Individualize Instruction, Protect Privacy, Investigate History & More
March 14, 2014
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IN THIS ISSUE
Grants, Competitions and Other “Winning” Opportunities
Resource Roundup
Powered-Up Professional Development
Mobile Learning Journey
STEM Gems
"Worth-the-Surf" Websites
Grants, Competitions and Other “Winning” Opportunities
Get Insight into the Future Funding Landscape
On March 27, 2014, from 5 to 6 p.m. (ET), the GetEdFunding community on edWeb.net will host its first webinar, “The Funding Outlook in Education,” sponsored by CDW•G. This free webinar will provide an update on the funding landscape for 2014. In the presentation, you'll get answers to the following questions: What does federal funding look like for the rest of the school year? Are there any new funds on the horizon? What are the latest funding trends in the states? What money is available now for the 2014–2015 school year? Participants will be able to submit their questions to the presenter during this interactive session. The webinar will be recorded and archived in the GetEdFunding community after the event.
Click Here to Join GetEdFunding Community
Click Here to Register for Free Webinar
Click Here to Learn More About CDW•G
Enrich Students' Academic Experiences
The McCarthey Dressman Education Foundation offers Academic Enrichment Grants designed to develop in-class and extracurricular programs that improve students’ learning. The foundation considers proposals that foster understanding, deepen students’ knowledge and offer students opportunities to expand awareness of the world around them. The Academic Enrichment Grants provide funding for programs that nurture the intellectual, artistic and creative abilities of youth in prekindergarten through grade 12 from low-income households. The foundation awards grants to individuals in amounts up to $10,000 per year for a maximum of three years, provided the eligibility requirements continue to be met.
Deadline: April 15, 2014, for applications
Click Here for More Information
Shine a Spotlight on Inspiring Young People
The Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes celebrates inspiring, public-spirited, highly diverse young people from all across America. Each year the Barron Prize honors 25 outstanding young leaders, aged 8 to 18, who have made a significant positive difference to people and/or our environment. The top 10 winners each receive a $5,000 cash award to support their service work or higher education. The primary goal of the prize is to shine the spotlight on these amazing young people so that their stories will inspire others.
Deadline: April 15, annually, for nominations
Click Here for More Information
Bring Great Ideas to Life
Discovery Education and 3M have opened the 16th annual Young Scientist Challenge, which rewards students in grades 5–8 for their science acumen, demonstration of innovative thinking and communication skills. Through the Challenge, students have the opportunity to compete for $25,000 and the title “America's Top Young Scientist.” Encouraging students to share their passion for science, the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge asks students to create a one- to two-minute video communicating the science behind a possible solution to an everyday problem. (Videos will not be judged on production skills and may be recorded on cell phones or basic digital cameras.) Evaluated on their creativity, scientific knowledge, persuasiveness and overall presentation, 10 finalists will be selected to participate in an exclusive mentorship program working directly with a 3M scientist. During the program, each finalist will be challenged to create an innovation that solves a problem in society. Students will meet virtually with their mentors and will receive resources and support from 3M and Discovery Education. Each finalist will also receive a trip to the 3M Innovation Center in St. Paul, Minnesota, to compete at the final event in October 2014.
Deadline: April 22, 2014, for video submissions
Click Here for More Information
Create a Positive School Culture
The Great American NO BULL Challenge is a social action organization that uses the power of social media, music and the magic of filmmaking to inspire millions of middle school and high school students to create short films or PSAs that speak to the importance of digital responsibility and antibullying. The organization’s goal is to use these socially driven documentary-style films and PSAs as a means to promote the importance of being an “upstander,” creating a positive school culture, and to end cyber and all other forms of bullying on a global basis. NO BULL Challenge’s four-month global video contest culminates in the NO BULL Teen Video Awards show, where millions of teens from all over the world are celebrated for participating. Middle school and high school students between the ages of 13 and 18 can participate in the contest by creating a two- to five-minute video, or 30- to 60-second PSA, with a digital responsibility or a bullying prevention theme. After the public voting period, a panel of expert judges will select the top 50 favorite videos. All 50 nominees will receive a golden ticket to attend the NO BULL Teen Video Awards show in August 2014. Prizes include a mentorship by Emmy Award–winning filmmaker Lee Hirsch, text-a-tip program for the winner’s school, video cameras, scholarships and a trip to the Sundance Film Festival, where the winning short-film video will be submitted.
