Find the Funding That's Right for Your Needs
GetEdFunding is CDW-G’s new website to help educators and institutions find the funds they need to supplement already stretched budgets. GetEdFunding is a free and fresh resource, which hosts a collection of more than 600 grants and opportunities culled from federal, state, regional and community sources and available to public and private, prekindergarten through grade 12 educators, schools and districts, higher education institutions, and nonprofit organizations that work with them. The site offers customized searches by six criteria, including 45 areas of focus, nine content areas and any of the 21st century themes and skills that support your curriculum. Once you are registered on the site, you can save the grants of greatest interest; then return to read about them at any time.
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Show Appreciation of Exceptional Librarians
The Carnegie Corporation of New York/New York Times I Love My Librarian Award recognizes the accomplishments of exceptional public, school, college, community college or university librarians. Has a librarian made a difference in your community? Nominate yours for the I Love My Librarian Award. Ten librarians each will receive a $5,000 cash award, a plaque and $500 travel stipend to attend an awards reception in New York hosted by The New York Times. In addition, a plaque will be given to each award winner’s library.
Deadline: September 12, 2012
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Finance Creative Classroom Projects
The Kids in Need Foundation awards grants to K–12 teachers to provide innovative learning opportunities for their students. Reviewers especially look for creative uses of common teaching aids, imaginative approaches to the curriculum or nontraditional concepts brought together for the purpose of illustrating commonalities. Retail and education credit union sponsors fund these teacher grants. Approximately 300 to 600 grants ranging from $100 to $500 each are awarded each year.
Deadline: September 30, 2012
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Plus: Winning projects are put in the form of project ideas and published as The Guide to Award Winning Projects. The projects can be searched by grade and/or subject.
Click Here to Access Guide of Past Winning Projects

Capture the Work of Earth Scientists
Geoscientists study Earth processes in action in many types of places—deserts, forests, mountaintops, rivers, ocean floors, underground, up in the air and in rural communities and cities alike. Whether they are optimizing land use, harvesting energy resources, ensuring safe water supplies or forecasting the weather, these scientists monitor natural processes to help improve our lives. The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) is sponsoring a photography contest to celebrate Earth Science Week 2012 (October 14–20). The photography theme for this year is Earth Science Is a Big Job. US residents of any age may enter the contest. To participate, they simply capture evidence in a photograph to show the important work that Earth scientists do in their community. The winner will receive a cash prize of $300, a copy of AGI’s Faces of Earth DVD, and his or her photograph will be used on the Earth Science Week website.
Deadline: October 19, 2012
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Plus: The Earth Science Week website provides free downloadable resources, in English and Spanish, to help students not only learn something new about the world around them, but also have fun discovering why Earth Science is important to society.
Click Here to Download Free Teacher Resources
Click Here to Download Free Student Resources

Foster Mathematical Insight, Ingenuity and Creativity
The USA Mathematical Talent Search (USAMTS) is a free mathematics competition open to all US middle and high school students. As opposed to most mathematics competitions, the USAMTS allows students a full month, or more, to work out their solutions. Carefully written justifications are required for each problem. The problems range in difficulty from being within the reach of most middle and high school students to challenging the best students in the nation. Students may use any materials—books, calculators, computers—but all the work must be their own. Students’ solutions to the problems are graded by mathematicians, and comments are returned to the students. The USAMTS is a program of the Art of Problem Solving Foundation. The goal is to help all students develop their problem-solving skills, improve their technical writing abilities and mature mathematically while having fun. The competition is intended to foster not only insight, ingenuity and creativity, but also the virtue of perseverance, which is equally essential in scientific endeavors. Participants in the USAMTS are eligible for various prizes, such as books and software. Visit the website to view current or past problems, or to register (for free) for the contest.
Deadline: Register at any time; problems must be completed within one month after registration.
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Transition into a New Era of Teaching and Learning
ASCD recently introduced the new, free EduCore digital tool for educators implementing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in both mathematics and literacy. The tool features a variety of formative assessment lessons and videos ready for classroom use, including more than 20 formative assessment mathematics lessons. Developed by the Shell Centre, these middle school and high school Classroom Challenges include problem-solving and content-development formative assessments on subjects such as solving linear equations in two variables and applying angle theorems. Useful plans, student materials, PowerPoint slides and other materials round out the many mathematics resources available. The EduCore tool’s three templates for argumentation, informational and narrative teaching support middle school and high school educators who are implementing the literacy standards in all disciplines. Created by the Literacy Design Collaborative, each template offers secondary teachers fill-in-the-blank “shells” built from the Common Core standards that allow educators to insert the texts students must read, writing students must produce and content students must address. In addition, the EduCore tool empowers content-area teachers to create their own tasks for students that support engagement and growth within the CCSS. Related resources include videos that instruct educators on how to create their own templates and Microsoft Word templates teachers can use to develop their own modules. Through a simple registration process, educators can access additional EduCore features, such as the ability to save searches, organize tools and annotate resources. In the coming months, ASCD will provide additional mathematics formative assessment lessons and sample literacy modules to further enhance this free digital resource.
Click Here to Access Free Digital Resource

