Raise the Level of Family and School Involvement
UPS Foundation Education Grants fund high-impact philanthropic programs that raise the level of educational instruction, family learning opportunities and school involvement projects. The size of the award varies.
Deadline: Ongoing
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Support Youth Service Projects
Clay Aiken Able-to-Serve Grants support implementation of service projects for National and Global Youth Service Day, April 20–22, 2007. Projects can address themes such as the environment, disaster relief, public health and awareness, community education, hunger, literacy and any other issues that youth identify as a community need. Those eligible for the $1,000 award include youth (aged 5–25); teachers and youth leaders; organizations that work with youth aged 5–25 or organizations that serve people with disabilities. Projects must be either youth-led or co-led by youth and adult allies.
Deadline: November 30, 2006
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Provide Arts Programs for At-Risk Students
National Education Association (NEA) Fine Arts grants are awarded to teachers, through local NEA affiliates, to enable them to create and implement fine arts programs that promote learning among students at risk of school failure. Programs must address the arts (painting, sculpture, photography, music, theater, dance, design, media or folk arts). For 2006–2007, members of the National Education Association who teach at grades 6–12 in a U.S. public school serving economically disadvantaged students are eligible for the $2,000 award.
Deadline: December 15, 2006
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Get a Free Translation Service
¡Tradúcelo Ahora! (Translate Now!) is IBM’s grant program designed to open up a world of services and information on the Internet for Spanish speakers, using automatic English to Spanish translation. Teachers at 120 schools registered with IBM’s free ¡Tradúcelo Ahora! program can send email translated into the native language of their pupils’ Spanish-speaking parents and receive replies from them translated into English. If you would like to take advantage of the free translation services available, you must be affiliated with one of the organizations participating in the ¡Tradúcelo Ahora! grant program. Find a list of participating organizations on the site linked below.
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Recognize Exemplary Literacy Educators
The National Center for Family Literacy/Toyota Family Literacy Teacher of the Year Award is given to an educator who demonstrates exemplary efforts in family literacy to help parents and children achieve their academic, personal and professional goals. To be eligible for the $5,000 award, nominees must have worked for at least three years in a literacy program that provides children’s education, adult education, parenting education (Parent Time) and interactive literacy activities between parents and children (Parent and Child Together—PACT—Time).
Deadline: December 1, 2006
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Write to an Inspirational Author
Student submissions to Letters About Literature (LAL), a national writing contest sponsored by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress in partnership with Target, are now being accepted. To enter, young readers write a letter to an author, past or present, describing how that author’s work somehow changed the student’s view of the world or of himself/herself. The contest, which focuses on reader response and reflective writing, has three competition levels: Level 1 for students in grades 4–6; Level 2 for students in grades 7 and 8; Level 3 for students in grades 9–12. Winners on the state level each receive a cash award as well as a $50 Target GiftCard. Six national finalists and their parents will travel to Washington, D.C., courtesy of Target. The national winners also receive a $500 Target GiftCard.
Deadline: December 8, 2006
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Bring the Gift of Reading to Children
The 2007 NEA Books Across America Library Books Awards will bring the gift of reading to students affected by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. Practicing preK–12 teachers or education support professionals in public schools in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas are eligible for the $5,000 award.
Deadline: December 14, 2006
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Explore the World of Wikis
Want to learn more about using and even creating Wikis? John Hubbard of the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Libraries has prepared a free online video course covering the benefits and disadvantages of the Wiki format.
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Recognize and Respond to Early Learning Difficulties
The National Center for Learning Disabilities, in collaboration with the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, the National Association for the Education of Young Children, the Communication Consortium Media Center and several key state partners, has launched a Web site full of free resources based on the Recognition & Response system. The system is a research-based approach to helping teachers and parents respond to signs of learning difficulty in young children as early as age 3 or 4, before they experience school failure. The site offers articles, checklists and fact sheets with action-oriented information. It also offers policy statements, legislative summaries, and research papers and reports that can help early-learning professionals integrate the Recognition & Response system into their programs. In addition, a wide variety of resources is available to help teachers with observing and recording behavior, progress monitoring, engaging parents as partners and more.
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Get High-Quality Evaluations of Educational Programs
Which educational programs have been successfully evaluated in valid scientific research? The Center for Data-Driven Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University has created a free Web site called the Best Evidence Encyclopedia (The BEE), which contains educator-friendly summaries of research on educational programs as well as links to the full-text scientific reviews. The reviews, written by many qualified individuals and organizations, focus on the programs educators should consider in order to improve their students’ achievement: math and reading programs, comprehensive school reforms, technology applications and more.
