Great conferences and more grants!

Each year there are a couple of great conferences scheduled in North Carolina where you can hear other area teachers just like yourselves sharing their experiences about using technology in teaching and learning. If you have the opportunity I would strongly encourage you to attend.

• North Carolina Educational Technology Conference - typically held the week after Thanksgiving weekend each year in Greensboro at the Koury Convention Center. I often drive over just for the day.
• North Carolina Association for Educational Communications and Technology - typically held in March - this past year in Research Triangle, next year at Concord Mills near Charlotte. Check out their Teaching with Technology grants - three grants of $3000 each awarded for "innovative, student-involved projects which effectively use technology." Recipients are also expected to present a session describing the results at the next year's conference (registration and lodging paid for).

At the national level, there is the annual National Educational Computing Conference that moves around the country. This year's conference was last week in Atlanta. Next year's is in San Antonio. Check out the NECC 2007 podcasting page to listen to selected sessions or the blogging NECC page to read blogs of many different participants.

Grant opportunity links

Another find while messing with United Streaming - the Discovery Education Implementation Blog.

Check out this post entitled Show Me the Grants that has links to sites that offer technology grants to teachers - check the comments too for sources suggested by readers of the post.

I'd also highly recommend as I did in an earlier email that you email Annemarie Timmerman (atimmerm@dpi.state.nc.us) at DPI and ask her to include you on her email list for the North Central Region update for news, opportunities, and reminders of upcoming dates.

Virtual Manipulatives

Here is the site Professor Richardson demonstrated with virtual manipulatives.

National Library of Virtual Manipulatives

She also asked me to let you all know that the NC Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCCTM) sponsors mini grants. As noted on the NCCTM grant information page:

A total of $15,000 is available each year for the mini-grants, with each region [of the state] awarding approximately $5000 in grants to its members. In recent years, approximately 30-35 proposals have been partially or fully funded, for an average grant of just less than $800.