to Visit Website

Plant the Seeds of Learning
Planting Science is a learning and research resource, bringing together students, plant scientists and teachers from across the nation. Students engage in hands-on plant investigations, working with peers and scientist mentors to build collaborations and to improve their understanding of science. The program is cost-free to schools and teachers.
Click Here to Visit Website

Access the “Accumulated Wisdom of the World”
Imagine being able to walk through Henry David Thoreau’s hand-drawn map of Walden Pond. With The New York Public Library’s recently started digitization project, anyone will be able to experience this bit of history and so much more. The NYPL Digital Gallery provides free and open access to more than 800,000 images digitized from The New York Public Library’s vast collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs.
Click Here to Visit Website

Reenact History in Real Time
History is filled with exciting stories that can be told by creating virtual reenactments using Twitter. The process is simple using TwHistory: First students choose a well-documented historical event. Then they choose real historical figures who were at that event and create tweets based on original source documentation. These tweets are then scheduled to be broadcast on the TwHistory site in real time. The virtual reenactments allow a new way to experience history. Instead of reading about a month-long campaign in just a few hours, followers experience the campaign over the course of a month, all in real time. Together, the separate tweets combine to paint a complete and unique picture of a small segment of history.
Click Here to Visit Website

Hook Boys on Reading
Guys Lit Wire was created after a broad discussion among Young Adult bloggers within the lit blogosphere about the lack of books for teenage boys. The blog’s sole intent is to bring literary news and reviews to the attention of teenage boys and the people who care about them. Female readers are more than welcome, but the main goal is to bring the attention of good books to boys who might have missed them. The titles may be new or old and on every subject imaginable. Every Monday through Friday, new posts appear from a list of 23 individual, scheduled contributors, plus several additional, occasional posters, all of whom have different literary likes and dislikes. The intent is to provide something for everyone.
Click Here to Visit Website

Make Friends Around the World
Beginning in April, Pen Pal Kids Club, a global social network for youth, is offering free classroom subscriptions to K–8 teachers across the United States. The website promotes cross-curricular collaboration by integrating nonfiction writing, geography, social studies and technology while offering students a chance to discover different cultures and meet new friends from across the globe. There are no advertisements or pop-up ads, and the site is fully compliant with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The free classroom subscriptions will be available for as long as teachers want to use them. Individual subscriptions for home use are $2.99 each month, with the first month free, or $29.99 per year.
Click Here to Visit Website

Plus: The site also features six educational games, designed for a range of age and skill levels, covering world history, language, geography, government, economics and social studies; and online access to Encyclopaedia Britannica for Kids.

Sink the Myths of the Titanic
On Board the Titanic is a virtual field trip produced by Discovery. To take the field trip, students select one of five characters to be as they set sail on the Titanic. When selecting a character, students do not know who they are or if they’ll survive until the night of the sinking. Students will spend four or five virtual days learning about the ship and their character. Only on the night of April 15, 1912 do they learn who they are and if they will survive.
Click Here to Visit Website

Hear Survivors’ Stories
The BBC’s Survivors of the Titanic website contains 13 audio recordings of survivors relaying their experiences. The collection also includes primary source documents.
Click Here to Visit Website

Plus: Estate of Hans Jensen v. The White Star Line is a mock trial in which the plaintiffs bring suit against the Titanic’s operators for negligence. You can read through each part of the trial, or you could use the framework to recreate the trial in your classroom.
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!

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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.