Professional Development Grant

I recently had the opportunity to attend ISTE's (International Society of Technology Educators) national conference in Atlanta. One of the perks was chatting and meeting new people. I happened to meet the teacher pictured above while waiting for a session on how to create games/advanced actions in PowerPoint (great session by the way!). We bonded over her nails (hence her hand position in the picture - they were Jamberry Nails and a friend of mine started to selling them so they stood out :)

While we were chatting she said that she wrote a grant to attend the conference (she was from Oklahoma). Apparently this grant (Fund for Teachers) paid for EVERYTHING...including her laptop, laptop bag, etc. She wrote everything she would need for the conference into the grant (I want to say the total grant she wrote was for $3,000). This was super impressive. She said in the grand scheme of things she thought small. Apparently a person wrote a grant to study programming using Scratch software...in Spain!

She is blocked for applying for another grant for three years but she said watch out in year three :).

Sadly I am ineligible to apply for a grant because 50% of your direct instruction time needs to be with children. I'm close to that number as a tech coach but not quite there. At the moment (and I know I am thinking "small" in terms of location) I would love to attend the professional development offered through the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta. They were featured in the Promethean booth at ISTE and I was super impressed by the demonstrated lessons and use of technology (one day...sigh! #ihatebudgetcuts).

The grant cycle opens up in October but I thought the summer was a great time to start thinking BIG in terms of what might be of interest to teachers (Galapagos anyone?).

Here is the link to the site for anyone interested - http://www.fundforteachers.org/

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