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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Write for a Purpose, Problem-solve with Games, Defeat Bullying & More
January 15, 2015
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IN THIS ISSUE
Grants, Competitions and Other "Winning" Opportunities
Resource Roundup
Online Learning Plus
Mobile Learning Journey
STEM Gems
Worth-the-Surf Websites
Grants, Competitions and Other "Winning" Opportunities
Make the World a Better Place
The DuPont Challenge encourages students to delve deep into their interests in science, technology, engineering and math and share their ideas in an essay for how science can help keep the global population supplied with food, safety and clean energy. Students’ essays must be between 700 and 1,000 words in length, include a list of research sources and fall under one of these categories: Together, we can feed the world. Together, we can build a secure energy future. Together, we can protect people and the environment. Together, we can be innovative anywhere. The first-place winner will receive a US Savings Bond of $5,000 at maturity; an expenses-paid trip to Orlando, Florida; the Britannica Digital Learning ebook collection, including the Britannica Illustrated Science Library (67 ebook volumes total); and Britannica’s five iOS science apps. Awards will also be given for second place, third place and honorable mention. Students currently enrolled in grades 6–12 in public, private or home schools in the United States, Canada or their territories are eligible for the award.
Deadline: January 31, 2015, for essays
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Champion the Arts in Education
Americans for the Arts celebrates its fourth year of partnering with Vans for the Custom Culture student arts and design contest. Vans Custom Culture was created to inspire and empower high school students to embrace their creativity through art and design, and to bring attention to diminishing arts education budgets. Custom Culture is a national high school art competition during which students customize four pairs of blank Vans shoes around four themes: Art, Music, Action Sports and Local Flavor. The Top 5 Finalists will be flown to the Final Event in New York City, where a Grand Prize winner will be determined. The Grand Prize winner will receive $50,000 for their high school’s art program and a chance for their designs to be sold in Vans retail stores. Four runners-up will each receive $4,000 toward their schools’ art programs.
Deadline: Registration closes on February 13, 2015.
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Participate in an Ideas Festival
Sponsored by the Bezos Family Foundation, the Bezos Scholars Program at the Aspen Institute seeks students who are independent thinkers, demonstrated leaders and engaged community members. Student scholars meet one another and engage in seminars and informal meetings with the international leaders, acclaimed thinkers and creative artists who participate in the annual Aspen Ideas Festival, June 27–July 3, 2015. Following attendance at the Aspen Ideas Festival, the student/educator scholar teams will return home and create Local Ideas Festivals in their schools. Applicants must attend public high schools (including charter and magnet schools) where at least 25 percent of students are eligible for the free/reduced lunch program. Potential scholars must be legal US citizens or Permanent Residents in their junior year with a GPA of 3.5 or higher and be taking Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate classes. Scholar applicants should demonstrate leadership in school and the community and have scored exceptionally well on PSAT/SAT/or ACT.
Deadline: February 17, 2015, for applications
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Experience the Science Fair in Cyberspace
eCYBERMISSION, a free web-based STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) competition offered by the Army Educational Outreach Program, challenges students in grades 6–9 to identify a problem in their community and then propose a solution by using scientific practices or engineering design processes. Students have a chance to be awarded up to $9,000 in savings bonds. Teams are composed of three to four students and one adult Team Advisor, all from the same grade and same state, which compete against thousands of their peers to be named as a State First-Place Winning Team, which may allow them a chance to compete at the regional level and possibly the national level. The awards will be presented during the 2015 eCYBERMISSION National Judging and Educational Event (NJ&EE). Teams that make it to the regional level have an additional chance of competing for the STEM in Action Grant (up to $5,000 per team) to implement their solution in their community and are chosen independent of the selection of eCYBERMISSION national winners. Students, educators and volunteers are encouraged to get involved with the eCYBERMISSION STEM competition and help make a real-life difference.
Deadlines: Submission of Mission Folders: February 25, 2015, at 11:59 p.m. (EST). Visit website for full competition timeline.
Click Here for More Information About the Competition
Click Here for More Information About How to Become a Volunteer Judge
Supplement Your Stretched Budget
GetEdFunding is a free 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 3,600 (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’s range of laptop, netbook, tablet and Chromebook carts is 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.
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Build a Caring and Respectful School Culture
Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy is a free downloadable guide for middle school and high school teachers to help students explore the ramifications of bullying by studying the stories of several real-life students who have been harassed online or at school.
Click Here to Download Free Guide
Plus: The Making Caring Common Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education offers a free downloadable toolkit that includes tips, tools and strategies to help educators build a more caring and respectful school culture and climate and teach students to expand their personal circles of concern. The toolkit includes Strategy Guides—step-by-step implementation guides that aim to increase empathy, positive relationships and more; and Resource Lists—compilations of websites and resources by topic (for example, social media).
