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 750 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 41 areas of focus, eight 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 and then return to read about them at any time.
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Recycle in Support of Your Local Community
In recognition of America Recycles Day on November 15, FundingFactory is sponsoring the “Care2Collect Just 1” campaign to help schools, nonprofits and businesses in protecting the environment while supporting their local communities. Participants are encouraged to simply recycle one e-waste item, such as a printer cartridge or cell phone, through FundingFactory and to donate one nonperishable food item to their local food bank. FundingFactory will donate $1 for every 100 qualifying recyclables it receives during the month of November to Second Harvest Food Bank.
Deadline: The free recycling fundraiser aims to collect and recycle more than 300,000 recyclables by the end of November.
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Enhance Student Learning Using Digital Media
PBS LearningMedia and The Henry Ford have announced the third annual PBS Teacher Innovator Awards in recognition of innovative preK–12 classroom educators, media specialists, technology coordinators and home-school educators who use digital media to enhance student learning. Entrants must submit a short video or PDF with text and images that showcases their work. Entries can be a demonstration of a unique teaching technique or the outcome of influence on student work. Thirty educators in total will receive prizes for their outstanding work, with the top 10 winners receiving a professional development prize package for a week-long, all-expenses-paid “Innovation Immersion Experience” at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan, in August 2013, and a free professional development course from PBS TeacherLine. Ten second-place winners will receive a Promethean ActiView document camera. And all first- and second-place winners, plus 10 third-place winners, will each receive a tote bag full of goodies from PBS and The Henry Ford.
Deadline: Entries are due by December 12, 2012; winners will be notified by March 31, 2013.
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Develop the 4Cs in a 21st Century Setting
The second annual Follett Challenge encourages educators to align their curriculum to teach 21st century learning skills—and is offering double the prize money as last year to those who do. Educators from all departments in schools can enter to demonstrate how their programs develop critical thinking, communication, creativity and collaboration between students and among educators in a 21st century setting, no matter the resources available. The Follett Challenge is open to all public and private K–12 schools in the United States and Canada, as well as to international schools that meet the criteria for participation. To enter, schools should submit a three- to five-minute video along with an overview of the program and its impact on student advancement. This year’s total prize value has increased to $200,000, and six winners will again be selected. The two grand-prize winners will each receive $60,000 in products and services from Follett, and the remaining prizes will range in value from $35,000 to $5,000.
Deadline: January 4, 2013; winners will be announced April 3, 2013, with celebrations to be scheduled the following month at the two grand-prize-winning schools.
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Increase Student Interest in STEM and Mobile Technology
The Verizon Innovative App Challenge provides an opportunity for middle school and high school students, working with a faculty advisor, to use their STEM knowledge, their ingenuity and their creativity to come up with an original mobile app concept that incorporates STEM and addresses a need or problem in their school or community. The goal of the challenge is to provide an engaging and empowering learning experience to increase student interest and knowledge in STEM and mobile technology. Prizes include grants of $10,000 for 10 winning schools, and Samsung Galaxy Tab wireless tablets for students. Winners that bring their apps to market by June 7, 2013, will receive free trips to the 2013 Technology Student Association conference in Orlando, Florida, where they will present their apps.
Deadline: Entries must be submitted by January 18, 2013.
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Spread Great Educators’ Great Ideas
TED-Ed’s commitment to creating lessons worth sharing is an extension of TED’s mission of spreading great ideas. TED-Ed’s videos aim to capture and amplify the voices of the world’s greatest educators. Within the growing TED-Ed video library, you will find carefully curated educational videos, many of which represent collaborations between talented educators and animators nominated through the TED-Ed platform. The “Flip This Video” button allows you to turn any useful educational video, not just TED’s, into a customized lesson that can be assigned to students or shared more widely. You can add context, questions and follow-up suggestions. You can distribute your lesson publicly or privately and track its impact on the world, a class or an individual student.
Click Here to Access and Create Video Lessons

Plus: Take a look at this detailed lesson on the life of a typical Roman teenager 2000 years ago. A Glimpse of Teenage Life in Ancient Rome is a new TED-Ed lesson developed by Ray Laurence from the University of Kent. The video and its associated questions feature Lucius Popidius Secundus, a 17-year-old living in Rome in AD 73. His life is a typical one of arranged marriages, coming-of-age festivals and communal baths.
Click Here to Access Free Video Lesson

Create a Multimedia Canvas
Edcanvas is a free web tool that allows teachers to create multimedia-rich lessons and share them with their students. These lessons may include YouTube videos, slides, files, text and images that you can download either from the web or from your computer. To start creating your lesson on Edcanvas, you will need to sign up for a free account. You can also use your Google account or Facebook account to sign in. Once logged in, click on “create a new canvas”; a short video will show you how to create your first canvas. With Edcanvas, you have the ability to arrange all lesson items in one board that is easily navigable and that students can access even on their iPads.
Click Here to Access Free Web Tool

