Access Files, Applications and Reports from Any Device
Stoneware’s webNetwork delivers a unified workspace where teachers and students access everything they need from wherever they are located. Users have freedom and flexibility to access resources from any device, extending education beyond classroom walls. webNetwork enables key initiatives such as personalized learning, 1:1/BYOD and Common Core assessment delivery.
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Join the Frozen Coders, Explore Moral Questions, Get in the Game & More
December 1, 2014 - K-12 Technology
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IN THIS ISSUE
Grants, Competitions and Other "Winning" Opportunities
Resource Roundup
Professional Learning Plus
Mobile Learning Journey
STEM Gems
Worth-the-Surf Websites
Grants, Competitions and Other "Winning" Opportunities
Honor an Inspirational Teacher
Each year The Kennedy Center/Stephen Sondheim Inspirational Teacher Awards solicits nominations from the general public and notable public figures, providing the opportunity to submit stories about teachers and professors who made a significant difference in their lives. On March 22, Stephen Sondheim’s birthday, a select number of these teachers will each receive an award of $10,000 in appreciation for their contributions to the field of teaching. Awardees will also be showcased, along with the people they inspired, on The Kennedy Center/Stephen Sondheim Inspirational Teacher Awards website. Nominees must be legal residents of the United States and must teach or have taught in a K–12 school or college or university in the United States. Teachers of all grade levels and subject areas are eligible.
Deadline: December 14, 2014, for nominations
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Share Superlative Classroom Practices
The Fishman Prize for Superlative Classroom Practice—named for acclaimed D.C. Public Schools teacher Shira Fishman—is an annual award for exceptionally effective teachers working in high-poverty public schools. In addition to receiving $25,000 each, Fishman Prize winners participate in an intensive summer residency program during which they reflect deeply on their classroom practice, explore the larger issues that shape their profession and write a short paper on their teaching practices to share with other educators and leaders worldwide. The residency allows the winners to share their expertise with educators across the country without taking time away from the classrooms where they do their best work. Applicants must be full-time teachers at public schools (including charter schools) where at least 40 percent of all students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (or a Title I school). Applicants do not need to be nominated to be eligible to apply.
Deadline: December 16, 2014, for nominations/applications
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Take the Science Fair into Cyberspace
eCYBERMISSION, an initiative of the US Army, is a free, web-based science, technology, engineering and mathematics competition in which students in grades 6–9 compete against other students in their grades for state, regional and national awards. Teams consisting of three to four students and a team advisor select a Mission Challenge from the categories on the competition’s website and then, using the scientific method, scientific inquiry or engineering design process, work to solve problems in their community related to the Mission Challenge. The maximum awards at state and regional levels are, respectively, $1,000 and $2,000 in US EE Savings Bonds per student; the maximum award at the national level is a $5,000 US EE Savings Bond. In addition, the Army Educational Outreach Program (AEOP) STEM-in-Action Grant awards funds to selected eCYBERMISSION national finalist teams to implement solutions in their local communities based on the results of their projects. The $5,000 grant will be awarded to five teams across all grade levels in the competition. The awards will be presented during the eCYBERMISSION National Judging and Educational Event (NJ&EE) and are independent of the selection of eCYBERMISSION national winners.
Deadline: Team advisor and all team members must register and join their team by December 17, 2014; Mission Folders must be submitted by February 25, 2015.
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Share a Story About a Triumph, Tragedy or Trend
To look back at every triumph, tragedy and trend, Google creates an annual Zeitgeist, a short year-in-review video of the biggest events as seen through the eyes of the search engine. PBS NewsHour Extra has partnered with Google to offer students an opportunity to create their own #MyZeitgeist video and win a prize. The student who creates the best #MyZeitgeist will take home a Nexus tablet from Google. Second- and third-place winners will receive Visa and Google Play gift cards. Students can create and share their #MyZeitgeist story in two different ways: they can use the Trio app to create fun mashups for the iPhone or iPad, or they can use the Meograph digital storytelling tool for creating a presentation-like video on their desktop. The #MyZeitgeist: 2014 teacher guide provides teachers with suggestions for supporting their students. The guide also includes engaging #MyZeitgeist activities for the whole class.
