Supplement Your Stretched Budget
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 700 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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Stand Up and Speak Out
The Upstanders Contest is an initiative from Facing History and Ourselves to celebrate those educators, administrators and school staff who have taught their students the importance of participating in a democratic society. Upstanders are educators dedicated to examining the impact and history of bigotry and injustice. They inspire conversation about the choices we make every day. Upstanders foster civic engagement, tolerance and mutual understanding in our communities. They are outstanding educators whose ingenuity, determination and passion teach students, parents and colleagues not to stand by, but to stand up and speak out in the face of injustice. You can nominate someone as an Upstander by filling out the online form on the Facing History website. There will be one grand prize: a $5,000 grant to be used by the winning Upstander to benefit their school or community and further their work as a great educator.
Deadlines: Nominations: October 22, 2012; semifinalist selection period: October 23, 2012–October 26, 2012; voting round 1: October 29, 2012–November 9, 2012; voting round 2: November 12, 2012–November 16, 2012; announcement of winning Upstander: November 20, 2012
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Take Action in Caring for the Environment
Sponsored by automaker Lexus and children’s publishing company Scholastic, the Lexus Eco Challenge is an educational program and contest designed to inspire and empower US middle school and high school students to learn about the environment and take action to improve it. Teams comprised of five to 10 students and a teacher-advisor are invited to participate in one or both of the two initial challenges, each addressing different environmental elements—land/water and air/climate. For each challenge, teams define an environmental issue that is important to them, develop an action plan to address the issue, implement the plan and report the results. Each of the challenges will have 16 winning entries—eight middle school and eight high school teams. The winning teams each will receive a total of $10,000 in scholarships and grants to be shared among the students, teacher and school. In early January 2013, the winning teams from the first two challenges will be invited to participate in the program’s final challenge. These teams will be asked to reach beyond the local community and inspire environmental action around the world through innovative ideas communicated to a wide audience. From the final challenge entries, eight first-place teams and two grand-prize–winning teams will be selected. Each of the eight first-place teams will receive a total of $15,000 in grants and scholarships, and two grand-prize–winning teams will each receive $30,000. The money will be shared by the students, their teacher-advisors and their schools.
Deadlines: Challenge 1 (land/water): submissions due by October 29, 2012; Challenge 2 (air/climate): submissions due by December 17, 2012
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Share the Wonders of Technology
Students and teachers in grades 6–12 are eligible to compete in a national science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) video competition. The Solve for Tomorrow contest is organized in partnership with Samsung, the Adobe Foundation/Adobe Youth Voices and DirecTV, as well as the National PTA. This year’s contest asks participants to submit ideas on how STEM can help improve the environment in their communities. To begin, applicants describe how the contest would be used to raise student interest in STEM-related disciplines, the ways in which students would participate in the project and what the school’s technology needs are. Seventy-five schools will be chosen to participate in the competition and will be given technology kits that will be used to create their videos. The kits include a Samsung camcorder and laptop and Adobe creative software. (Participants may keep the kits following the competition.) From those 75 schools, 15 will be chosen to receive technology grants worth at least $40,000, and five will receive technology grants of $110,000.
Deadline: October 31, 2012 for applications
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Debate Issues Surrounding the Election
With the presidential election one month away, McGraw-Hill Education is asking middle school and high school students to “Enter the Debate.” Open to students in grades 6–12, the contest calls for teachers to assign students to write an essay (of 250 words or less) suggesting a potential debate question for President Obama and Governor Romney and have students explain why the question is important to our nation. Students are encouraged to examine the critical and hotly debated social, economic and political issues surrounding the election. To “enter the debate,” teachers submit student essays on the contest website. All eligible entries will be scored by a panel of judges, who will select six finalists based on the essay’s persuasiveness, quality of content and English usage and mechanics. The winning student will receive a $5,000 classroom grant for his or her school. The schools of the remaining five finalists will each receive $1,000. Selection of the finalists will take place in early December, and winners will be announced around the time of the Presidential Inauguration in January 2013.
Deadline: November 2, 2012 for submission of essays.
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Celebrate Teen Read Week!
During the third full week of October, teens will be reading for the fun of it, as hundreds of libraries, schools and bookstores celebrate Teen Read Week. This year’s theme—It Came from the Library!—encourages teens to take advantage of reading in all its forms—books and magazines, ebooks, audiobooks and more—and become regular library users. Libraries across the world celebrate Teen Read Week with a variety of special events and programs aimed at encouraging teens to read for pleasure and to visit their libraries for free reading materials.
Click Here to Visit Teen Week Website

Plus: A suggested application of this year’s theme is It Came from the Library . . . and into a movie theater! In this lesson from ReadWriteThink, elementary students compare a book to its film adaptation and then perform Readers Theatre of a scene from the book that they think was not well represented in the movie version.
Click Here to Access Free Lesson Plan