Explore the World with Maps
National Geographic’s MapMaker Interactive enables users to create customized map displays in six themes—Physical Systems: Land; Physical Systems: Water; Physical Systems: Climate; Human Systems: Populations & Culture; Human Systems: Political & Economic; and Environment and Society. Within each theme there are subcategories from which to choose. For example, you can select the theme Physical Systems: Land and then choose volcanic eruptions to display on your map. MapMaker Interactive also provides drawing tools and marker icons that you can place on your map. Although you can’t embed your maps on a website, you can download them, print them and share links to them.
Click Here to Access Free Interactive Resource

Reflect on Who We Are As Americans
The anniversaries of the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, and the signing of the Constitution on September 17, 1787, provide us an opportunity to examine our most fundamental values and principles and affirm our commitment to them, as well as evaluate progress toward the realization of American ideals and propose actions that might narrow the gap between these ideals and reality. The four lessons on the website of the Center for Civic Education are designed to accomplish these goals.
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Teach with Primary Sources
The latest issue of the Library of Congress’s TPS Journal features resources and ideas for using primary sources to support teaching to meet the Common Core State Standards. Along with the feature article, “Primary Sources: At the Heart of the Common Core State Standards,” the journal includes articles on Research on Current Thinking, a Teacher Spotlight and Learning Activities for Elementary and Secondary. Read the articles online or download the issue in full from the Library of Congress website.
Click Here to Access Free Journal Articles

Engage Students in the Democratic Process
Lynn University in Florida has partnered with Apple’s iTunes U to create an online curriculum intended to help students learn about the October 22 presidential debate being held on its campus. The plan is to focus and discuss foreign policy. The Debate Curriculum for Education can be downloaded at no charge to any smartphone. The civics activities—intended for students in kindergarten through grade 5—include mock scenarios, videos of past debates and fact sheets. Each activity is grade-level specific, and some are linked to the Common Core State Standards. The curriculum is designed to help keep students informed and interested in the democratic process.
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Deepen Appreciation of the Building Blocks of Our World
The Elements: A Visual Exploration lets students experience the beauty and fascination of the building blocks of our universe. The Elements is the first of a line of ebooks from Touch Press developed from the ground up for the iPad. To read about tin, for example, students tap the tin soldier. To read about gold, they tap the gold nugget. Immediately they’ll see the sample filling nearly the entire screen and rotating in a complete circle. Beside the rotating element is a column of facts and figures, each of which can be tapped to bring up rich detail and current information. Students can examine more than 500 live objects from all sides. They can use one, two, three or ten fingers to spin as many objects as they like at once, and some objects can be “thrown” to set them spinning. Some pages also include live video clips of experiments showing interesting properties of the elements. Double-tapping any object brings it up full screen. Tapping again splits the image into a pair of stereo 3-D images. Students can see all 500 objects pop off the screen, and with the touch of a finger, they can spin the objects in 3-D. The app is available for $6.99 in the iTunes App Store.
Click Here to Visit iTunes App Store