Deadline: All entries must be received by 11:59 p.m. (PST) on December 12, 2014.
Click Here for More Information About Student Challenge
Click Here to Access Free Teacher Guide
Plus: Do Now is a weekly activity from PBS NewsHour Extra for students in grades 7–12 to engage in, and respond to, current issues on Twitter. Do Now introduces news, new media tools and technology to the learning process, giving students firsthand experience with 21st century skills. Students can share their projects on Twitter during the week of December 5–12 and discuss the news events that were most important to them in 2014. Use the Rubric/Checklist to help students with the process.
Click Here to Access Weekly News Activity
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 3,400 (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.
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Resource Roundup
Get Help for IT
LapCabby has been doing things differently in IT storage for more than 25 years. Born in the UK, LapCabby offers a range of laptop, netbook, tablet and Chromebook carts that are a big hit in schools worldwide—and they’re now available in the US and Canada. The cleverly designed carts give you everything you need in the classroom: storage, safety, simplicity—even charging and syncing.
Click Here to Visit Website
Unlock the Digital Vaults
The National Archives Digital Vaults poster and video creation tools allow students to drag and drop digital artifacts into a poster or video. The National Archives provides images, documents and audio in an easy-to-use editor. When making a poster, students can combine multiple images, change background colors and create captions to make collages of digital artifacts. Creating a video in the Digital Vaults is just as easy as creating a poster. To create a video, students simply drag their selected images onto the editing templates, type image captions, select the duration of display for each image and select audio tracks
Click Here to Access Free Tools
Plus: Teachers can use the Digital Vaults Pathways tool to create short quizzes that ask students to identify the connections between two or more images or documents. To start, drag one image to the Pathways menu and then select a related item to add to the Pathway. Type in a clue for students to use to help them make the connection. When you share your Pathway with others, they will see only your first image and your connection clue. They will need to find the image that connects. Take a look at a sample Pathways challenge.
Click Here to Access Free Tool
Click Here to Access Sample Challenge
Interweave Literary Analysis with Historical Context
Do you remember the first time you read To Kill a Mockingbird as a young adult? For many, the voices of Scout, Tom and Atticus still resonate decades later. Facing History’s fresh approach to teaching Harper Lee’s classic novel engages students in issues central to the novel and in their own lives, including race, class and gender. Teaching Mockingbird: A Facing History and Ourselves Study Guide offers a unique approach to the classic novel. By interweaving literary analysis with historical context, multimedia resources and innovative teaching strategies, this resource engages students in the issues central to the novel—and their own lives—including race, class, gender, justice and moral growth. The new guide provides English language arts teachers with Common Core–aligned student handouts, close reading exercises and connection questions that allow students to build a complex understanding of the historical realities and big moral questions at the heart of To Kill a Mockingbird. On December 1, 2014, the guide was made available to download at no charge.
Click Here to Download Free Teaching Guide
Become a Critical Media Consumer
The PBS series MASTERPIECE, renowned for its superb adaptations of classic literature, is a trusted source for both teachers and students. Presenting a treasure trove of video segments from MASTERPIECE, supported by essays and teacher tips, this collection offers innovative ways to access, understand and analyze complex literary texts. Watching these pivotal moments from award-winning shows also helps to provide a deeper appreciation of the power of film dramatization—and the importance of becoming a critical media consumer. Featured among the MASTERPIECE programs are Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Jane Eyre, Sense and Sensibility, Wuthering Heights and The Diary of Anne Frank.
Click Here to Access Free Literary Resources
Plus: The MASTERPIECE Agatha Christie Book & Film Club, produced by PBS for librarians, provides background information on Agatha Christie and her work, library programming ideas, book and film club discussion questions and activities, resources in print and online, and a “Delicious Death” recipe created to honor the 120th anniversary of Agatha Christie’s birthday.
Click Here for More Information About Book & Film Club
Unlock a Rich World of Learning
The MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning explains key ideas in game-based learning, pedagogy, implementation and assessment. This free guide makes sense of the available research and provides suggestions for practical use. Along with an Introduction, the guide includes five chapters: “What the Research Says About Gaming and Screen Time,” “How to Start Using Digital Games for Learning,” “How to Choose a Digital Learning Game,” “Overcoming Obstacles for Using Digital Games in the Classroom” and “How Teachers Are Using Games in the Classroom.”
