Here are some resources on grants that I’ve gathered in Delicious, a social bookmarking tool that I use to store and share resources: http://delicious.com/district6/grants Some of the grants in this collection have already expired, but are probably up for renewal soon.

There are several great resources that will help schools and teachers find funding and technology for their classroom. There are Donor Matches, Grant Resource Sites, and even a social network for finding grants.

Donor Matches

There are a few sites that allow teachers to put in their requests in a database on a website, where donors can then contribute to help them out. The more well known of these sites is Donors Choose, but I just heard about another, specifically geared for teachers with technology requests on Wes Fryer’s Technology Shopping Cart Podcast, called Digital Wish. It works the same way as Donors Choose, but teachers can go “shopping” for technology needs. Also, I have bookmarked another donor match site called Adopt a Classroom. I haven’t really heard much about this site, but it looks promising.

Grant Resource Sites

Other grant resources are websites that have a collection of educational grants to choose from. I regularly scan sites like Grant Wrangler, ESchool News Funding, and LACOE’s Grants and Funding Site to see what’s available. Additionally, LAUSD’s Grants Assistance Unit offers a regularly updated list of grant resources. Follow the directions on their site to sign up for grant alerts and applications. All of these sites offer deadline grants, as well as ongoing – foundation type grants. They are a great place to start searching for grants that will suit the needs of your school.

Grant Social Network

Grant Wrangler has also started up a social networking site on Ning so that grant seekers and grant givers can interact. You can join at http://mygrantwrangler.ning.com/

Grant Seeking Guidelines

The most important goal to keep in mind when purusing a grant is that it’s not about the technology or goodies that can be bought with a grant, but it’s more an opportunity to do things differently and out of the box to address the learning needs of our students. Once you’ve established what your need is and how you are going to address it, you need to make sure you have buy-in from the staff for the plan you have. I learned a great deal about grant writing from a presentation on grant writing at our District 6 EdTech Cadre meeting a few years ago. It was facilitated by Ms. Pat Sanford of Tech Ed Services. She gave me permission to record and publish her presenation as a podcast. It’s worth a listen for some great tips on grant writing: Grant Writing Workshop. Ms. Sanford refers to a handout during her presenation. If you would like a copy of the handout, please leave a comment on this blog post, and I will be able to send you that information.

Gabcast

We’ll be using Gabcast to leave our reflections about the learning that’s taking place this week. Gabcast is an easy to configure tool that you can set up for any kind of collection of audio recordings. Gabcast has a toll free number that contributors call. You set up a channel number and password that is used in the phone call., and the recording is added to the “podcast”. What’s nice is that individual recordings can be downloaded as .mp3’s to add background music or remix.

User contributed content is easier than ever, now that we have tools that allow us to easily contribute photos through email and recording voice through calling a simple phone call. Using the cell phone to contribute this content is a great way to model how this powerful technology could be used in the classroom.

1. The NECC Ning (A social network for conference attendees, including virtual attendees) Join the ning, and then join some groups. So far, I belong to Digital Storytellers, Moodle, Virtual NECCers, K12Online2008, LOTIMotion, EdubloggerCon, Google in Education, and NECC Unplugged. There are many other groups that may be of interest to you. Browse them and find some of interest to you. Join and begin the conversation and learning.
2. The Edustream.tv Home Page – A place to watch some live broadcasts of various sessions at NECC. This is awesome! Come visit, chat, and learn together.
3. Watch the conversation about NECC on Twitter on a tool called Summerize. Join Twitter and add some of the people you see tweeting about NECC on Summerize to engage in the conversation.
4. Come (virtually) to the Blogger’s Cafe to attend some of the sessions at the “unconference”.
5. Join with all the educators at Saturday’s EdubloggerCon – wish I could be there in person to meet people, but I won’t miss out on the learning. This was the best part of last year’s conference for me.
6. Follow the blog conversations and the images (from Flickr) at the conference aggregator, Hitchhikr and Technorati’s blog, photo, and video search.
7. Subscribe to what people are bookmarking about NECC08 on Delicious, a social bookmarking tool.
8. From NECC’s official site, listen to podcasts and watch videos, and read the blogs from and about various keynotes and selected sessions.

This is just a small sample of how conferences and learning have changed in just a few short years. This is 21st century learning, connecting with people of similar passions to connect, collaborate, learn, and create. Please join me.

twitter id: janstearns

Skype id: janstearns

I believe that students should have plenty of opportunities to learn in an environment that celebrates individuality, uniqueness, and respect.

