Big Deal Media K-12 Technology Newsletter

Pearson_Teachability_Ad_640x100

Inspire Inquiring Minds, Join the Maker Movement, Explore Sound & More

May 1, 2014

In Partnership With:

VSTE

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


Share Breakthroughs in Learning

Teachability, an online collaborative community for teachers, has launched the Dream STEM Classroom contest with a teacher prize package worth more than $2,000. The package includes a 3-D Printer, Telescope, Microscope, MinecraftEdu Classroom License and more. Teachability is a place for teachers to interact and share breakthroughs in the classroom. The site provides educators with STEM resources and tools to help their students succeed.

Click Here for More Information

SHARE: Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn Email


Supplement Your Stretched Budget

GetEdFunding is a free and fresh website sponsored by CDW•G to help educators and institutions find the funds they need in order to supplement their already stretched budgets. GetEdFunding hosts a collection of more than 2,300 (and growing) 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. GetEdFunding 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. After registering on the site, you can save the grant opportunities of greatest interest and then return to them at any time. This rich resource of funding opportunities is expanded, updated and monitored daily.

Click Here to Visit Website

SHARE: Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn Email


Engage Students in Inquiry-Based Projects

The Captain Planet Foundation (CPF) has announced a competitive grant program in partnership with the Ray C. Anderson Foundation. Sixteen $2,500 grants will be awarded to schools or nonprofit organizations for the purpose of engaging children in inquiry-based projects in STEM fields that use innovation, biomimicry/nature-based design or technology in new ways to address environmental problems in their communities.

Deadline: May 31, 2014 (as funds allow) for projects in the summer and fall of 2014

Click Here for More Information

SHARE: Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn Email



Resource Roundup


Build Project Management Skills

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21), together with the Project Management Institute Educational Foundation (PMIEF), recently released the 21st Century Skills Map: Project Management for Learning. PMIEF is part of P21’s broad coalition of education, business, nonprofit and foundation members. Rounding out P21’s existing library of content maps for Math, English, Social Studies, Science, Geography, the Arts and World Languages, the Project Management for Learning Map provides examples for elementary, middle and high school project-based learning from around the world; it was written with input from the world’s leading experts in project management.

Click Here to Access Free P21 Skills Maps

SHARE: Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn Email


Celebrate Children and Books

Día is a year-long literacy initiative culminating in April with celebrations for children and families across the country,” says author Pat Mora, who created El día de los niños/El día de los libros in 1996. Although the April celebrations have concluded, Mora’s Bookjoy website is full of ideas for celebrating children and books all year long. One of the resources on the site is Children’s Days, Book Days: Planning for a Día Year, in which you’ll find tips to share with your planning committee or colleagues. You can click on a chapter link to download and print that chapter, or you can download and print the complete booklet at no charge.

Click Here to Download Free Día Resource

SHARE: Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn Email


Encourage Making and Exploring

Makerspaces provide hands-on, creative ways to encourage students to design, experiment, build and invent as they deeply engage in science, engineering and tinkering. Diversity and cross-pollination of activities are critical to the processes of designing, making and exploring, and they are what set makerspaces and STEAM labs apart from single-use spaces. Designing a space to accommodate such a wide range of activities is a challenging process: Which tools are most needed? Should digital fabrication tools, such as CNC routers, laser cutters or 3-D printers, be included? Which materials will be used? The Makerspace Playbook and the Makerspace Tools & Materials PDF document are both useful resources for addressing these questions. The Makerspace Playbook is a helpful guide to envisioning the projects and activities that could happen in the makerspace. The Makerspace Tools & Materials document provides detailed lists of the diverse tools and materials that you might consider in order to ensure a safe working environment.

Click Here to Learn More About Makerspaces

Click Here to Download Free Makerspace Playbook

Click Here to Download Free Tools & Materials Document

SHARE: Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn Email


Promote Critical 21st Century Skills for All

Boston Children’s Museum has been creating curricula, activities and other resources for educators and parents for 100 years. These resources are used in every state in the United States and in more than 100 countries around the world. They are rooted in decades of understanding how children learn most effectively and how adults can best support that learning. The museum’s online resources include the multiple-award-winning Beyond the Chalkboard website, which was named “Best of the Web: Education Website” and is used by tens of thousands of afterschool professionals all around the world; the STEM Sprouts Teaching Guide, which offers ideas and activities for early childhood educators who teach science, technology, engineering and math; guides for afterschool educators working with English language learners and children with autism; and BCM Home Edition, a book of 26 activities that families can try together at home. Each of these resources is available for free to any parent, teacher or other caregiver that wishes to use them.