Click Here to Download Free Guide
Professional Learning Plus
Get Students Thinking
On December 10, 2014, at 5 p.m. (ET), the Amazing Resources for Educators community and edWeb.net will host a free webinar entitled “H.O.T. Web Tools to Ignite Your Classroom,” sponsored by Quill.com. In this webinar, participants will learn about easy-to-use, free tech tools that will build 21st century and higher-order thinking (H.O.T.) skills. The presenter will discuss resources for student progress monitoring and alignment to the Common Core State Standards. Participants will also learn about websites and apps and be provided with implementation ideas that will give their lessons a new twist and get students creating. Join this interactive webinar to learn about a wide variety of tech tools along with ways to incorporate them into your daily lessons. The webinar will be recorded and archived after the event in the community.
Click Here to Register for Free Webinar
Make Sparks Fly in the Classroom
Spark101.org is a free resource that brings STEM to life in the classroom through video case studies. Real-world professionals break down real-life STEM challenges that help inspire students to pursue STEM careers. Register for Spark101’s free webinars and learn how to make sparks fly in your classroom.
Click Here to Visit Website
Mobile Learning Journey
Journey Through a Puzzling Universe of Numbers
Twelve a Dozen, aims to help students aged 10–14 hone their math skills and have fun at the same time. Twelve, the game’s heroine, is on a mission to find her family members, who disappeared after a cataclysmic event befell Dozenopolis. With her companion, Dot, she solves puzzles to rescue her loved ones. She also receives help from the ever-willing “Numbles,” number characters that follow her in a conga line. All of the game’s puzzles revolve around manipulating numbers—through subtraction, addition, division or multiplication, and introduce students to processes that they will use when they begin to explore algebra. For example, in one puzzle, Twelve needs to reach the other side of a bridge that will break when a number greater than seven tries to cross it. She has two Numbles with her, Two and Three. Students need to use these Numbles to solve the problem. Changing Twelve’s face value also unlocks a host of new powers that help players on their adventure. The game is available for $4.99 from the iTunes App Store.
Click Here to Visit iTunes App Store
Learn the Local Meaning
A harbinger of the geospatial web, Yellow Arrow began in 2004 as a street art project in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and has spread across the world. Participants print out yellow arrow stickers from the Yellow Arrow website, each with a unique identifying code, and place them in public places that have important local meaning. People who know about the project can text the Yellow Arrow phone number with the unique code and instantly receive the story or piece of local lore the author marked. Other users can add more stories to a location, creating a crowd-sourced ethnography of place.
Click Here to Visit Website
Bring Famous Artworks to Students' Fingertips
Timeline – Art Museum is a free app for the iPad and iPhone that brings to life the paintings of such masters as Botticelli, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Van Gogh, Monet, Courbet, Klimt and 73 others in an easy-to-navigate format. The app also provides complete details of each work, including the title, year of completion, actual dimensions, creator and current gallery location, paired with a high-resolution digital image. In addition, students will find a brief artist synopsis, including date/location of birth/death, completed works and more. Students can use the slide navigation at the bottom of the screen for quick scanning through years, artists and paintings. With the touch of a finger, they can to jump from artist to artist.
Click Here to Visit iTunes App Store
STEM Gems
Encourage Girls to Code
Code.org has teamed up with Disney Interactive on a tutorial that lets young programmers help Frozen sisters Anna and Elsa make ice fractals and skating patterns using basic coding skills. The tutorial has become part of the nonprofit Code.org’s online learning platform, which is used in more than 50,000 classrooms. The Frozen tutorial will also kick off the Hour of Code campaign (December 8–14), an initiative designed to widen participation in computer science worldwide, especially among girls. The backbone of the tutorial is basic: employ simple commands to help the princesses skate lines on the ice. Students join Anna and Elsa in creating snowflakes and patterns as they ice-skate and make a winter wonderland that they can then share with their friends.
Click Here to Access Free Coding Tutorial
Click Here to Bring the Hour of Code to Your Classroom
Plus: Organize an Hour of Code event during December 8–14 and register it on the campaign’s website. Anyone can participate; no experience is necessary. Every Hour of Code organizer will receive Dropbox or Skype credit as a thank-you. In addition, one public school in every US state and Washington, D.C., will win $10,000 worth of technology, and 96 classrooms will win video chats with very special guests.