Deadlines: Video upload, April 30, 2014; voting period, May 5–16, 2014; nominees announced, May 30, 2014; NO BULL Conference and Teen Video Award, August 8 and 9, 2014
Click Here for More Information
Resource Roundup
Protect Students' Privacy
Seeking to help schools and districts better protect students’ privacy, the US Department of Education has released new guidelines on the proper use, storage and security of the massive amounts of data being generated by new, online educational resources. The guidelines, produced by the department’s privacy technical assistance center, highlight the rapidly evolving, often-murky world of educational technology and student data privacy. The law is intended to protect the personally identifiable information contained in children’s education records from disclosure. To encourage better understanding and implementation of “best practices,” the guidelines contain seven high-level recommendations for schools and districts. Much of the department’s 14-page document, titled “Protecting Student Privacy While Using Online Educational Services: Requirements and Best Practices,” focuses on the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA.
Click Here to Download New Privacy Guidelines
Turn Language Learning into an Adventure
What can possibly get students excited to learn a dead language? This was the challenge for Latin teacher Kevin Ballestrini, who has turned his introductory Latin class at Connecticut’s Norwich Free Academy into an alternate reality game called Operation LAPIS. The students’ job: to save the world by joining a shadowy organization on a quest to find the Lapis Saeculōrum that was part of an ancient Roman society. Playing the role of Romans in a reconstruction of ancient Pompeii (or ancient Rome), students have to think, act, create and write like a Roman in order to win the game. Using an online portal, student teams direct their character in Latin to find mysterious inscriptions on stones and solve mysteries. Then they can see how other teams’ characters responded to the prompts. Much of the action takes place in a sophisticated simulation cleverly disguised as an Internet forum. Each night, students receive a new piece of the narrative and a prompt to which their team’s Roman must respond. In its second year, the game is now being run in 30 classrooms across the country and can be done with as little tech as pen and paper or as fully tech integrated as mobile phones and a full website.
Click Here for More Information
Nurture Critical Thinking Skills
Civil Rights Historical Investigations, developed by Facing History and Ourselves, includes three units that require students to “do” history—to gather evidence from primary documents, use that evidence to make claims about the past and then apply what they learn to their lives today. In the first unit, students learn about the murder and trial of Emmett Till. This material asks students to consider the historical context that contributed to the growth of the civil rights movement in the 1950s. In the second unit, students explore voter discrimination in the South and the philosophy of nonviolence that guided civil rights activists’ responses to this injustice, culminating in the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965. The third unit exposes students to the civil rights movement in the North by focusing on the struggle over school desegregation in Boston in the 1960s and early 1970s. A journey through all units allows students to trace the development of the civil rights movement from the 1950s to the 1970s.
Click Here to Visit Facing History Website
Click Here to Download Free History Investigations
Plus: Facing History encourages teachers to use student-centered teaching strategies that nurture students’ literacy and critical thinking skills within a respectful classroom climate. The strategies suggested on this web page can be used with students of all ages with any academic content. You’ll find a complete list of teaching strategies—from Alphabet Brainstorm to Four Corners to Wraparound (Whiparound).
Click Here to Access Free Teaching Strategies
Sponsored By:
Powered-Up Professional Development
Use Data to Inform Instruction
CoSN works on a national level to help K–12 technology leaders build and sustain a data-rich culture within their districts. CoSN’s Data-Driven Decision Making Toolkits provide the tools and resources to help districts implement and sustain data usage while providing a national forum on how data can be used to inform instructional practices and individualize the learning process.