Click Here to Access Free Toolkit
Encourage Students to Become Historians
Fifty years ago, the Selma voting rights campaign grabbed the nation’s attention and helped lead to the passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. A new movie, “Selma,” portrays that movement to secure free and fair voting rights for all. The New York Times Learning Network offers a free online lesson that encourages students to become historians—to read original Times reporting on the Selma marches and uncover important distinctions between primary and secondary sources. In the Going Further section, students have the opportunity to make connections between Selma and today, as they look more closely at the decisions made by Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Click Here to Access Free Lesson
Make Poetry Appealing to Tech-Savvy Students
The SpokenVerse channel on YouTube offers more than 400 readings of great poems in English, from Shakespeare to today’s poets. For example, students can listen to William Blake’s “The Tyger” read by Tom O’Bedlam. The reading is accompanied by artwork of Blake’s original poem from Songs of Experience, which was designed after 1789 and printed around 1829. The text of the poem also appears, with punctuation to match the original.
Click Here to Listen to Free Poetry Readings
Please the Art Critic
Everyone’s a Critic is a friendly game of observation and persuasion designed by the Institute of Play in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. In this game, two or more students assume the roles of Artists or Critics and try to outwit and outplay their opponents while discovering works of art. As MoMA’s museum educators look outside the field of education to what behaviors are truly engaging, they have embraced games as models for learning in the 21st century. By encouraging students to make the museum experience a more social one through dialogue and debate, Everyone’s a Critic provides a model for the type of engagement that cultural institutions can foster with new approaches to learning design. Everyone’s a Critic can be played in any museum or gallery, anywhere in the world.
Click Here to Download Free Game
Online Learning Plus
Make a Difference in the Classroom
On January 20, 2015, at 5 p.m. (ET), the Amazing Resources for Educators community and edWeb.net will host a free webinar entitled “The Decisive Element: Defining Your Ability to Be the Difference,” sponsored by Quill.com. From the cultivation of one’s particular teaching persona to developing structures for continuous professional growth, this webinar will present lessons learned from the classroom. Sean McComb, 2014 National Teacher of the Year, will lead a rich discussion on the question that drives his own work: How do I cultivate an educational experience worthy of my students? From strategies that can be applied in the classroom tomorrow to driving questions that will ruminate in the mind for months, K–12 educators from all subject areas will find this session both inspiring and practical. Sean will field questions from attendees at the end of his presentation. The webinar will be recorded and archived in the community after the event.
Click Here to Register for Free Webinar
Bring 21st Century Skills into High School
Learning.com’s Project NextTech is a high school digital literacy course that helps prepare students for success in high school, college and their future career opportunities. The content is based on curriculum developed by the nonprofit Generation YES through years of research and student and teacher feedback. Project NextTech addresses the 24 performance indicators in the ISTE Standards for Students and provides authentic learning experiences along with opportunities for students to demonstrate their skills through projects and a final portfolio. Project NextTech’s curriculum is organized around three core topics: Technology Literacy in which students develop technology skills and the ability to select the right tool for the context and audience. Information Literacy in which students locate and access information, evaluate information critically and competently, and use information effectively and ethically. And Media Literacy in which students access, analyze, evaluate and create media in all its forms. Spanning two semesters, Project NextTech is divided into four nine-week curriculum blocks consisting of eight weeks of instruction and a one-week project. Each unit includes a teacher preparation section, student overview and performance-based activities to help educators evaluate student understanding. Project NextTech will be available for schools to implement starting January 2015.
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Develop Effective Writing Practices
Adventures in Writing is a series of graphic novel–style learning modules designed by Stanford University to help students learn more about and practice a range of effective written communication skills. In this free online course, students will immerse themselves in the adventures of Maya and Chris, using each module’s interactive exercises to apply what they’ve learned. Writing instructors in Stanford’s Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) designed the modules to reflect PWR’s philosophy that the best academic and real-world communication practices require thinking about more than “correctness” or just getting things right—students must actively consider what they’re trying to achieve with a specific audience for a specific purpose. Through joining Maya and Chris on their adventures, students will develop their abilities to communicate in writing—from punctuation and style to argument—increasing the power of their language in the classroom and beyond. The course focuses on the following issues critical to writing success: academic language; purpose, audience and context: language as communication; identifying active and passive voice; punctuation: signposts to guide readers; and argument: making and supporting claims. Classes began on January 12, but registration is still open.
Click Here to Visit Website
Mobile Learning Journey
Open the Doors to Game Making
Pixel Press Floors: Draw Your Own Video Game for the iPad and iPhone provides an engaging way to capture the interest of students who love games but are a bit intimidated by the technological skill it takes to make one. First students hand-draw their levels using a pencil, grid paper and specific markings, called glyphs, and then Pixel Press transforms that schematic into a modifiable, playable and sharable digital version. The physical-to-digital transformation opens doorways to game making for students more analogically inclined.