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Motivate Young Minds
Published with the Smithsonian magazine, ASK^® encourages young readers to explore the world with the greatest inventors, artists, thinkers and scientists of the past and present, discovering how the ideas that shaped our lives were formed. Recent issues covered, for example, the solar system, deserts, how (and why) money works, the human body, how wild animals stay healthy and volcanoes. This broad-ranging magazine is modeled after adult magazines in that it has a mix of short and long articles, but it’s more focused in that each issue has one central topic or theme. To stay kid friendly, content-heavy articles are balanced with content-related comic strips and fun activities. Click below to view a sample article and accompanying activities and to find subscription information.
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Monitor the Activities of the National ICT Literacy Policy Council
The National ICT (Information and Communication Technology) Literacy Policy Council was formed in October 2006 to provide leadership in creating national standards for ICT Literacy. The Council will review current ICT literacy and information literacy assessments and standards documents, determine the number of assessment levels, name those levels (such as advanced proficiency, acceptable proficiency and minimal proficiency) and provide descriptions for each level. The Council will also recruit subpanels to review the ICT Literacy Assessment, an online, interactive test of students’ ICT literacy created by Educational Testing Service. The subpanels will determine cut points for each of the performance levels so that students who score above a cut point will be considered more ICT literate than students who score below that cut point.
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Clarifying the eRate Program
The Federal Communications Commission has issued its annual Eligible Services List (ESL) of qualifying technologies and services for the upcoming year’s eRate program and announced that libraries’ and schools’ eRate filing window will run from November 14, 2006 to February 7, 2007. This year’s ESL makes voiceover Internet protocol eligible for eRate discounts, clarifies rules on redundant components and provides more guidance on qualifying technology training services, among other changes.
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Determining Fair Use in the Digital Age
The issue of what constitutes fair use in today’s digital world confounds many educators. “Fair Use in the Digital Environment,” an article in Reference & User Services Quarterly (RUSQ ), addresses this issue in detail and lists an extensive array of resources. For details, read the full article, available online or as a downloadable PDF file.
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Identifying Practices of High-Performing Schools
The National High School Center has released a report on key practices and policies of higher-performing high schools. The study identifies patterns of practice found in higher-performing schools, schools that promote rigorous student achievement across entire student populations. Successful schools set explicit academic goals that are aligned with and often exceed state standards, provide focused professional development activities that support a culture of collaboration, encourage educators to use differentiation strategies to reach students at all levels, use data to make decisions about teaching, and recognize student and teacher achievement within a context of support.
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Learning About Online Learning
Thirty-eight states now regulate or sponsor virtual learning programs, while enrollment in online K–12 courses has soared over the past year, finds a report released by the North American Council for Online Learning at its annual Virtual School Symposium. The organization also released the results of a separate survey that provides snapshots of virtual learning programs in 30 different countries.
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Investigate the First Thanksgiving
At the Plimoth Plantation’s You Are the Historian Web site, students become history detectives as they investigate the first Thanksgiving. Some historians think that “The First Thanksgiving” wasn’t really a thanksgiving. They call it “The 1621 Harvest Celebration” because it was more like a harvest festival. On this Web site, students use clues to try to figure out what really happened at the 1621 harvest celebration. They are guided by Dancing Hawk, a Wampanoag whose ancestors were at the harvest celebration, and by Sarah, whose ancestor, Remember Allerton, was at the celebration too. If students don’t know the meaning of a word they encounter, they can use the online Glossary. Or if they want an expert opinion, they can go to Visit the Expert.
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Find Opportunities for Making a Difference
If you’d like to make a difference, Idealist.org will help you find the best option for you. The site lists more than 10,000 volunteer opportunities, which you can search by location, dates you would like to serve, skills and type of service (arts, children, disaster relief, race, wildlife and so on). Sign up for My Idealist, and you’ll be able to get email updates about nonprofit opportunities, join discussion groups and create a profile so that organizations can find you. Idealist.org has a wealth of other information on internships, careers, job fairs and events, and fundraising, plus resources and tips for volunteers.
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Plus: Check out the section for kids and teens who are curious, optimistic, seeking help or looking to help others. Under For Teachers, you’ll find free online resources created to help you introduce issues such as environmental conservation, human rights and artistic expression to your students.
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