Make Learning Mobile, Examine the Past, Jump into Social Media & More
February 14, 2014
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IN THIS ISSUE
Grants, Competitions and Other “Winning” Opportunities
Resource Roundup
Professional Learning Plus
Brave New Social World
STEM Gems
"Worth-the-Surf" Websites
Grants, Competitions and Other “Winning” Opportunities
Instill a Lifelong Love of Reading
The National Book Foundation’s Innovations in Reading Prize recognizes exceptional initiatives and programs that have created and sustained a lifelong love of reading: thoughtful, groundbreaking projects that generate excitement and passion for literature and books. The foundation is particularly interested in applications from those who have developed interdisciplinary approaches and incorporate innovative thinking in design, technology, social change, social entrepreneurship or other fields. Potential candidates can enter themselves for consideration or be nominated by others. Winners will each receive $2,500 and be featured prominently on the foundation’s website and in other digital publicity that reaches around the world.
Deadline: Applications postmarked by February 19, 2014
Click Here for More Information
Build Healthy Habits for Life
Smart from the Start is an initiative of Together Counts that is designed to reward preschools (including Head Start programs) that develop plans for creating practical, long-term improvements in nutrition and physical activity. Preschool teachers are encouraged to identify their school’s Energy In and Energy Out needs, to write a goal statement that addresses those needs and to create a simple action plan that incorporates support from their community in order to meet their goal. The Together Counts program encourages educators, students and families to live active and healthy lives in an effort to address childhood obesity nationwide. Smart from the Start will award up to 47 grants, ranging from $2,500 to $20,000. Each grant will serve up to 500 families, community members, students and faculty. Over the first two years of the initiative, up to 47,000 people will be enabled to make life-changing decisions for a healthier lifestyle.
Deadline: Applications accepted until February 28, 2014, 8 p.m. (ET)
Click Here for More Information About Smart from the Start
Click Here for More Information About Together Counts (English)
Click Here for More Information About Together Counts (Spanish)
Plus: The Energy Balance Pre-K curriculum is a custom program designed to teach children the skills they will need in order to develop healthy habits of eating and physical activity. Created to fit within a preschool’s existing curriculum, two thematic units—“Me and My Choices” and “Give It a Try!”—are organized into 10 days of flexible activities. (Days are nonsequential and can be taught individually or as a larger unit.) “Me and My Choices” focuses on what is unique and special about children and how they can make choices related to nutrition and physical activity. “Give It a Try!” encourages children to explore a variety of foods and engage in diverse activities as they learn about the benefits of trying new things. Each of the new lessons and activities are also aligned to a range of popular preschool health programs, including Head Start, NAEYC, WIC, SNAP-Ed and NASPE.
Click Here to Access Free Curriculum Units
Celebrate Extraordinary Community Service
The Hasbro Community Action Hero Award recognizes youth from diverse backgrounds across the nation who have shown an extraordinary commitment to service in their local and/or global community. The Hasbro Children’s Fund and generationOn will celebrate five young people between the ages of 5 and 18 for their extraordinary community service and volunteer activities at a special recognition event in New York City and award each winner a $1,000 educational scholarship.
Deadline: Nominations accepted until 5 p.m. (ET) on February 25, 2014
Click Here for More Information
Make the World a Better Place
The Doodle for Google art contest is back for the seventh consecutive year. This year’s doodle theme is “If I could invent one thing to make the world a better place …” The contest is open to K–12 students in the United States. To enter the competition, students simply download and print the application form, doodle their version of the Google logo based on this year’s theme and submit it online or by postal mail. The winner will receive a $30,000 scholarship and a $50,000 technology grant for his or her school.
Deadline: Submissions due by March 20, 2014
Click Here for More Information
Participate in an Innovative STEM Experience
In their continuing effort to help teachers develop the next generation of scientists, Northrop Grumman Foundation and Conservation International (CI) are accepting applications for the 2014 ECO Classroom program. Four teams of four teachers will be selected for an all-expenses-paid trip, from July 7 to 20, 2014, to join scientists conducting fieldwork in a tropical forest in Costa Rica. The ECO Classroom program brings groups of public school teachers from across the United States to CI’s Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring (TEAM) Network Volcan Barva site in La Selva Biological Station and Braulio Carrillo National Park in Costa Rica. They participate in field data collection on plant and animal biodiversity, climate and land use using TEAM scientific protocols.
