Newsletter December 11
Delicious and Online Activities Grants
I recently sent out the video below that hopefully explains our Delicious and Online Activities/Lessons grants. Teachers who have done the work are having fabulous success with it, so please check this out. If you have any questions about the grant, please email me.
Here is the link to the video: http://www.screencast.com/t/ODVmNDAxMjE
This grant is not set in stone; you can modify it to your own needs. We want teachers to use technology that will help them reach their students, so think about how one of our grants would help you do that and then throw the idea by us.
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Teacher as Leader Program Updates
We’ve updated our Teacher as Leader program a bit. If you don’t know about the program, please read here. The original limit of $2500 per district has been removed. It’s first come first serve for those who would like to take advantage of the program. The Teacher as Leader program is an attempt to get more workshops into our schools with teachers as the leaders of the workshops. We hope that teachers will want to share their expertise with their colleagues. If you have any questions, please let me know. My contact information is on our About page.
TEACHER AS LEADER WORKSHOP PROGRAM
The purpose of this new grant will be to allow teachers in our two-county membership area to lead workshops after school, weekdays, or staff development days. They will develop the workshop, get it approved locally (and ultimately by the Teacher Center), and get reimbursed for their work from the Teacher Center. Because of the Teacher Center’s collaboration with BOCES, districts that use the BOCES coser 529-Effective Schools can be reimbursed for teacher stipends if they decide to compensate teachers for attendance at these workshops. The Teacher Center will not compensate attendees, only workshop presenters.
Workshops can be on any professional development topic deemed appropriate by the district level team. The Teacher Center will help to promote the workshop. This can encourage attendance from neighboring districts. It could also help to stimulate others to run similar workshops in their districts.
Specifics of the grant program:
- Teacher develops an idea for a locally based workshop and submits the idea to their local PD team or other appropriate district level people or teams.
- Policy Board members or representatives of the member are to introduce the program at faculty meeting(s) so that all teachers are aware of the program.
- District receives the workshop idea and submits it to the Teacher Center for final approval.
- The Teacher Center will review each grant proposal submitted by the district. The original deadline for applications has been eliminated.
- There is no longer a dollar limit in effect per district. First come first served for the grant money. The Teacher can decide about funding on a case by case basis.
- Teacher instructors will be paid $35 per workshop hour by the Teacher Center. Up to 2 hours of prep time at $35 per hour will be allowed for the first occurrence of the workshop. Other prep time pay will at the discretion of the district team.
- At least 90% of each grant will be used for trainer stipends with a 10% maximum allotment for materials.
- Districts that use the BOCES coser 529-Effective Schools can be reimbursed for teacher stipends if they decide to compensate teachers for attendance at these workshops. The Teacher Center will not compensate attendees, only workshop presenters. Attendee compensation is a local decision.
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Tutorials Posted Again
A couple of years ago, I posted some tutorials on our site. They were taken down when I switched to this new format. You can get them again by going to our Tech Links page. I used Camtasia Studio to make them. I’ll soon be making some more videos about some grant opportunities.
A few teachers are currently working on grants using screen casting technology to make tutorials for their specific classes. For example, Jodi Brown from Fillmore is making some Photoshop tutorials about the parts of the program she wants her students to learn. I will post links to them once they are up and running. These videos provide a great way to show how to complete specific tasks or even provide detailed project instructions that can replayed over and over. You can even get a free account at www.screencast.com that allows you to store up to 2 gigabytes of files (that’s a lot o’ files). If you have any questions pertaining to screen casting and/or about grants for learning the programs and incorporating them into your teaching, let me know. My contact info is on the About page.
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Events a Big Success So Far
Our events have been a big success so far this year. We had over 60 people for Chick Moorman’s seminar on November 6 and over 50 for Dr. Mendler on Oct. 30. We’re almost up to our limit of 200 for Dr. Jean on December 4. Planning is in the works for other events that are based on your input, so keep those ideas coming. To see our calendar, please click on the Calendar of Events page on the right. For those workshops that have a corresponding survey, a link is there in case you’d like to review it.