Blend Mathematics with the Animal World
The iLiveMath Animals of Africa app for the iPhone and iPad has more than 50 photos and videos of animals from Africa, with over 1 million randomly generated math word problems. There are three levels of difficulty for young readers from kindergarten to grade 6: Level 1—addition and subtraction with numbers 1 to 10; Level 2—multiplication with numbers 1 to 50; and Level 3—percentages, mean, median, mode and range with numbers 1 to 10. Students can share their question-and-answer summaries on the iLiveMath community blogsite or email the questions and answers to their teacher for review. After they’ve answered a certain number of questions correctly, they can explore related wiki links in a child-safe browser and watch fun educational videos in a child-safe view. The app is available in the iTunes App Store for $4.99.
Click Here to Visit iTunes App Store
Click Here to Visit iLive Math blogsite

Plus: The iLiveMath Animals of Asia app for the iPhone and iPad has more than 30 animal photos, over 60 educational animal videos and educational links combined with over 100 thousand possible questions in applied math focusing on years, months, weeks, days, hours and minutes as well as related topics. There are three levels of difficulty, which can be set by the student and/or the teacher, for grades 1–6: Level 1—addition and subtraction across beginning concepts in time, such as hours and minutes, as well as basic math; Level 2—multiplication concepts across minutes, hours, weeks and months; Level 3—difference between years using the Chinese zodiac animals. The app is available in the iTunes App Store for $4.99.
Click Here to Visit iTunes App Store

Create and Share Computer Science Programs
The free online education site Khan Academy has a new approach to introducing programming. Based on a combination of JavaScript and Processing, and intended to be a fun environment in which to learn, the Khan Academy Computer Science Tutorials are highly interactive. The tutorials have been put together by a team led by Khan Academy’s resident JavaScript expert John Resig, who is best known as the creator of the jQuery JavaScript library. He also began the development of Processing.js, the JavaScript port of Processing, the open source programming language that aims to get non-programmers started with programming through the instant gratification of visual feedback. With the launch of the new computer science tutorials, the Khan Academy has added to its collection of more than 3,300 online instructional videos in math, biology, chemistry, physics and other subjects.
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Click Here to Access Computer Science Tutorials

Unite Technology and Teamwork in Real-World Contexts
The Ten80 Student Racing Challenge: NASCAR STEM Initiative unites the United States Army’s keys to success—technology and teamwork—with the thrill of NASCAR, to teach students real-world applications of STEM. Developed by engineers and educators, this practice league for future professionals is a hands-on, real-time, project-based learning program. Students mirror professional motorsports teams, engineers and green transportation designers in their quest to optimize a 1:10 radio-controlled (RC) car that has 14 million setup options. The Ten80 Student Racing Challenge: NASCAR STEM Initiative also provides teachers and team coaches with a cross-curricular, national-based curriculum that helps students develop complex job-related skills.
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Build the Systems of the Human Body
SpongeLab Biology’s Build-A-Body interactive lets students construct a human body, system by system. To build a body, students drag and drop into place the organs and bones of a human body. Each organ and bone is accompanied by a description of its purpose. Students can build the skeletal, digestive, respiratory, nervous, excretory and circulatory systems. The Build-A-Body website also presents case studies in which students can read about diseases, disorders and other concerns that affect the human body. Each case study includes a short description of the concern followed by a question that students should be able to answer after completing the related Build-A-Body activity.
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Get a Global View of Earth
NASA’s Earth Observatory features satellite imagery and maps depicting what is happening on Earth’s surface, in the oceans and in the atmosphere. The website presents a daily image feed that includes an explanation of the image and its context. Some of the daily images are used for a monthly puzzler challenge that asks students to identify what is in the image and when it was taken.
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Click Here to Access Puzzler Challenge

Plus: The Earth Observatory’s Global Maps collection contains 16 animated maps depicting changes over time of sea surface temperatures, land temperatures, snow cover, rainfall, carbon monoxide levels in the atmosphere and more. Students can play the animations online or download them as QuickTime files. They can also download the datasets that were used in the construction of the animations.
Click Here to Access Global Maps

Track Fall’s Journey South
Journey North is a free Internet-based program that engages students in a global study of wildlife migration and seasonal change. K–12 students share their field observations with classmates across North America. They track the coming of fall and spring through the migration patterns of monarch butterflies, robins, hummingbirds, whooping cranes, gray whales, bald eagles, and other birds and mammals. They also observe the budding of plants, changing sunlight and other natural events. Find migration maps, pictures, standards-based lesson plans, activities and information to help students make local observations and fit them into a global context.
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Plus: Students can take Journey North outside with the new citizen science app for their mobile device. They can report their sightings from the field, and they can view maps, take pictures and leave comments. The free app is available for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. An Android version of the app will soon be available.
Click Here to Access Free App