Click Here for More Information
Create an Experiential Framework for Using Tech Tools
21Things4Teachers is a free web-based professional development resource, offered both as an online presentation and as a structured virtual course, which provides “just-in-time” training for K–12 educators based on ISTE’s National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS•T) through an online interface. This professional development opportunity covers a wide array of digital applications framed within the context of different educational practices, issues, considerations and environments. It consists of 21 modules, or “things,” with learning activities structured around the NETS•T. Together the 21 modules create a conceptual and experiential framework for participants to learn how to use various technology tools and how technology can support every aspect of an educator’s professional life. Participants achieve valuable technology skills and foundational knowledge while gaining readiness in all of the performance indicators for the ISTE standards.
Click Here for More Information
Integrate Digital Media into Classroom Instruction
Discovery Education invites teachers and administrators worldwide to attend the upcoming Discovery Educator Network (DEN) Spring VirtCon on April 26, 2014. Focused on the theme of digital transformations, this free, daylong professional development event combines both virtual and face-to-face opportunities for educators to learn proven strategies for integrating digital media into classroom instruction to improve student engagement and achievement. Presentations will focus on five themes: Call to Action: Students Speak; Planning Your Transition: District Administration, Thought Leaders and Policy Makers; Creating a Culture and Community of Change; Leading from the Front: Teachers as Leaders; and Digital by Design: Integrating Digital Resources into the Classroom. Discovery Education is also encouraging teachers to create local face-to-face events at which they can convene with their peers, participate in the online events and discuss and workshop the online presentations.
Click Here for More Information
Mobile Learning Journey
Experience an Extraordinary Moment in American History
The Cuban Missile Crisis is one of the landmark events discussed in nearly every history course covering the Cold War. To the Brink: JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis is a free iPad app through which students can learn about the causes of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Kennedy administration’s handling of the crisis. The app uses archival images, videos, documents and audio recordings to tell the story of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The app is arranged as a series of pages for students to flip through. Each page has icons that students can tap to get more information on the documents, images and videos displayed.
Click Here to Visit iTunes App Store
Explore American History—Day by Day
Students can explore American history with 365 documents and photos from the collections of the US National Archives and Records Administration. Today’s Document, a free app for the iPad and iPhone, displays a significant historical document or photo for each day of the year. Students can learn what happened on their birthday, search for a document by keyword or just browse at their leisure. The app features popular documents, such as the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation, as well as lesser-known (but equally fascinating) documents, such as the Zimmerman Telegram, President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1961 Farewell Address and a handwritten draft of President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 Inaugural Address. Today’s Document is based on the America’s Historical Documents feature found on the National Archives website.
Click Here to Visit National Archives Website
Click Here to Visit iTunes App Store
Learn the Language Underlying Math Concepts
The Common Core State Standards stress the importance of having students use math vocabulary in written and spoken explanations of their thinking. The MathTerms app for the iPad is designed to help students learn definitions of mathematical terms so that they can use them appropriately. This free app includes almost 1,000 entries for middle school and high school mathematical concepts and even has Spanish language entries.
Click Here to Visit iTunes App Store
Discover What Paintings Can Reveal
Touch Van Gogh is a free app for iOS and Android devices that allows students to explore the wealth of information contained in and under the paint in three of Vincent van Gogh’s masterpieces—View from Theo’s Apartment, The Bedroom and Daubigny’s Garden. Users simply “touch” Van Gogh’s artworks and let the paintings tell their stories. The surprises in store include revelations about recycled canvases, discolored pigments and Van Gogh’s use of a perspective frame. Touch Van Gogh was developed by the Van Gogh Museum for anyone who would like to view Van Gogh’s work up close, discover the secrets of his techniques, travel through history and explore new research findings. In addition to the three Van Gogh paintings, the app includes letters and sketches, biographical information and research findings that shed new light on the artworks and their maker. More paintings are slated to be added to the app in the near future.
Click Here to Visit iTunes App Store
Click Here to Visit Google Play Store
STEM Gems
Make Math Interactive
Math Open Reference is a free, web-based reference source for students and teachers. Subjects include Plane Geometry, Coordinate Geometry, Solid Geometry, Trigonometry and Calculus. The project has three goals: (1) to be a source of math information to students any time, any place; (2) to move beyond static texts toward interactive content (example: incircle of a triangle) and (3) to provide teachers with the tools they need to become learning facilitators. Math Open Reference is highly interactive and contains many engaging animations (example: definition of a cube). In addition, it has a Common Core alignment, as well as an Index by Subject and a Word Index.