Click Here to Access Free App
Think As a Professional Developer
Run Marco is a free “adventurous coding game” by Allcancode that students can play on an iPad, Android, Kindle Fire or online. Players learn coding by guiding Marco through a series of levels as he tries to discover himself. In this journey, students will learn how to think as a professional developer, one step at a time, although they won’t be creating code from scratch. Based on an original story by a children’s literature writer, the game was designed for six to 12 year olds by a team of experts in computer programming, game design and teaching technology in schools. At present the first 10 levels are available, with more to come soon.
Click Here to Access Free Game
STEM Gems
Get into the Field
National Geographic (NG) invites the next generation of explorers to get out in the field and follow in the footsteps of National Geographic’s photographers, writers and scientists during summer 2015. On a National Geographic Student Expedition, you and your students might snorkel with marine biologists in Belize, go on photo shoots with a National Geographic photographer in Paris or help out with a community project in Nepal. On each program, students get immersed in the local culture, interacting directly with community members and learning about their daily life. Then they set out to discover the area on outdoor excursions. All of the trips allow students to dig deeper into a country’s landscape and culture, and to develop their own story through a hands-on project, such as crafting a photography portfolio, creating a field guide or making a video. To help students prepare, National Geographic will provide books, magazines or maps about their destination so students can get the most from their trip. Students will also receive a complimentary one-year subscription to a National Geographic magazine of their choice. Applications are carefully reviewed by National Geographic’s Admissions Committee, and students are selected on the basis of their maturity, enthusiasm, motivation and willingness to live and participate constructively in a supportive community environment.
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Dread a Bump on the Head
From a tackle in a football game to a fall on an icy sidewalk or a car accident, the dangers of traumatic brain injury are real and sometimes even fatal. To help educate students about traumatic brain injury and heighten their awareness and ability to make informed decisions, Project NEURON at the University of Illinois developed The Golden Hour. Named for the critical time period after a traumatic injury when swift and apt medical treatment has the greatest potential for saving a patient’s life, The Golden Hour is an educational computer game that immerses students in a medical case study that takes place in this decisive timeframe. Players must save the life of a patient, Quinn Shepard, who has suffered a traumatic brain injury. To succeed, they must learn and apply neuroscience concepts and use sound reasoning skills to properly diagnose and treat the patient. The Golden Hour is an engaging case study–based tool that helps students learn science content and practices.
Click Here to Access Free Game
Plus: Teacher materials have been developed specifically to support classroom use of The Golden Hour game. The “mini-curriculum” contains three lessons that correspond with the three main scenes of the game and support the concepts of neuroscience and traumatic brain injury presented in the game. The teacher materials also include a short overview of the game, including quick-start instructions, a description of what happens in each scene and an explanation of different ways the game can be utilized.
Click Here to Access Free Teacher Materials
Explore Chemical Elements in a New Way
The team at Periodic Videos has created a TED-Ed lesson for every element of the periodic table. For example, students can view the video on aluminium (aluminum), a metal once as precious as gold, now used for wrapping a sandwich. Or the video about hydrogen and an exploding balloon. What makes the fireball?
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Plus: Engage students with the new Periodic Table Song in this video from AsapSCIENCE. Also find the lyrics under the “More” link.
Click Here to Access Free Video and Lyrics
Worth-the-Surf Websites
Experience a Rich and Intimate History
Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were the most prominent members of one of the most important families in American history. All three overcame personal obstacles as they independently—and collectively—transformed the model of a nation’s responsibility to its citizens and the wider world. Students can navigate a timeline of key events during Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s lifetimes using photos, quotations and clips from Ken Burns’s The Roosevelts: An Intimate History.
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Delve into Photographs from the Great Depression
During the Great Depression, photographers fanned out across the country to capture the United States. The photographers continued taking pictures during the early 1940s, when the country was focused on World War II. A team at Yale University has produced Photogrammar, a site that allows you to look at the photos from the Library of Congress, county by county, across the country. Photogrammar is a web-based platform for organizing, searching and visualizing the 170,000 photographs from 1935 to 1945 created by the United States Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information (FSA-OWI). An interactive map plots the approximately 90,000 photographs that have geographical information. Customize your search by photographer, date and place. Delve into the Photogrammar Labs where visualizations techniques are being used in order to shed new light on the archive.
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Explore Historical Documents in Context
History can come alive in classrooms around the country under a new project that enables students to access a trove of old data that can help them discover their own places in the broad sweep of the American story. The for-profit online family history company Ancestry.com has opened its collection of historical documents to schools for free, drawing on help from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to guide teachers in using them in their classrooms. The idea behind the project is to help students look at historical documents, analyze them and put them in context. Teachers in elementary, middle and high schools apply through the Ancestry.com website for access to its material, which under the program will be granted only to computers used in schools.
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