Click Here to Access Free School–Home Resources

SHARE: Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn Email



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

SHARE: Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn Email


Explore Science with Science Experts

Seminars on Science is the American Museum of Natural History’s online professional development program for educators. Since 2000, Seminars on Science has engaged thousands of educators around the world in cutting-edge research and provided them with powerful classroom resources. The program offers 12 online graduate courses in the life, earth and physical sciences. Each course is rich in essays, images, videos, interactive simulations and vibrant discussions that connect learners to the museum’s scientists, laboratories, expeditions and specimens. Graduate credit is available for all courses through partnerships with eight colleges and universities. All Seminars on Science courses correlate with the National Science Education Standards.

Click Here to Visit Website

Click Here for Information on Online Courses

SHARE: Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn Email


Get Access to World-Class Scientists

The Denver Museum of Nature & Science offers free, 60-minute webinars that provide short, interactive sessions with convenient online access to experts that will help you build your science content and teaching skills. Participate on your own or meet as a group with your colleagues. Past webinars include “NGSS: An Informal Conversation,” “Rigor and Inquiry,” “Nonfiction Text: Making a Claim for Evidence-based Inquiry,” “Concept-based Curriculum & Instruction,” “Teaching with Nonfiction Text” and more. Check the website for upcoming webinars. All past webinars are archived.

Click Here to Visit Website

SHARE: Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn Email


Engage Students Through Primary Sources

Through June 10, the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) is presenting a different professional development opportunity every Tuesday evening. The next webinar, in May, is “Using Primary Source Documents to Engage Your Students.” This presentation will focus on accessing online primary source documents and using them to challenge students to think critically as well as improve their writing and analytical skills. Lesson plans and ideas will be presented with a follow-up resource page for participants to access later.

Click Here for Webinar Listings

Click Here for More Information About Upcoming Webinar

SHARE: Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn Email



Mobile Learning Journey


Transform Teaching and Learning Through Technology

As schools’ acceptance of mobile tools, such as smartphones and tablets, becomes more widespread, educators often struggle with how to incorporate these tools into current teaching models. Instructional Designer David Gagnon and his team at the University of Wisconsin’s ENGAGE program may be able to help. As the minds behind Augmented Reality and Interactive Storytelling (ARIS), they’ve developed an open-source mobile learning platform that educators can download onto an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch to create place-based and narrative gaming activities that can be incorporated into classroom curricula. For example, Chris Holden, an assistant professor in the University Honors Program at the University of New Mexico, and Julie Sykes, an assistant professor of Hispanic linguistics, used ARIS to create the game Mentira, designed to help Spanish-language students learn in a real-world context.

Click Here to Visit ENGAGE Website

Click Here to Visit ARIS Website

SHARE: Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn Email


Hear with Your Eyes, See with Your Ears

Students can explore the surprising side of sound with Sound Uncovered: An Interactive Book for the iPad, from the Exploratorium in San Francisco. This interactive collection features auditory illusions, acoustic phenomena and other things that go bump, beep, boom and vroom. Why do some noises seem louder at night? Are there secret messages in music played backward? How can Siri understand different accents? Why does the sound of gum chewing drive some people mad? Students will find answers to these questions and others as they take an auditory trip to the place where sound gets truly interesting: the space between their ears.

Click Here to Download Free iPad App

Plus: When is yellow yellower than yellow? What color is a whisper? What’s missing from the palette of Renaissance painters? Students can explore the surprising side of color with Color Uncovered: An Interactive Book for the iPad, featuring fascinating illusions, articles and videos developed by the San Francisco Exploratorium. This free app offers a broad spectrum of colorful surprises that focus on the art, physics and psychology of color. The app also includes color activities that students can conduct themselves using their iPad and simple items they have at home: a CD case, a drop of water and a piece of paper.