Click Here to Visit Free Math Reference
Click Here to Access Triangle Example
Click Here to Access Cube Example
Tap the Tools of Scientists
Teachers can bring Q?rius into their classrooms with Smithsonian Science How?, a new way to tap into the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Smithsonian Science How? delivers real-world science into classrooms through free, interactive, live webcasts and supporting classroom resources. The 25-minute programs feature the research and personalities of the National Museum of Natural History, providing students with positive STEM role models, information about science careers and pathways, and connections to current research. For example, students can interact with Smithsonian experts who examine bones and artifacts that are millions of years old; they can piece together forensic anthropology mysteries and dive into coral reefs. In addition, students will see how scientists and other experts use tools and technology in their work and how the science is connected to them. Browse the program schedule to plan your next journey.
Click Here to Visit Website
Click Here to Access Program Schedule
Join the Scientific "Zooniverse"
A project of the Chicago Adler Planetarium, Oxford University and Zooniverse.org, Zooniverse empowers hundreds of thousands of “citizen scientists” around the world to contribute to research papers and advance knowledge in fields ranging from astronomy to meteorology. The Zooniverse website hosts almost two dozen active research efforts that essentially have more data to comb through than a typical team of scientists can handle. The project designs a framework for amateurs, over the web, to step up and do some of the data analysis themselves. These include looking at telescopic images to detect planets in space, at medical pictures to find and classify cancers in human tissue and at camera-trap photos to identify animals in Africa’s Serengeti National Park. In one of the two projects listed under Humanities, citizen scientists are asked to annotate and tag solders’ diaries from World War I. Zooniverse turns curious consumers into engaged citizen scientists, working alongside professional research teams to accelerate the scientific discoveries of tomorrow.
Click Here to Visit Website
"Worth-the-Surf" Websites
Catch the March Madness
Tiffany Whitehead, aka the Mighty Little Librarian, is the library media specialist at Central Middle School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. An obsessive reader, social media user and technology geek, Tiffany has created a March Madness bracket for books on her blog. To create her brackets, she ran the Destiny report that showed the top 25 circulated titles for this school year. For books that were part of a series, she went with the first book in the series so she could have more variety in the selections. She also made some filler spots that she’ll replace with the winning titles along the way. She is planning to use Google Forms for the voting each week of March and will post the links on Schoology so students can vote. Also, during the first week, she will have a place for students to make their predictions for the winner, and at the end of the month, she will do some type of drawing/giveaway for a prize.
Click Here to Access Weblog
Plus: ISTE’s Special Interest Group for Librarians (SIGLIB) will be hosting its annual March Madness discussions on Facebook this year. Join the Facebook group and participate in the discussions throughout the month of March. There will be some ISTE book giveaways along the way.
Click Here to Visit Facebook Group Page
Bring the World into Your Classroom
A new program from Google, Connected Classrooms, aims to streamline the process of finding and taking part in live virtual field trips. Google has recruited a number of major partners, including the Seattle Aquarium and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, to hold live virtual field trips on the Google+ Hangout platform. Although only a limited number of classes can participate with live, streaming interactivity, any class can watch the trip live and post questions on the trip’s Google+ page. Interested educators can find out about new opportunities by joining the Google+ Connected Classrooms Community, where they will also find lesson materials around the trips and can discuss ideas with group members. These trips make possible visits to such locations as a Syrian refugee camp or the Stanford Particle Accelerator Lab—the sort of experiences students wouldn’t have had even in the golden age of the field trip. Google offers an FAQ (PDF file) that addresses basic questions on the process and required technology.
Click Here to Visit Website
Find Buried Treasure in the Deep Web
Learn the Net teaches students everything they need to know about the Internet and World Wide Web—from Mastering the Basics to setting up Social Networks, Managing Media, Publishing Online and more. In addition, Learn the Net’s Interactive Glossary helps students learn Internet-related terms, such as access point, JPEG, QWERTY and other common (and not-so-common) terms. Students can also test their knowledge of these terms in the Glossary Game.
Click Here to Visit Website
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