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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Find Support for Your Special Projects
DonorsChoose.org is an online charity that makes it easy for anyone to help students in need. Public school teachers from every corner of America post classroom project requests on the DonorsChoose website, and donors can give any amount to a project that most inspires them. When a project reaches its funding goal, DonorsChoose will ship the materials to the school. Donors will get photos of the project taking place, a letter from the teacher and insight into how every dollar was spent. Donors who give more than $50 will also receive handwritten thank-yous from the students.
Deadline: Ongoing
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Teach and Travel in China
Sino-American Bridge for Education and Health (SABEH) is offering a five-week opportunity to experience Chinese culture, schools, teaching and travel with eager Chinese teachers of English while sharing American methods of teaching English based heavily on oral interchange. The program, which runs from July through August 2013, involves four weeks of teaching and one free week of travel in China. American teachers pay for visas and international airfare, half of which will be reimbursed after the first week of teaching. Since American teachers are volunteers, Chinese hosts take care of all the rest: half the international airfare, in-country travel, and room and board.
Deadline: December 31, 2012 for applications
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Spark Students’ Creativity
ePals, in partnership with the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, has launched Invent It, the second annual invention contest for K–12 students. This year the contest includes both a school theme and an opened-ended theme for students seeking more freedom in their creative projects. In Challenge 1 (school theme), students think about a problem in their school and come up with an invention to solve it. In Challenge 2 (school theme), students find an invention that is used in their school and tell how they would improve it. And in Challenge 3 (open-ended theme), students think about a real-world problem that exists today and invent something that could help solve it. Each challenge has four age categories for submission: ages 5–7, 8–11, 12–14 and 15 and up. Submissions, which can be in the form of videos, PowerPoint presentations or printed documents, will be judged on originality, effectiveness, creativity and technical quality. This year the challenge has added another layer to the final evaluation process, with an “ePals Choice Award.” ePals and Smithsonian community members will have a chance to vote online from among those top winners beginning on January 17, 2013, Kid Inventors’ Day. Also, finalists will have the opportunity to “market” their product to voters during a month-long campaign before all winners are announced. Prizes will be provided by sponsors, including LEGO and the Columbia, South Carolina–based law firm Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP.
Deadlines: January 4, 2013 for submission of inventions; all winners announced on February 4, 2013
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Open a Book and Drive for 10
The Fast Break for Reading campaign is a joint initiative between the International Reading Association (IRA), the American Basketball Association (ABA) and classroom teachers nationwide to encourage students to read for 10 minutes a day, with a goal of a million minutes read nationwide by the conclusion of the program. After you sign up for the program, you can download the official Program Reading Log and Certificate of Participation. Photocopy and distribute the logs to your students, who will record their minutes. At the end of each month, collect the logs from your students, tally the total minutes for that month and submit your students’ reading “tally” for that month. The website will take care of tracking your totals for the program for your account. Each student who participates in the program will receive a Certificate of Participation and is eligible to receive a one-time General Admission Fast Break for Reading Program Ticket to attend an ABA game of the student’s choice. Participating students who fulfill their reading requirements during the duration of the program are also eligible for a chance to win a Grand Prize: a student who reads the most total minutes nationally and is taught by the teacher who accumulates the most total minutes nationally earns round-trip airfare for the student and two chaperones and a one-night hotel stay for one ABA Finals game. The program contestant teacher who accumulates the most total minutes nationally for the program is eligible for a chance to win round-trip airfare for two and a one-night hotel stay for one ABA Finals game.
Deadline: Ongoing through March 10, 2013
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Head to the Closet, Discover Interdependence
The Global Closet Calculator, from National Geographic Education, is a two-part interactive lesson on interdependence for elementary students. The first part of the lesson asks students to identify the origins of objects from their closets at home. Students enter the names of those items into the calculator to see a map of the origins of their closet items. Students can also see a map of the items entered by others using the Global Closet Calculator. The second part of the lesson asks students to make decisions about the manufacturing of MP3 players and jeans, including the sourcing of materials and labor practices. A short video introduces the options. After making their decisions, students watch another short video that explains the potential implications of their decisions.
Click Here to Access Free Interactive Lesson