Connect with Mathematics Teachers Around the World
The Algebra 4 All (A4A) Social Network is an online community of educators committed to sharing resources and supporting one another in the practice of teaching algebra. Join the A4A network and use the Lesson Sharing area to gather resources for your classroom. Share lessons, ideas and successes with other teachers. Use the 30 instructional applets directly with your students. Access many Calculator Tutorials for you or your students. Communicate with Network Moderators who are classroom algebra teachers actively supporting the site and its members. The network was created by Michigan Virtual University (MVU) to support teachers involved in the statewide Algebra 4 All professional development project. The A4A Social Network is now public. It has a worldwide membership and remains a relevant and viable resource for any mathematics educator.
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Turn Your Mailbox into a Box Full of Surprises
An activity called Postcrossing uses the US Postal Service to teach geography, history and languages. The first step in becoming a “Postcrosser” is to register on the Postcrossing website and request to send a postcard. The website will display (and send you an email) with the address of another member and a Postcard ID (for example, US-786). You then mail a postcard to that member. The member receives the postcard and registers it using the Postcard ID that is on the postcard. At this point, you are eligible to receive a postcard from another user. You are now in line for the next person that requests to send a postcard. Where the postcard comes from is a surprise! Students can have up to five postcards traveling at any single time. Postcrossing has more than 326,000 members from 207 countries. Currently more than 381,000 postcards—606 postcards/hour—are traveling at one time! Participation in Postcrossing is free, aside from the cost of postage.
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Plus: To help reduce its impact on the environment, Postcrossing regularly donates to Climate Care, which offsets carbon dioxide by funding sustainable energy projects around the world. These involve replacing nonrenewable fuels, working toward increased energy efficiency and forest restoration. Check out the tips on this web page for ways that you and your students can help to reduce Postcrossing’s ecological footprint.
Click Here for Ways to Make Postcrossing a "Greener" Hobby

Examine the Arts Learning Picture
The Arts Education Partnership has launched ArtsEdSearch.org as the nation’s first research clearinghouse focused on the educational benefits that emerge when a student is given the chance to create, perform, learn about and experience the arts—in school or out of school. In examining the full arts learning picture, ArtsEdSearch also provides data on how teaching strategies based in the arts influence educators’ instructional practice and engagement in the teaching profession. ArtsEdSearch grew out of a need for high-quality, centrally located and user-friendly information on the essential role the arts play in developing students’ creative thinking, problem solving, communication and collaboration skills. ArtsEdSearch provides research summaries—written in everyday language—on the impact of arts learning on students’ cognitive, personal, academic, social and civic development, and offers objective analyses on the implications for education policy.
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Encourage Children to Read More Books
A new, free social networking platform aims to encourage elementary school children to read more books. BiblioNasium is a pilot virtual reading village for children aged 6–12 and their friends, parents and teachers. The site let young readers catalogue, share and exchange their book recommendations. It also offers reading-level-appropriate book recommendations using the Lexile Framework for Reading. To help ensure safety and privacy, parents or teachers register first and then register their children or students for the site. Children require permission from their parent or teacher to add other users to their network. Once logged in, users can search for books by title, author, category or reading level. They can also add books to their virtual bookshelf and recommend books to other users in their network. Children can track their reading in their personal reading log, including the date, title, reading level, number of pages read in the sitting and the length of the reading session. Teachers can then run reports on individual students, groups of students or an entire class to assess progress.
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Join a Professional Learning Community with Webinars
Over the past year, edWeb has hosted more than 100 webinars on topics for professional development, including game-based learning, mobile learning, Common Core Standards, autism, technology, e-books, new teacher help, blended learning, and more. All edWeb webinars are archived in edWeb’s professional learning communities. Join a community, watch the webinar recordings, take the CE quiz, and you’ll receive a certificate for participation. As a member of an edWeb community, you’ll be invited to future, free webinars and will have the opportunity to connect with peers for a highly engaging and interactive webinar with edWeb’s expert presenters.
Click Here to Join edWeb Communities

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.

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.

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.

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.