Learn Vocabulary in Real-World Contexts
Professor Word is a free service that helps students learn new SAT and ACT vocabulary words. The service operates as a browser bookmarklet in Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. When students are reading a webpage, they click on the Professor Word bookmarklet to quickly identify SAT and ACT vocabulary words on that page. They can also use Professor Word to get definitions for any unfamiliar word on a webpage. To get a definition, they simply highlight the word; a small dialogue box containing the definition will appear.
Click Here to Access Free Vocabulary Service

“Get on the Raft with Taft”
Voices, Votes, Victory: Presidential Campaign Songs presents a sampling of the rich collection of campaign songs housed in the Music Division of the Library of Congress. From pocket-sized songsters to sheet music, the wide variety of subjects reflects virtually every party platform and national issue on which presidential elections have focused. This look at presidential campaign songs, whose melodies so faithfully mirrored contemporary popular music and whose lyrics ranged from broad satire to sincere political expression, demonstrates just how effective a messenger music can be. These songs helped rally the crowd, encourage enthusiasm for the candidate and sometimes say something about the candidate and his beliefs.
Click Here to Learn About Campaign Songs

Plus: You can access presidential campaign sheet music through the Library’s Performing Arts Encyclopedia or through this online exhibition featuring presidential campaign sheet music.
Click Here to Access Free Campaign Sheet Music

Encourage Daily Writing
The Toasted Cheese literary journal publishes daily writing prompts on a monthly calendar on its website. The whole month is laid out for teachers with a different prompt for each day. If you don’t see anything you like on the current calendar, you can click through the previous months to find old prompts. The site also hosts a Weekly Writing Chat [Sundays at 1 p.m. (ET), 10 a.m. (PT)] as well as Monthly Articles on Writing and Quarterly Writing Contests based on one or more of the prompts from the calendar.
Click Here to Access Free Writing Prompts

Focus on Children—From Past to Present
Children & Youth in History is a world history resource that provides teachers and students with access to sources about young people from the past to the present. The web resource was created by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and the University of Missouri–Kansas City. The teaching modules cover Africa: Children in the Slave Trade, African Scouting (20th c.); East Asia: Ancient China, Late Imperial China, Educational Reform in Japan (19th c.); Europe: Children During the Black Death, Health in England (16th–18th c.), Age of Consent Laws; Latin America: Love & Authority in Argentina (19th c.); Middle East/North Africa: Education in the Middle East; North America: Children in the Slave Trade, Age of Consent Laws; Pacific Basin: New Zealand Childhoods (18th–20th c.), Age of Consent Laws; and South/Southeast Asia: Age of Consent Laws.
Click Here to Access Free World History Resources

Plus: Explore the Guide to Reading Primary Sources on the History of Children & Youth to get started using the resource.
Click Here to Access Free Guide to Reading Primary Sources

Link Reading Instruction with the ELA CCSS
The International Reading Association (IRA) has released a set of guidelines for the successful implementation of the English Language Arts (ELA) Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The guidelines, a white paper/statement entitled Literacy Implementation Guidance for the ELA Common Core State Standards, address the need for a link between reading instruction and the ELA CCSS. They provide teachers and educational leaders with recommendations on how to integrate many of the central ideas of the standards into effective practice. The guidelines capture the most pressing issues in clear language, point out their significance for those responsible for implementation and then offer guidance on accomplishing the task at hand. Seven specific issues are addressed: (1) challenging texts, (2) foundational skills, (3) comprehension, (4) vocabulary, (5) writing, (6) disciplinary literacy and (7) diverse learners.
Click Here to Download Free Literacy Implementation Guidelines

Follow a Roadmap for Developing ELP Standards
As school districts forge ahead in putting the common academic standards into practice, many states are still revising or creating new English language proficiency standards to spell out for teachers the sophisticated language skills that their English learners will need in order to succeed with the rigorous new academic expectations. To help states with that task, the Council of Chief State School Officers has released a detailed set of guidelines created by English language learner experts and some of the lead writers of the Common Core State Standards in English/Language Arts and Mathematics, as well as the Next Generation Science Standards. The new guide (or framework, as it is formally called) is designed to be a roadmap for states as they update, revamp and rewrite the English language proficiency standards that teachers will use as guideposts to help ELL students acquire the academic language necessary to learn the new content.
Click Here to Download Free Framework for ELL Proficiency Standards

Build a Common Understanding
The Center for College & Career Readiness offers a process for deconstructing the Common Core State Standards so educators can develop a deep understanding of what the standards actually mean. This enables teachers to build units of study that truly match the expectations of the standards. For example, in looking at the verbs in the standards, it is possible to see what students are expected to be able to “do,” and by identifying the nouns and noun phrases, educators can identify the “essential concepts” embedded within the standards.
Click Here to Download Free Deconstructing Standards Process