Deadline: Applications accepted through March 31, 2014
Click Here for More Information
Supplement Your Stretched Budget
GetEdFunding is CDW-G’s 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 2,100 grants and other funding opportunities culled from federal, state, regional and community sources and available to public and private, preK–12 educators, schools and districts, higher education institutions and nonprofit organizations that work with them. The site offers customized searches by six criteria, including 43 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.
Click Here to Visit Website
Resource Roundup
Explore Messages in Media
The 2014 Oscars are just around the corner (March 2), and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (AMPAS), in cooperation with Young Minds Inspired, has produced a series of Teacher’s Guides that explore the art and science of motion pictures. The free Teacher’s Guides address Animation, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costumes and Makeup, Documentaries, Film Editing, Media Literacy, Screenwriting, Sound and Music, and Visual Effects. The activities are designed to capitalize on students’ natural interest in current films and the excitement generated by the Academy Awards to teach valuable lessons in critical thinking and creative writing, and to develop visual literacy skills. Each Teacher’s Guide is available in its entirety to download and print at no charge. The guides are made available to high schools throughout the United States.
Click Here to Download Free Teacher’s Guides
Experience the "Whirlwind" of the Dust Bowl
What if your students had lived in the Dust Bowl? In this interactive, which complements The Dust Bowl, the PBS series produced by Ken Burns, students are about to embark on an experience that will show them what life was like on the southern Great Plains during the Dust Bowl. On their journey, they will learn about the changing market and weather conditions and be asked to make decisions about whether to play it safe and keep their farm the same size or expand it for greater profit. They will also meet several of their “neighbors,” who are doing their best to make it. Some will stay on the land, trying to scrape out a living. Others will say “enough” and head west. What choices will your students make?
Click Here to Access Free Interactive
Globalize US History
National History Day, in conjunction with the History Channel and the Longview Foundation for World Affairs and International Understanding, has produced a new resource for teachers called U.S. History in Global Perspective. This book offers historical essays, documents and activities that assist teachers in globalizing US history. The book includes chapters on the American Revolution, Native American land rights, epidemic diseases, the Civil War, Chinese immigrants in the American West, industrialization, the civil rights movement and the socialist movement. Each example includes an essay for historical context, along with documents and activities for teachers to use. The content is appropriate for both world history and US history classrooms. In addition, the book includes connections to Common Core and 21st Century Skills frameworks being implemented in classrooms across the nation and suggestions on ways to make global connections with National History Day themes. This resource is available for free to all teachers electronically.
Click Here to Access Free Resource
Carry Out Everyday Activities in Ancient Communities
Life in the Iron Age is a series of interactive animations from BBC History. Through the animations, students discover how the Iron Age community carried out daily tasks, such as making fire, grinding grain and baking bread or spinning wool. Each animation includes an activity in which students gather materials needed to carry out the task. As they collect objects, students read a short passage about that object and the way it was used to accomplish these everyday activities in ancient communities. At the end of each animation, students can take a short quiz about the activity they just studied.
Click Here to Access Free Interactive Animations
Sponsored By:
Professional Learning Plus
Examine the Impact of Mobility on School Culture
CoSN’s Leadership for Mobile Learning initiative is an effort that helps educational leaders to overcome barriers and develop, plan, implement and manage policies to effectively enable mobile learning. CoSN explores and develops resources that support school leaders at this critical juncture of exponential growth in mobile learning. Specifically, the initiative examines the impact of mobility on school cultures, the digital divide and informal learning. CoSN’s Guide for Mobile Learning Implementation provides key information and tips to educate and support administrators interested in implementing mobile learning. The guide also includes a mix of best practices, outlines and resources in a variety of formats (blogs, videos, websites, reports).
Click Here to Visit Website and Explore Administrator’s Guide
Make Literacy Come Alive with Digital Strategies
On Wednesday, February 26, 2014, at 3 p.m. (ET), join a webinar sponsored by the Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE), which takes a look at making literacy come alive in the middle level with the Common Core State Standards—and more! Get practical strategies, impactful methods and digitally driven practices that you can use with your students right away. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar, Literacy & Digital Strategies for the Common Core and More.
Click Here to Visit Website and Register for Webinar
Plus: Check out the schedule for other AMLE webinars during February and March.