Subject Text and Images to “Close Reading”
America in Class (AIC) Lessons, from the National Humanities Center, are tailored to meet the Common Core State Standards. The lessons present challenging primary resources in a classroom-ready format, with background information and analytical strategies that enable teachers and students to subject texts and images to the close reading called for in the standards. Each AIC lesson is built around a framing question, an essential understanding and a single primary resource or a small manageable set of resources. A background note illuminates and contextualizes the material, and another note offers teaching advice. Each lesson culminates with key passages and analytical questions through which teachers can lead students to the essential understanding, and each concludes with a follow-up assessment. AIC lessons are web based and optimized for mobile devices.
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Piece Together the History of the Civil War
In 2011, TeachingHistory.org released an interactive poster and companion website about the United States Civil War. The 24" x 36" poster, entitled “How Do You Piece Together the History of the Civil War?”, features a collage of primary sources and related questions that get students thinking about how we know what we know about the past, especially in relation to our country’s most devastating conflict, the Civil War. The question, “How can geography impact a battle?” accompanies a map of Gettysburg, while a slave receipt prompts students to think about the laws, economics and people involved in the institution of slavery. The interactive version of the poster allows students to zoom in on different parts of the poster and click through to find more information about those artifacts and their roles in the Civil War. As a bonus for teachers, the interactive poster includes links to teaching materials and websites related to the Civil War. Topics include children’s voices during the Civil War, African American perspectives, women’s roles, Civil War–era music and emancipation as well as military history and life on the battlefield.
Click Here to Access Free Interactive Civil War Poster

Plus: In 2012, TeachingHistory.org released two more interactive posters. “Doing History is Like Solving a Mystery” is an interactive poster for elementary school students. The poster uses images with notes to guide students through the process of developing good research questions and recording their ideas. “History is an Argument About the Past” is an interactive poster for middle school and high school students. The poster walks students through identifying primary and secondary sources of information and then using that information to create an argument.
Click Here to Access Free Interactive Elementary Poster
Click Here to Access Free Interactive Secondary Poster

Create Meaningful Learning Experiences with Mobile Devices
Mobile Learning Reflections is a free ebook intended for anyone interested in using mobile devices as instructional tools. The 80-page ebook is full of detailed examples of leveraging mobile devices to create meaningful learning experiences for students. You can read the ebook online or download a free copy for yourself from this Issuu website.
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Click Here to Download Free Ebook

Use Modern-Day Sleuthing Skills
Murder at the Met: An American Art Mystery is a free web-based application that guides users of smartphones and tablets through the galleries of American paintings, sculpture and decorative arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art to solve a murder mystery. The fictional plot transports players back to an evening gala in 1899 and revolves around the murder of beautiful Virginie Gautreau, who was immortalized by John Singer Sargent in the portrait Madame X, one of the museum’s best-known paintings. Players use their mobile devices to travel through the galleries, where the art has come to life and everyone has secrets to share. By learning to look more closely at works of art—which serve as witnesses, weapons and possible crime scenes—players piece together meaningful clues. The goal of the game is to determine the who, where and how of the murder. Because the app provides three possible paths through the galleries, each having a different storyline and culprit, the game can be played repeatedly. Murder at the Met is the first mobile detective game created by the museum. A collaborative project that involved the museums’s Departments of Education and Digital Media (content), Green Door Labs (gaming) and TourSphere LLC (development), the app can be found on the museum’s website.
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Get Students Excited About Reading
Tales2Go is an award-winning children’s audiobook service that works like Pandora, giving educators and students instant and unlimited access to thousands of name-brand titles from leading publishers to play on desktops, laptops and Apple mobile devices—in the classroom and beyond. Use the audiobooks with individual students or in groups, in conjunction with printed text or for some fun listening. 
Click Here to Start a Free 30-Day Trial