Click Here to Download Free iPad App

SHARE: Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn Email



STEM Gems


Prepare Students for AP Exams

Highlights for High School (HFHS), a companion website to MIT OpenCourseWare, provides open educational resources for high school educators and students. HFHS contains both materials created specifically for those in high school and resources collected from the MIT curriculum that can be used effectively by those in high school. The website is organized into two main sections. The Subjects section is arranged by topics that students are likely to encounter in high school, such as mathematics, physics and biology. Within each of these subjects, you’ll find a variety of content, such as labs, courses and video resources that vary from subject to subject. The Exam Preparation section is aimed at students who are preparing to take the Advanced Placement exams in Biology, Calculus, Chemistry or Physics. These materials are meant to supplement the learning that takes place in your class. Highlights for High School’s resources cover not only science and mathematics but also engineering, humanities and social sciences. These resources are available under a Creative Commons license, so the materials on the site can be integrated into classroom lesson plans, shared, reused and remixed for free.

Click Here to Visit Website

Plus: An online Guide for Teachers presents ideas on how to integrate Highlights for High School’s web materials and MIT’s OpenCourseWare into your teaching. Also find examples of how others are using the materials in their classrooms.

Click Here to Access Online Guide

SHARE: Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn Email


Encourage Girls to Learn Software Development

The international nonprofit organization Girl Develop It (GDI) provides affordable and accessible programs for women and girls who want to learn software development through mentorship and hands-on instruction. The organization is committed to making sure women of all ages, races, education levels, income and upbringing can build confidence in their skill set to develop web and mobile applications. GDI’s introductory course (a core curriculum) walks participants through the fundamentals of web development in layman terms. While they won’t be writing code, participants will learn about the various components of the web and how they work together. The course is intended for people with little to no technical experience. Topics include What is the World Wide Web? Where are website files generally stored? What is the difference between a client and a server? Which programming languages are compiled on a server, and which are compiled in a web browser? What do you need to know before building a website? What language should you use, and what are the differences? What tools do you need to develop a website? Who does what on a typical web development team? What is Web 2.0 and the Cloud?

Click Here for More Information About GDI Programs

SHARE: Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn Email


Create Apps at App Camps

App Camp for Girls is a place where young women can put their creative power to work, concepting and building apps, while learning more about the business of software and being inspired by women who are professional software developers. The camp’s organizers believe that when girls see how fun and creative app development can be, they’ll be more likely to pursue a career in software development and technology. The inaugural season of App Camp for Girls took place in summer 2013 in Portland, Oregon. During the two weeklong sessions, girls brainstormed, designed, coded and pitched their apps. In 2014 the organization will continue to focus the program on girls aged 12 to 14 in Oregon. However, its vision is to offer App Camp for Girls in other cities and even other countries. Girls who are interested in attending a 2015 App Camp for Girls in their location should fill out the online Prospective Camper Interest Form.

Click Here for More Information About App Camp for Girls

Click Here to Access Online Interest Form

SHARE: Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn Email



"Worth-the-Surf" Websites


Take Courses at Hogwarts

A group of Harry Potter fans have created a website called Hogwarts Is Here, where students can take free online classes in the same subjects studied by Harry, Ron and Hermione. The website works as a cross between a MOOC (massive open online course) and an RPG (role-playing game). Students start by creating an account and choosing a house. After they enroll at the virtual Hogwarts, they can join a dorm, buy books from Flourish and Blotts and even write for The Daily Owl. As first-year students, they are expected to complete seven rigorous courses: Charms, Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Astronomy, Herbology, History of Magic and Transfiguration. Every course consists of nine lessons, each of which involves a written introduction, some supplemental readings and a number of assignments. The exact nature of the assignments varies, but most of them are essays, and the volunteer instructors take grading very seriously. One assignment for Transfiguration asked for 300 words exploring possible loopholes in one of the exceptions to Gamp’s Law—an expansion on a comment Hermione makes in Harry Potter and the Deathly Harrows about the five things that cannot be created with magic. Since the website is just starting out, most of the courses and textbooks aren’t yet complete. But the site is growing rapidly: in one week, the number of lessons available for each course increased, the textbook A History of Magic was uploaded and the ability to review assignments and appeal grade decisions was added.

Click Here to Visit Website

SHARE: Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn Email


Study the Science of Storytelling

Storytelling is the backbone of a great piece of entertainment. A strong story is especially important in the world of television, where plots unfold slowly over long stretches of time. The narrative elements and character developments keep us loyal to our favorite shows year after year. These elements are known around the Internet as TV tropes— “devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members’ minds and expectations.” TV tropes have many common threads—so many that it would seem almost impossible to chart, but graphic designer James R. Harris has done just that with his Periodic Table of Storytelling. This stylized table tracks all the elements repeated in TV storytelling. Clicking on each element leads to its wiki definition. At the bottom of the chart, Harris combines elements into “storytelling molecules” with pop culture examples, such as Star Wars, Dilbert and Ghostbusters.