Click Here to Access Webinar Schedule
Sort Fact from Fiction in the Digital Age
The News Literacy Project offers customized professional development workshops for schools, districts and other educational organizations. NLP seeks to inspire teachers as learning professionals and to give them concrete activities, tools and other strategies to introduce news literacy in the classroom. NLP also introduces professional development participants to a variety of free, open-access digital resources and provides them with a copy of NLP’s news literacy primer for teachers, which includes sample lesson plans, activities and other approaches to incorporating news literacy into their teaching. Teachers can preregister on the NLP website for one of NLP’s free online professional development workshops for teachers in early April. The training will provide an overview of the field of news literacy, using real examples of information that is both timely and relevant to students’ lives. It will also include a review of free news literacy resources for educators and a Q&A with News Literacy Project trainers.
Click Here for More Information
Plus: NLP’s digital program is designed to deliver the core content of the classroom program in a blended elearning unit. The digital unit seeks to give teachers and students a concise yet comprehensive survey of news literacy as a drop-in academic unit. The unit covers five days (and approximately five instructional hours) and is delivered in a computer-lab setting in which all students have his or her own screen. The content can also be delivered to an entire class using an LCD projector or interactive whiteboard in a traditional classroom setting. The unit is comprised of a collection of digital learning objects—digital video lessons by NLP journalist volunteers, interactive computer-based trainings and a live webinar with a journalist—that teachers can blend with classroom discussion and optional homework assignments.
Click Here for More Information
Brave New Social World
Use Twitter As a Teaching Tool
KQED Education aims to introduce 21st century skills and add value to learning through the integration of relevant local content and new media tools and technologies. Every Friday on its Do Now website, KQED Education posts a weekly activity for students to engage in and respond to current issues using social media tools, such as Twitter. The activity includes a brief introduction to the topic and a media resource that can be played directly on the site. At the top of the activity, there is a question for students to respond to after they go through the introduction and media resource to deepen their understanding of the topic. Students can respond to the Do Now activity in the comments section on the website, or they can tweet their response. (Each student must create a Twitter account.)
Click Here to Visit Website
Plus: KQED Education has produced a Guide to Using Twitter in Your Teaching Practice in collaboration with the Trust and Safety Team at Twitter. The online guide provides resources for your school community to help jump into using social media, specifically Twitter, as a learning tool.
Click Here to Sign Up for Free Guide
Build a Communication Hub
GroupTweet is a Twitter app that turns any Twitter account into a group communication hub. It works especially well for study groups who want to be able to communicate privately via Twitter. Teachers can also set up an account for an entire class so they can stay connected.
Click Here to Visit Website
Connect with Colleagues in a Twitter Chat
As educators continue to use Twitter to connect with fellow professionals, a number of valuable Twitter chats have launched. Two popular chats are #edchat, which occurs twice on Tuesdays, and #lrnchat, which is focused on social media and education. #edchat is one of the longest running Twitter chats around (at least in the education realm). Two #edchat conversations take place every Tuesday at 12 p.m. NYC/5 p.m. UK, and 7 p.m. NYC/12 a.m. UK. You’ll find tweets related to a huge variety of topics in education filed under this hashtag. #lrnchat occurs on Thursdays from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. (ET)/5:30 to 6:30 p.m. (PT). This chat is focused on social media and education.
Click Here to Participate in EdChat
Click Here to Participate in lrnchat
STEM Gems
See How Technology Maximizes Performance
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has partnered with NBC Learn (the educational arm of NBC News) to release “Science and Engineering of the 2014 Olympic Winter Games”—the latest installment in the Emmy Award–winning Science of Sports series. This 10-part video collection delves into the physics, engineering, chemistry, design and mathematics behind the world’s foremost sporting event. The segments feature a variety of sports stories, as told by some of the world’s top athletes and record holders, along with perspectives and innovative research from leading NSF-supported engineers and scientists. The series’ diverse topics reveal how key engineering and science concepts and cutting-edge technology play an integral part in each athlete’s respective sport and help maximize their performance at the 2014 Sochi Games. Each of the videos is accompanied by an integration guide as well as an inquiry guide for hands-on investigations.