Learn About a Range of Scientific Subjects
Scitable, created by NatureEducation, is an online collaborative space for science learning. Visitors to the site can browse or search through science articles and ebooks, ask experts science-related questions, build an online classroom and even share their own content. Currently, Scitable’s materials focus on the life sciences; however, Scitable also offers resources for the budding scientist, with advice about effective science communication and career paths.
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Engage Students in Modern Biology-Related Scenarios
The Partnership for Biotechnology and Genomics Education (PBGE) project on the University of California Davis campus involves components of secondary education focused on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) concepts. The components include the development and distribution of innovative 3-D virtual reality software. In STEMware: Zombie Plague, students explore a 3-D world where they are responsible for identifying the pathogenic microorganism causing a deadly outbreak and implementing a cure. Although the symptoms of the fictional disease is zombieism, the science content embedded in the software deals with diagnosis, treatment strategies and career connections that are applicable to any disease caused by viruses, bacteria or fungi. Interactions with characters “in-game” introduce students to the variety of career pathways in modern biology along with diagnostic technologies used in the real world. Embedded assessments allow teachers to track student interactions. This 3-D virtual reality software is downloadable for Windows or Mac OS X and licensed through Creative Commons, allowing for free sharing and installation on multiple machines.
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Provide Mathematical Experiences Aligned to Standards
Illustrative Mathematics is a free resource for K–12 mathematics teachers. On the Illustrative Mathematics website, teachers can find lesson activities aligned to standards for every grade level. When appropriate, the activities include drawings and diagrams. Anyone may access the activities posted on the website. You can rate activities and share your own activities if you register for an Illustrative Mathematics account. Illustrative Mathematics is an initiative of the Institute for Mathematics & Education funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
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Separate Fact from Myth
At the Plimoth Plantation’s You Are the Historian website, students become history detectives as they investigate the first Thanksgiving. (Some historians think that “The First Thanksgiving” wasn’t really a thanksgiving. They call it “The 1621 Harvest Celebration” because it was more like a harvest festival.) On this website, students use clues to try to figure out what really happened at the 1621 harvest celebration. They are guided by Dancing Hawk, a Wampanoag whose ancestors were at the harvest celebration, and by Sarah, whose ancestor, Remember Allerton, was at the celebration too. If students don’t know the meaning of a word they encounter, they can use the online Glossary. Or if they want an expert opinion, they can go to Visit the Expert.
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Plus: A Teacher’s Guide includes corresponding online activities for Historian Skills: separating fact from myth, identifying and analyzing primary sources, making educated guesses using cultural clues and considering multiple points of view. The Teacher’s Guide also includes a Historian’s Log with free, downloadable graphic organizers to further students’ online understanding and enhance offline work. The student activities are based on the Teaching for Understanding framework developed by educators at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Click Here to Access Free Teacher's Guide

Plus: The History Channel offers information about the history of Thanksgiving, including videos and audio clips of interviews with Plimoth Plantation living history museum characters.
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Inspire Student Civic Engagement
Created in 2009 by former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, iCivics recently partnered with EverFi on a new initiative, Commons – Digital Town Square, which is offered free to all K–12 schools. The focus of Commons – Digital Town Square is to provide schools with standards-based educational gaming, aligned to the Common Core State Standards, with social components. Students who play iCivics games move along at their own pace; adaptive-pathing techniques as well as evidence-based practices help guide each student differently as he or she learns. In addition to the adaptive feature, Commons – Digital Town Square has a variety of media, including simulations and animations as well as pre- and post-assessments and behavioral surveys that “measure changes in students’ attitudes and behaviors regarding a variety of civic matters.” Students interact not only with one another in their virtual classroom, but also with other classrooms across the country. Commons – Digital Town Square leverages many standards in its design of instruction and assessment, from existing state standards to Common Core.
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Examine How We Use Words
A Way with Words is an upbeat and lively hour-long public radio show about language examined through history, culture and family. Cohosts Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett talk with callers from around the world about slang, grammar, old sayings, word origins, regional dialects, family expressions, and speaking and writing well. They settle disputes, play word quizzes and discuss language news and controversies. You’ll hear conversation about new words from pop culture, sports, science, music and art; the language of current events; political jargon and other words in the headlines; the latest language breakthroughs; family expressions and linguistic heirlooms—old-fashioned things your grandparents and parents may have said; books, literature, reading and writing; word games, puzzles and quizzes; proverbs, idioms, folklore and catchphrases; word histories, slang and new words; language in the classroom, including English as a second language; dialects, accents and vocabulary of regional and ethnic groups; speaking, speech and pronunciation; and grammar, syntax and semantics. On the program’s website, you can listen to episodes and join in the discussion. The content is sorted by date and kind.
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Drop in on a Live Class
Fraboom is an online children’s museum packed full of games, interactive books, creativity, learning and LIVE online teachers! Fraboom TV has a variety of cartoons that teach students content-area vocabulary words. Each cartoon lists all associated vocabulary words so teachers can quickly find a video that will support learning. Drawing classes with live teachers start every hour on the hour. Students can drop into a class and learn how to draw cartoons. There is a new challenge every day, so content is always fresh. Students can interact with teachers through the chat feature; students type a message and the teacher responds to them by name. Fraboom cartoon characters introduce the activity for the day, and teachers interact with the cartoon on the screen. Students learn how to draw step by step guided by the teacher and follow along on their own whiteboard space. When they are finished, students can share their pictures with the class. After drawing, the class completes a “mad lib” together. The teacher explains a part of speech and requests words for that part of speech from the class. Students can contribute words to the story by typing them into the chat area. Throughout the class, the teacher shares submitted pictures with the whole class. Fraboom was created for students aged six to 12.
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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.