I believe that caring for classroom animals, playing with blocks, exploring bubbles, singing, dancing, and watching plants grow are necessary components of a Kindergarten classroom. What has happened lately?

I believe that students should have multiple ways to demonstrate their learning, whether in text, mixed media, video, or audio.

I believe the BEST teachers are the ones that miss their kids on the last day of school and reflect on their practice.

I believe that every educator should build a personal learning network that helps them push their thinking and teaching and learning.

I believe that no matter how much you think you aren’t being heard, you keep pushing. Change begins to happen right before your eyes.

I believe we should never perceive ourselves as experts at anything. We’re all learners and there’s just so much to learn.

I believe that this is a very exciting time to be in education – I feel change for the better is in the air.

I’d like to hear from:

John Rivera

Antonio Hernandez

Jose Rodriguez

Mathew Needleman

Edie Walker

That’s why I was so excited to see Chris Lehmann’s Twitter post this morning about Educon 2.1 at the Science Leadership Academy that will take place in January 2009. Chris is the principal at Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia. His leadership and vision makes this school truly exceptional. His thoughtful reflections on his blog, Practical Theory, inspire me to keep moving forward.

Last year, he hosted Educon 2.0 at his school, an informal conference where many edubloggers gathered to see how learning takes place at his school. As in all activities at his school, students were part of the conference. They attended, facilitated workshops, oversaw the virtual connections (which allowed me to attend a few sessions), and in general, were part of the learning going on. I really wanted to attend in person. I want to see his school in person and participate in the learning that happens at this unique conference. I’m not missing it this year, and I’m going to bring along leaders in my local district. I’m working on it now…

Ideas are coming together in our district. From our conversations in the district office, we are seeking ways to grow and change. Tomorrow, the Superintendent, several Directors, … and I … will be traveling down the coast to San Diego to visit two innovative schools, The San Diego MET School and High Tech High School.

The San Diego MET is an innovative school the holds its classes on the local community college campus. Students don’t learn just from the classrooms, but participate in internships. Mildred Phillips, the principal, shared that all 51 graduates this year will be attending 4 year universities or community colleges. Project based learning is the norm in this school.

High Tech High School is equally based on project based learning. Students study the world through authentic learning opportunities, from working with the San Diego Zoo to building pool tables to study “how impulse, momentum and angles play a big part in society through sports and games.” Wow!

We’ll take what we learn and create our own path. I’m excited. This, and a chance to visit Educon 2.1 in January 2009, makes going to work so rewarding.

Bell High School
South Gate High School
Huntington Park High School
South East High School
Maywood Academy
South East Middle School

You can tell that some of the schools have student created entries. Some of the articles are really quite good, but need some editing. Others need quite a bit of work. All haven’t been updated in quite some time – probably since our external IP was banned from Wikipedia. There was abuse to Wikipedia articles from our domain, so Wikipedia has blocked the entire domain from editing. This was a few years ago. As far as I know, no one can update Wikipedia articles from within our district firewall since then.

This causes a problem. If no one is updating these articles, then they will never be of high quality.They will never reflect our schools for some of the great things that happen there. Just this morning, there was an article in the LA Times written about an outstanding new teacher at South East Middle School. (Thanks Paul B. for telling me about it.) That should be linked to the SouthEast Middle School entry.

Since students and teachers can’t access the editing features from within the firewall, maybe we need to find other means of updating and maintaining these entries. Maybe students should have this responsibility as part of their homework. For those with internet access, they could be writing about their schools. What could be more authentic? They could also monitor the pages. This could be a shared responsibility between students, teachers, all staff and parents. The community could join together for something positive. This could be a very positive step into beginning to “get” 21st century literacies.

Thanks, Jeff, for posting this article to spark my thinking. I will be calling together interested educators from all our schools to see if we can figure out how to make this work as an authentic learning experience for all of us. I think this is extremely important.

.. Now if I only knew how to find profiles on FaceBook. All I see are students from those schools, but not much about the schools. I’m sure I’m missing something…

Note: After looking at the history pages of all the entries, it is apparent that some editing and revising has taken place recently. However, there certainly isn’t enough there to represent the schools well. It was interesting to see the discussion on the Bell entry. An alumni from the graduating class of 1965 had entered that the school colors were purple and white, and it had been changed by a more recent graduate. It’s interesting to see how those that contribute collaborate on the writing.