Click Here to Visit Website

SHARE: Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn Email


See History Come Alive

British Pathé was one of the leading producers of newsreels and documentaries during the 20th century. The company, now an archive, is turning over its entire collection—more than 85,000 historical films—to YouTube. The archive—which spans from 1896 to 1976—is a goldmine of footage, containing movies of some of the most important moments of the last 100 years. For example, in Pathé’s playlist “A Day That Shook the World,“ which traces an Anglo-centric history of the 20th century, students will find clips of the Wright Brothers’ first flight, the bombing of Hiroshima and Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon alongside footage of Queen Victoria’s funeral and Roger Bannister’s four-minute mile. There’s also footage of the dramatic Hindenburg crash and Lindbergh’s daring cross-Atlantic flight. Students can see King Edward VII abdicating the throne in 1936, Hitler becoming the German Chancellor in 1933 and the eventual Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941. But the really intriguing part of the archive is seeing all the ephemera from the 20th century—the hairstyles, the way a city street looked, the sexism and racism and more.

Click Here to Visit Website

Click Here to Visit YouTube Channel

SHARE: Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn Email


Stroll the Streets of the Past

Google recently turned its Google Maps Street View into a time machine that lets users track changes in landscapes, buildings, roads and entire neighborhoods from around the world since the Street View mapping program began, in 2007. When students use Google Maps Street View on a desktop or laptop computer, a clock icon will appear in the corner of the screen. Clicking on this icon will fire up the scrollbar-controlled time machine, allowing students to change the year and even the season of the area they are currently viewing to see how it has changed over time. They can see a landmark’s growth from the ground up—for example, the Freedom Tower in New York City or the 2014 World Cup stadium in Fortaleza, Brazil. Or they can use the digital timeline to explore recent history, such as the reconstruction after the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Onagawa, Japan.

Click Here for More Information About Time Machine Feature

Click Here to Explore Google Maps Website

SHARE: Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn Email


Turn Students' Hobbies into Summer Jobs

Young people can receive hands-on entrepreneurship training this summer through Make Your Job, a new collaboration between Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) and Citi Foundation. Make Your Job is a component of the Citi Foundation’s new Pathways to Progress initiative, a three-year, $50 million commitment to unlock economic opportunity for 100,000 low-income youth across the United States. Make Your Job is different from many other summer employment programs because it is intended to train, motivate and encourage young people to find summer employment through innovation and entrepreneurship. MakeYourJob’s website launches in May. This youth-centered web experience converts key aspects of NFTE’s entrepreneurship program into a game using rewards to demonstrate to students how they can turn a hobby or interest into a business.

Click Here to Visit Website

SHARE: Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn Email


BOOKMARK THESE!

Big Deal Media provides timely, relevant resources in a rapidly changing educational environment, created with insight and attention to detail by seasoned educational publishing professionals and practicing K–12 educators. “Like” Big Deal Media on Facebook to learn how other educators are using Big Deal Media resources and to share your own ideas and experiences.

Subscribe to The Big Deal Book of Technology’s “Amazing Resources for Educators” on the edWeb to get frequent updates on grant deadlines, free resources and hot, new websites for 21st century learning. And, of course, you can share any great new resources that you’ve unearthed!

Join Big Deal Media’s inclusive community of special needs educators by subscribing to Everyone CAN! Essentials for Educators of Special Needs Students, a free quarterly enewsletter of curated, easily accessible resources to serve this group of educators. Find sources of funding, research-based developmental strategies, mobile learning innovations, assistive technology collections and truly useful online interactive environments, including specialized resources to partner with parents.

Sign up at Big Deal Media’s website for hELLo!, a free quarterly ELL enewsletter that includes a wealth of information on interactive resources for students, teachers, librarians, principals and others involved in the education of English language learners.

Explore the Web Wednesday feature on Big Deal Media, where you’ll find new interactive experiences and resources that incorporate 21st century themes and skills into the study of core subjects.

SHARE: Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn Email




Please forward this newsletter to a friend!

If you received a forwarded version of this newsletter and wish to subscribe
for FREE, visit: bigdealbook.com/members/sign_up/

 

 

Copyright © 2014 Big Deal Media. All rights reserved.