Collaborate and Share Creative Ideas
iBrainstorm, a free brainstorming app for the iPad and the iPhone, allows users to record brainstorming sessions using a combination of free-hand drawings and sticky notes. Users can share and collaborate with up to four other users. Sharing notes and drawings between users in a local setting is a simple matter of “flicking” an item to another user.
Click Here for More Information
Click Here to Visit iTunes App Store

Build Intricate, Working Contraptions
In an effort to make physics palatable, the Monster Physics app lets students aged 10 and up build their own virtual machines, from cars to rocket ships, using parts including wheels, wings, propellers, magnets, rockets and claws. Students learn physics by building and refining their inventions and completing missions. The app costs 99 cents for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.
Click Here to Visit iTunes App Store

Explore an Interactive Periodic Table
The Royal Society of Chemistry’s Visual Elements Periodic Table features sections on history, alchemy, podcasts, videos and data trends. Simply by clicking the tabs above the table, students can explore each featured section. Using the buttons on the table, students can change their view and access stunning Visual Elements Images. And by clicking the symbol or image for each element in the table, they can read detailed information about that element.
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Teach Reasoning, Logic and Communication Skills
Codecademy, a free website that provides computer programming lessons to users, has launched a new feature, specifically for teachers, that provides a free toolkit—including curricula, letters to teachers and student accounts—for those who would like to start an after-school computer programming club, no programming experience necessary. The curriculum, created with the help of dozens of teachers, is split into two semesters. During the first semester, students tackle the HTML and CSS programming languages; during the second semester, students learn JavaScript.
Click Here to Visit Website
Click Here to Launch Free Computer Programming Lessons

Explore the Past, Discover the Future
BackStory with the American History Guys is a nationally distributed, weekly, one-hour public radio program produced by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and hosted by three historians who explore the historical contexts of current events. On each show, US historians Ed Ayers, Peter Onuf and Brian Balogh tear a topic from the headlines and plumb its historical depths. Over the course of the hour, they are joined by fellow historians, people in the news and callers interested in exploring the roots of what’s going on today. Together, they drill down to colonial times and earlier, revealing the connections (and disconnections) between past and present.
Click Here to Visit Website

Share Perspectives on National Issues
The My Voice National Student Mock Election gives students across the country the opportunity to cast their votes for candidates in both federal and state elections, and to talk about the issues they care about this fall and beyond. This program, a digital initiative of the Pearson Foundation, builds on the 30-year history of the National Student/Parent Mock Election and My Voice. Over the years, more than 50 million young voters have participated while learning about the importance of using their own voice to share their perspectives on important issues. In 2012, national student voting begins on October 25 and culminates on National Mock Election day, November 1, in advance of the nation’s election. For the first time this year, the National Student Mock Election will take place entirely online, as will student polling on national topics, social issues, education and local communities. Students, teachers and parents are encouraged to register their schools to take part.
Click Here to Visit Website

Dive Below the Water’s Surface—Virtually
In the five years since its launch in 2007, Google Street View has been a strictly above-ground experience. Although it has occasionally left the comfort of the open road for a river (as when it visited the Amazon) or an icy expanse (as when it documented the remote sites of Antarctica), it has never taken us down below, into the waters that cover 70 percent of our planet. Google’s new addition to Street View does just that, providing “street” view access to six of the world’s most beautiful underwater landscapes. The project—made possible through a partnership with the Catlin Seaview Survey—gives Google users a chance to swim around the Great Barrier Reef, Hawaii’s Molokini Crater, its Hanauma Bay and the Apo Islands in the Philippines. The 50,000 stitched-together images come from a special underwater camera—the SVII—that divers bring eight meters below the water’s surface. They take shots every four seconds, which can then be fed into Street View.
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Get the Q&A Started
What was a hot hairstyle for the founding fathers? What does the famous poem “The Raven” have in common with a scientific text about mollusks? How can you tell when the writing is on the wall? Questions like these can come alive for you and your students at the Smithsonian Institution’s Seriously Amazing website.
Click Here to Visit Website

Connect with a Virtual Volunteer
Digital Wish, the nonprofit technology-integration organization, now offers Virtual Volunteers, a new service on its website that allows teachers to post classroom projects and ask for a virtual volunteer who can serve via video conference; it also allows volunteers to sign up, describe their various capabilities and volunteer to help with a class project. Throughout the school year, the organization will recruit for volunteers in corporations, entrepreneur networks and scientific associations to encourage members to help educators with their class projects. Digital Wish emails profiles of newly posted expert volunteers to teachers who are members, and volunteers will receive email newsletters that list the latest projects seeking help. Both groups can sign up at the organization’s website.
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.

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.