Help Students Become Better Searchers
Google has created a series of lessons to help teachers guide their students to use web searches meaningfully in their schoolwork and beyond. Google Search Education provides free Search Literacy Lesson Plans and “A Google a Day” Challenges. The search literacy lessons help teachers meet the new Common Core State Standards and are grouped based on level of search expertise: Beginner, Intermediate or Advanced. “A Google a Day” Challenges help students put their search skills to the test as they use technology to discover the world around them. The challenges are organized into the following categories: Culture, Geography, History, Science.
Click Here to Access Free Search Resources

Reflect on Judgment and Responsibility
On November 20, 1945, 24 high-ranking Nazis went on trial for atrocities committed during World War II. The Nuremberg Trials, held from 1945 to 1949, were a galvanizing moment in history, international law and human rights. Nuremberg Remembered is a free 12-minute documentary about the Nuremberg Trials. It combines both archival footage and modern-day interviews with trial participants who served in a variety of roles, including members of the legal team for the prosecution and a journalist reporting on the events for the press. A set of three lessons, along with the documentary, introduces teachers and students to the essential questions of judgment and responsibility that were initially posed at the end of World War II and continue to be raised in the twenty-first century. Extension activities and resources at the end of the lessons provide ideas and activities for more in-depth study of judgment, past and present. The lessons, entitled “The Road to Nuremberg,” “Guilt and Responsibility” and “Reflections and Legacies,” are provided free of charge by Facing History and Ourselves.
Click Here to View Free Documentary
Click Here to Download Free Lessons

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 Free 30-Day Trial

Trace the Origins of Aphorisms
Aesop’s Fables—also called “the Aesopica”—are a collection of stories intended to teach moral lessons. The stories are credited to Aesop, a Greek slave and storyteller thought to have lived between 620 and 560 BCE. The Aesop’s Fables interactive book, presented by the Library of Congress, was adapted from The Aesop for Children: with Pictures by Milo Winter, published by Rand, McNally & Co. in 1919. The interactive book contains more than 140 classic fables, accompanied by charming illustrations and interactive animations: a choosy heron eyes the fish swimming at his feet, a fox swishes his tail, a mouse chews a rope and frees a lion. The interactive book can be read on the web, on an iPad and on an Android device.
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Click Here to Access Free iPad App
Click Here to Access Free Android App

Hit the “Target” Number
5 Dice iPad app is a free math game that helps upper elementary and middle school students practice the order of operations. The game encourages students to use higher order thinking to solve the “target” number by working backward, given the answer but not the equation. After they are provided the number, students have to write an equation, using all of the dice presented to them. When they think they have created an equation that will result in the number given to them, students click “shoot” to hit the target number. If they have written a correct equation, 5 Dice will show them other equations that will also work. If they have not written a correct equation, 5 Dice will prompt them to try again. In addition to the “target number game,” students can use the app’s whiteboard option to try out various ways to hit their target numbers. Teachers can receive immediate feedback of their students’ progress through email. The app also includes printable game sheets. Download the app at no charge from the iTunes App Store.
Click Here to Access Free iPad App

Turn a Book into a Digital Classroom
Subtext is a free iPad app that allows classroom groups to exchange ideas in the pages of digital texts. When you and your students annotate a book or a document in Subtext, notes are linked to a specific passage, so there’s a built-in emphasis on the source text and close reading. In addition, Subtext allows you to layer all types of web content over texts—videos, photographs and links to articles, blog posts, maps and even locations on Google Street View. Immediate access to a variety of related information encourages students to compare and contrast different media and creates a more complete picture of a story or topic. You can also browse by grade level the Common Core recommended texts available in Subtext; many more books will be added during the school year. In addition, a feature called “Save to Subtext” lets you search the web for interesting nonfiction content to read with your class. The free app is available for downloading in the iTunes App Store.
Click Here to Access Free iPad App

Capture a Modern Moment of History
The Historypin Android app reveals photos near your current location and allows you to view them layered over the modern scene in front of you. You can also explore collections of some of the best old photos from around the world, wherever you are. You can add your own piece of history and pin it to the map too by using your phone to digitize an old photo, capture a modern moment of historic importance or take a modern replica of a photo on the app. Historypin was created by the not-for-profit company We Are What We Do, in partnership with Google. The app is free to download for Android.
Click Here to Access Free Android App

