ING Unsung Heroes Grant for Educators

If you are a K-12 educator, you can apply for the ING Unsung Heroes grant program. ING is looking for educators who are using new teaching methods and techniques to help students learn. Those who apply will need to describe projects they are working on with students or projects they would like to pursue. Each educator project will be “judged on its innovative method, creativity, and ability to positively influence students.” One hundred educators will receive awards of $2000 and the three top winners will receive $5000, $10000, and $25000. The deadline is 01/30/11.

Shell Science Lab Challenge

Middle and high school teachers (Grades 6-12) in the United States and Canada are eligible to apply for National Science Teachers Association Shell Science Lab Challenge Grants. Describe your successes with your students in your science lab. It may not be the fanciest or best-equipped lab around, but it’s what you do with it and your students that counts. Your entry could get you a $20,000 science lab makeover package, professional development opportunities, and all the science tools you may have dreamed of for your students. To receive an application, email shellsciencelab@nsta. Application deadline is 01/01/11.

Teachers Dream Online Network: A “Dating” Site for Teachers & Scientists

The Baltimore Sun reports that in Maryland state education officials, business leaders, and twenty-nine teachers joined to brainstorm what they thought would be a dream online network to help teachers with the teaching of STEM subjects. Out of this meeting came STEMnet Teacher Hub, which will start its work with biology and then expand to other STEM subjects. The network will make the latest in research available to teachers and will allow teachers to share and comment on each others’ lesson plans. The Maryland educators are thinking of it as sort of a Wikipedia that can handle comments and changes from teachers.  Teachers on TeacherHub will be able to connect with top researchers at places like Northrop Grumman, NASA, University of Maryland, and Johns Hopkins.  If you could design a dream teacher network for your subject or grade level, what would it be?

Award of Excellence for Geometer’s Sketchpad

Technology & Learning Magazine presented an Award of Excellence to Geometer’s Sketchpad, Version 5, a downloadable application for Windows and Mac that offers students visual learning in mathematics. Key Curriculum Press offers The Geometer’s Sketchpad Version 5 and Sketchpad Lessons with its Sketchpad bundles. Sketchpad also has a teacher lesson link that features over 500 ideas for use of the devices in classrooms from elementary school through college. If you’d like to see how Sketchpad can help you enhance student learning in mathematics, you’ll want to look at the video Sketchpad snapshots that are available on site and also browse through the Getting Started and teacher materials. As a student said, “It can pretty much do everything that is math.” Teachers commented that it gives students instant feedback in a very relaxed environment.  One said, “It’s the missing link we’ve been waiting for all these years.”

Time to Think About e-Rate

November is a good time to get your e-Rate applications going. On the first form, #470, you list the services/products your school or library wishes to purchase for the coming school year. A list of eligible services is available on the USAC Schools & Libraries site. The items on your #470 must be posted at least 28 days before you can file the next form #471, which will feature the services and providers you have selected to use. You’ll usually need to file #471 by late January or early February. After this filing, USAC works through the applications submitted and makes determinations about funding. Representatives often call applicants to verify information or to request additional information. Once funding is approved, you’ll need to file form #486. The next step is to work with those providing the services/products to determine whether you wish reimbursements or wish to have discounts taken from your billing. It can all be quite confusing, especially when USAC representatives call you for details several months after a form has been submitted. That’s when you need to get your mind back in e-Rate gear, find all those forms and documentation and send the rep whatever is needed.  There’s help online at USAC, though, and you can always talk to a “real” person on the telephone to get answers to your questions.

What’s Your Opinion of Pens & Pencils in Classrooms?

Katie Stansberry on the site Mind/Shift: How We Learn offers 10 Reasons to Ban Pens & Pencils in the Classroom. Her reasons include: they are distracting, dangerous, unhealthy, and messy and can be used to bully, cheat, play games, and embarrass teachers. Sounds like some of the problems we face with use of technologies and the Internet and may always face with students. Will enriching lessons through interactive technologies take away some of these problems. One wonders.

What Are We Doing Wrong with Professional Development?

Is our current system of professional development for teachers “mediocre” and “scattershot training” and “apart from doing little to help students, a burden for teachers”? These descriptions come from an article by Stephen Shawchuk in Education Week (11/10/10). Teachers say they do the same things over and over during inservice education and don’t like it.  M. Hayes Mizell, Learning Forward Fellow, comments that professional development “has tolerated a lot of sloppy thinking, practice, and results.” So, we know that much of how we are trying to help teachers improve isn’t working. But what will? How do we connect teacher evaluation and step-by-step teaching in classrooms with what each teacher needs? Will more efficient ways of evaluation, self-evaluation, and individualized staff development evolve with new technologies?

New Mavis Beacon Typing: Type a Novel, A Song, Today’s News

The folks at Mac Kiev, who have updated many of the most popular software programs of the past and made them ready for today’s computers, have put their creative powers to work in Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, 2011 Ultimate Mac Edition. It has options such as allowing students to type the text of novels like Treasure Island or Pride and Prejudice for practice. Not just parts, whole novels if they want. Of course, your students won’t be typing entire novels in one sitting and probably will only want to do parts, but the Mavis’ automatic bookmarks will take them to the exact section where they left off. Or they can practice by typing in the latest news from BBC or by working on song lyrics. The program costs less than $40 and works with ages six through adult.

National Novel Writing Month for You & Your Students

November is National Novel Writing Month, and you and your students are invited to write novels and submit them. There’s no judging, just certificates of achievement for managing to work industriously on writing skills throughout the month. Could be a great classroom or home assignment activity. The site is called NaNoWriMo, which means, of course, National Novel Writing Month. To help with motivation, there’s a video, a Procrastination Station, fun stuff, and lots of ideas. If you miss the November deadline, you can always use the material available on the site.

Foreign Language Studies Affected by Economy

In today’s world, it’s important for students to learn to understand the languages of others, but in these tough economic times, can schools afford  to continue to offer a variety of foreign languages to students? According to an article in Education Week, Strapped Schools Ax Foreign Languages, this elimination “Undermines a skill that economists and educators agree is one of the most overlooked but essential navigation skills in a global economy.” In many other parts of the world, schools “make second and third languages compulsory” and this learning begins with elementary-age students. For our students to be able to keep up in a global economy and for our security as a nation, learning foreign languages seems to be a must. Perhaps online courses in language instruction will be the answer?