Click Here to Visit Website
Go Behind the Science of a Museum Laboratory
Virtual Visits from the Field extends science directly to your classroom through live video broadcasts from Chicago’s The Field Museum. The program gives students an unparalleled chance to connect the research occurring at the museum with learning in their own classroom. In a 60-minute live broadcast, students can see, hear and interact with researchers during a behind-the-scenes “visit” to the museum’s state-of-the-art laboratory. The program is offered for both middle school and high school audiences. In addition to the live broadcast, participating classrooms are supplied with grade-level–appropriate supplemental educational activities to increase student learning before and after the live broadcast. The activities are available in two tracks: Anatomy or Research. The live broadcast and supplemental activities align with the Next Generation Science Practices. The cost for 35 students or fewer is $125; for 36 students or more, $250. Reservations are now open for virtual sessions on March 4 and 5, and 18 and 19, 2014.
Click Here to Visit Website
Experience a Historic Spacewalk
Spacewalk is a networked interactive experience about taking a spacewalk outside the International Space Station. Players collectively take on the role of astronauts navigating and exploring the structure of the space station. Spacewalk is an interactive experiment in alternative control schemes, free-form play, virtual embodiment and metagame communication. The game was designed and developed by Richard Emms over the course of five days as an assignment for University of Southern California’s Interactive Media MFA program. Spacewalk v0.63 (May 5, 2013) is available as a free download for Windows, Mac or Linux computers. All platforms support keyboard and mouse input.
Click Here to Visit Website
Plus: Check out UrthCast, a live streaming ultra HD camera installed on the International Space Station that shows Earth’s surface in real time.
Click Here to Visit Website
"Worth-the-Surf" Websites
Explore the Historical Context of FDR's Presidency
The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum has launched FRANKLIN, a partnership with the National Archives and Records Administration, Marist College, IBM and the Roosevelt Institute. FRANKLIN is a virtual research room and digital repository that provides free and open access to the digitized collections of the Roosevelt Library. FRANKLIN allows students of history to search for keywords within archival documents and photograph captions and to search, browse and view whole files, just as one might when visiting the Library’s research room in person. Available online are some of the most important documents of the twentieth century—primary source documentation of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s experiences leading the nation through the Great Depression and World War II.
Click Here to Visit Website
Plus: The Roosevelt Rap is a rhythmic audiovisual timeline of the major events in the life of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Through fast-paced music played against a backdrop of historical images, students are introduced to more than 50 facts and events that defined the Roosevelt era. The rap lyrics were written by Jeffrey Urbin, Education Specialist at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, and the music was recorded by Robert Ferrin. The site also provides 52 questions that are raised in The Roosevelt Rap. The questions are designed to be used to test how well students have been paying attention to the rap. The questions can also be used as jumping-off points for class discussions, as topics for homework or term-paper assignments or as prompting questions to accompany the primary source documents that have been provided. Teachers can contact the museum’s Education Specialist to obtain curriculum materials related to The Roosevelt Rap, including copies of primary source documents and teaching ideas and activities.
Click Here to Download Audio and Lyrics of Roosevelt Rap
Plus: Chemists use the periodic table of the elements to classify, systematize and compare all of the many forms of chemical behavior. The FDR Library devised a periodic table of the New Deal to serve the same function for the study of New Deal history. By collecting and grouping information regarding this major component of the Roosevelt presidency, the periodic table may help teachers and students study and understand these important elements of American history.
Click Here to Download Periodic Table of the New Deal
Journey Through the Land of the Pharaohs
Walk around the Sphinx. Clamber inside the Great Pyramid of Giza and seek out the pharaoh’s burial chamber. Visit the magnificent tombs and temples of ancient Thebes. Explore Ancient Egypt is a multilayered, highly visual interactive that lets students view 360° panoramas, “walkaround” photos and other breathtaking imagery shot throughout the Giza Plateau and ancient Thebes (modern-day Luxor), often with special permission. On this virtual fieldtrip, students will see Old and New Kingdom tombs and temples, pyramids and statues, and a 140-foot-long wooden boat that is 4,600 years old.
Click Here to Visit Website
Take a Virtual Tour Around the World
AirPano lets visitors view 360º imagery of dozens of famous landmarks and cities all over the world. Much of the AirPano imagery includes interactive pinmarks that students can click to learn more about the places they are seeing. For example, if they visit the AirPano imagery of Petra, students can click the pinmarks to learn about the construction of Petra and the significance of various carvings seen throughout the virtual tour. AirPano also presents videos along with the 360º imagery.
Click Here to Visit Website
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