Trace Space Back to You
NASA @ Home and City is a virtual tour of NASA-related science that is everywhere we look. Students visiting NASA @ Home and City can rotate buildings and take a look inside to discover everyday items, the development of which has been influenced by space exploration. Each item within a building has a narrated explanation of how that item was influenced by NASA technology. For example, students can take a look inside the bathroom of a house to learn how technology used at NASA has had an impact on the development of cosmetics and toothpaste.
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Solve Puzzles for Science
Foldit is an interactive computer game enabling students to contribute to important scientific research. In the Foldit game, players are presented with puzzles that start with a snaking arrangement of amino acids, identical to the sequence of an actual protein. Players then have to fold that sequence into a complex 3-D structure that fits the laws of chemistry. The closer players get to folding a realistic looking molecule, the higher they score, and the more researchers learn about how proteins loop and scrunch inside living cells.
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See How Cells Function in Real Life
Meta!Blast is a real-time 3-D action-adventure video game, aimed at high school and undergraduate student audiences. The game is meant to provide an entertaining, engaging experience while simultaneously educating players about cell biology. By playing Meta!Blast, students will be introduced to the concepts of respiration, photosynthesis and the functions of various organelles in a manner complementary to the textbook. Students will also be introduced to how the living cell actually appears through a biologically accurate virtual replica of a cell environment. They will be presented with a series of puzzles and goals, such as having to create oxygen, which will require them to think critically in order to come to the solutions. By actively participating in these biological processes, students will “learn by discovery.” The website provides access to the game and supplementary learning materials as well as ideas for students and educators.
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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

Join the Movement to Transform Literacy Teaching and Learning
The National Center for Literacy Education (NCLE) is building a coalition of stakeholders representing the premiere education organizations, policy analysts, researchers and foundations who are working together to identify and share the plans, practices, support systems and assessments used by educator teams working to improve literacy learning. NCLE is providing the Literacy in Learning Exchange as a free resource to all educator teams. All educators are invited to use the free site to build or further develop a team in their school, district or across schools/districts, or in an out-of-school setting. After you create your free login, you can view videos, articles, recordings and more. You can also read, tag, save and respond to the extensive resources and add your professional learning group to the NCLE network of collaborative teams. And you can assess and strengthen your group with the customized online tools. NCLE will celebrate the work of successful school teams across the country that are achieving remarkable results in advancing literacy learning and share what is learned with education policymakers.
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Track Down Famous Artworks
Hangout Quest is a Google+ game that allows students to go on a virtual scavenger hunt inside the Palace of Versailles. The object of the scavenger hunt is to find artwork and other objects in the palace. If they invite others to their Hangout, students can compete against them in a race to find the objects first. Hangout Quest uses the Street View imagery of Google Maps to bring students inside the Palace of Versailles. Facial tracking technology allows students to move around the Palace of Versailles by just moving their head instead of clicking around with their mouse. Visit the website to see the Hangout Quest in action.
Click Here to Visit Website

Examine How Artists Portrayed the Civil War
This interactive timeline, from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, displays how artists have portrayed the Civil War. Webcasts of presentations from a symposium entitled Effects of the Civil War on American Art examine the impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on American landscape and genre painting, along with the period’s new medium of photography. The webcast took place on November 16, but is archived for future viewing.
Click Here to Access Timeline
Click Here to Access Webcasts

Plus: The museum has produced a free downloadable curriculum guide for educators to use in their classrooms. The program combines interactive videoconferences and classroom activities to prompt discussion of the Civil War conflict as seen through the art of the period. A special videoconference series will be offered for ninth- through twelfth-grade teachers and their students. The spring series begins February 12, 2013.
Click Here to Access Curriculum Resources

Share Wildlife Experiences
Project Noah is a global collaboration tool to explore and document wildlife and a platform to harness the power of citizen scientists everywhere. The Project Noah Missions for the Classroom section includes dozens of challenging and meaningful investigations that touch on nearly every key concept in the life sciences, from adaptation and natural selection to conservation and biodiversity. Browse through the growing list of ongoing missions and find one that inspires you, or create a place-based custom mission for your classroom that gives your students the chance to experience science firsthand by examining the natural world that’s right outside the window. Also find teacher-created, teacher-tested resources that can help you get started using Project Noah in your classroom.
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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.