Find a Grant to Fund STEM Initiatives, Professional Development and other Educational Imperatives

I'm always wary of databases or indexes hosted by commercial companies. I have to believe there is a motive beyond altruism. Thus, a database offered by IT warehouse CDWG (the part of CDW that serves education, government and healthcare) is suspect. While I'm sure there are some honest "service to the community" goals for the effort, I'm also sure there's some hope dollars delivered to schools, educators and students via its GetEdFunding website will end up in the company coffers.

GetEdFunding is a free, curated database of more than 750 active grants and awards (as of January 8) "that are currently available to public and private pre-K–12 schools, districts and educators, higher education institutions and the nonprofit organizations that work with them. I'd take that number with a grain of salt; many of the results I found had application dates during 2012 and many others were unsure of funding for 2013. I also found some "contests" that were not really grants including the National Geography Bee listed.

The site allows searches by geography (U.S. state or nationwide) institutional eligibility (public, private, charter, etc.), grade level (by grade group, higher ed, adult), focus (humanities, ed tech, professional development or STEM), content areas (arts, math, social science) and what are called 21st Century Skills (critical thinking, global awareness and problem solving).

I searched for U.S. grants for grade 9-12 STEM grants and got 50 results. Many are from federal government agencies like the National Science Foundation or the Department of Education while others are from professional groups like American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and AAUW. Many are from private corporations like Lowes and United Technologies Corporation.

A keyword search on "geography" resulted in two state grants, including one from a state geography alliance. Good to see!

It's worth a quick look and perhaps an application if it will mean a professional development workshop for an instructor or a new computer for the classroom.

- via EdTech Magazine

GIS Edu News Analysis: Esri Grants; Digital Quest Teams with NPCLPSCS (Who?)

On Feb 28 Esri announced some grant awards to educators at colleges and universities via a press release.

Esri has awarded five grants to select university and college faculty members to create exemplary higher education course materials and implementations of ArcGIS Online. Grantees receive $10,000 (US) each, as well as assistance from curriculum development specialists on Esri's education solutions team.

I didn't recall any public call for proposals. Esri confirmed this was invited competition.

Esri’s education team invited proposals from select educators that we know are doing innovative work that could be enhanced by the ArcGIS Online platform. The team then reviewed the submitted proposals and awarded grants to the top 5 proposals.

The selected proposals include courses/exercises for pre-service teachers, business majors, general education and an exploration of ArcGIS Online use in a large land grant university. That last one is of particular interest to me (having studied at a land grant school). I wonder how the "land grant" aspect makes these schools different, in terms of GIS use, from other large public institutions? Perhaps that's the question to be explored.

The grantees are expected to share their preliminary work at the Esri Ed UC and to actually use the resources in teaching during the 2012-2013 academic year. It's unclear if other Esri and even non-Esri users will have access to these materials. The materials could become part of Esri's SpatiaLABS, which I discussed two weeks ago, I suppose.

One takeaway from this announcement is that if you want to be included in these sorts of education grants, it behooves you to let Esri know about your work! Do not be shy about marketing yourself, your work and your school to Esri!

The same day, Digital Quest announced a partnership with the National Partnership for Careers in Law, Public Safety, Corrections and Security (NPCLPSCS) via a press release. I've never heard of this Partnership before, but it dates back to 1999 when it was established with funding from the Dept. of Justice. The Partnership mission:

To build and support career development programs and systems that ensure seamless transitions by linking and integrating secondary and post secondary education, professional certifications, and organizational recruitment, employment, training and retention systems. 

The secondary/post secondary career-focused space is exactly where Digital Quest's previous geospatial education materials and certification have been directed. It's my understanding that Digital Quest will try to offer its packages of materials to schools already offering courses in the areas of interest to the Partnership. While Digital Quest's footprint is small and mostly regional, it's clearly blazing its own trail in the industry-specific geospatial career focused education and training market.