Click Here to Register Your Hour of Code Event
Explore Science—One Game at a Time
Rice University’s CSI Web Adventures is a series of six online interactives, including the CSI web experience. Each of the Web Adventures is appropriate for middle school or high school use. In each adventure, students take on the role of a scientist to solve a crime, conduct experiments and learn about scientific methods and processes. In Cool Science Careers, students explore five STEM-based career areas. The adventure begins with a 21-question interest survey. How students progress through the activity is based in part on how they respond to the interest survey. In MedMyst, students learn about microbiology through a series of interactive lessons and games that focus on infectious diseases and ways to prevent the spread of those diseases. Reconstructors includes three games in which students need to gather evidence and data to solve drug-related cases. Virtual Clinical Trials puts students into the role of research scientists who are working toward developing treatments for spinal cord injuries, depression and brain injuries. In N-Squad, students investigate the effects of alcohol on the digestive, circulatory and nervous systems. The CSI Web Adventures are designed to teach students the process of forensic investigation and problem solving. The CSI web experience includes four cases of increasing difficulty. The Web Adventures are accessible in English and Spanish.
Click Here to Visit Website
Worth-the-Surf Websites
View History Through Different Lenses
On December 7, 1941, the day of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, more than 110,000 people of Japanese descent were living on the West Coast of the United States. Within a few months, this entire population was gone. Out of fears of espionage and sabotage along the Pacific, the US government removed Japanese American men, women and children from their homes and placed them in internment camps in the interior of the country. Two-thirds of the internees were United States citizens. None of them was ever charged with a crime. The Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles presents personal accounts of the internment in an online exhibition, “Dear Miss Breed: Letters from Camp.” Before the war, Clara Estelle Breed was the supervising children’s librarian at the San Diego Public Library, where she came to know many young Japanese Americans. When they were evacuated from San Diego, she was at the train station to see them off. She handed out stamped, self-addressed postcards and urged them to write to her when they reached their destination. In 1993 she gave her collection of more than 250 postcards and letters to one of her correspondents, who later donated the collection to the museum. Four of the “Miss Breed” letters are used in a lesson plan on the study of letters as primary source documents. As students compare the writers’ differing points of view, they may see more clearly that the history of an event or period of time is never a single story.
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Remember Where the Past Is Ever Present
USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education—is partnering with Discovery Education on education components of Auschwitz: The Past is Present, a global communications and education program that will support the official observance of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on January 27, 2015. The Auschwitz–Birkenau State Museum and the International Auschwitz Council are the organizers of the official commemoration event. A major component of the education initiative will include four new activities on the Institute’s free IWitness online educational platform that provides access to more than 1,300 testimonies from survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides. The activities will teach students about the past and encourage them to reflect on how their actions can help make the world a better place. The activities include Growing up “Behind the Barbed Wire” of Auschwitz; Art in the Face of Death; Arrival at Auschwitz – Images and Individual Experiences; and Auschwitz – Inner Strength, Outward Resistance. In all, 16 new activities based on testimony from survivors and witnesses of Auschwitz will be available in IWitness in the coming months leading up to the anniversary of the camp’s liberation.
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Plus: To provide students a deeper understanding of the continued importance of the Holocaust, Discovery Education, in cooperation with USC Shoah Foundation, will bring the 70th anniversary commemoration directly to the classroom through an exclusive Virtual Field Trip. Available to schools across the United States in the spring of 2015, the Virtual Field Trip will provide students with firsthand accounts from survivors and witnesses returning to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and will motivate them to engage in a meaningful dialogue about history and its relevance today.
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Cultivate and Expand Young Minds
The Kid World Citizen website presents an ever-expanding database of age-appropriate, engaging activities gathered from around the world that are organized by topic and by country. The site features games from around the world; global celebrations, holidays and festivals; recipes; multicultural art projects; foreign films for children; world music; reviews on children’s literature related to world cultures; map-reading, geography and geo-literacy activities; family travel; service projects that reach both locally and globally; and many other activities that help cultivate and expand young minds.
Click Here to Visit Website
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