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If you’ve attended a Project Learning Tree workshop, you can win 500 bucks for your school via the Learn Outside GreenWorks! grant from the American Forest Foundation. You can use this money for all manner of environmental projects at your school, including building a butterfly garden, creating an outdoor classroom, or other creative projects that promote environmental education.

The one downside to this grant is that winners are chosen at random. That said, entering will cost you only the time it takes to complete the application, so it makes sense to apply. The entry deadline is December 30, 2008, so get those applications in soon. -BILL FERRIS

Learn Outside GreenWorks! grant

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Students can win environmental grants with the Planet Connect Grant Program

Photo credit:  jenny downing on flickr

Going green can earn your students some serious green. Well, actually, it’s a grant, so the money would probably arrive in the form of a check, which often have more subdued hues like a light blue or yellow. What was I talking about?

Right. Saving the environment. Planet Connect will award $1000 to the best student-submitted solutions to local environmental problems. Winners will receive $500 to help fund their idea, plus another $500 for an environmental internship in their communities.

Students should apply before January 20, 2009. For a full list of guidelines, tips, and their application guide, click here. This is a great incentive to get your students thinking about how to be nicer to the planet, and possible fodder for a class project. Here’s hoping they earn some green blue yellow money. -BILL FERRIS

[NOTE: If you win this, or any grant mentioned on Instructify, please be sure to let us know!]

Planet Connect Grant Program

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We like to post grants for educators here on Instructify. Here are three we’ve mentioned that are still accepting applications, plus their deadlines:

Target Field Trip Grants - November 1 (that’s this Saturday, folks)

Toyota Tapestry Grant for Science Teachers - January 21, 2009

NEA Foundation Grants - February 1, 2009

Photo credit: Cayusa on flickr

Looking for some money for your professional development or classroom? The NEA has a grant program that could help you out. They have several grants available for educators, including:

Learning & Leadership Grants: provide opportunities for teachers, education support professionals, and higher education faculty and staff to engage in high-quality professional development and lead their colleagues in professional growth. The grant amount is $2,000 for individuals and $5,000 for groups engaged in collegial study.

Student Achievement Grants: provide $5,000 to improve the academic achievement of students by engaging in critical thinking and problem solving that deepen knowledge of standards-based subject matter. The work should also improve students’ habits of inquiry, self-directed learning, and critical reflection.

Some recent winners used grant money for teacher training for the Numeracy Project (a program from New Zealand); implementnig a faculty mentorship program; and training in a culture program in Italy for a foreign language instructor.

Application deadlines are February 1, 2009 and June 6, 2009. -ALICE MERCER

The NEA Foundation Grants

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Win gas money for your next educational excursion with Target Field Trip Grants

Free money: Toyota Tapestry Grant for Science Teachers

HASTAC is looking for the sharpest needles on the digital farm, and when they find them, they’ll award them anywhere from $5,000 to $250,000. You’re an Instructify reader; surely you could be one of those talented needles — especially if you’ve got a great Web 2.0 project or idea.

The aforesaid HASTAC (pronounced just like the proverbial bale of dried grass) is actually the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory, an initiative funded by the deep-pocketed MacArthur Foundation. The 2008 Digital Media and Learning Competition is giving out two separate kinds of awards: one to teams of people on “larger-scale projects” and the other to individual “innovators aged 18-25.” In both cases, the DML Competition wants to encourage “Participatory Learning,” which from their description doesn’t sound much different from social networking: “Participatory Learning includes the many ways that learners (of any age) use new technologies to participate in virtual communities where they share ideas, comment upon one another’s projects, and plan, design, advance, implement, or simply discuss their goals and ideas together.”

Examples of winning projects from 2007 include “FollowTheMoney.org”, which helps civics students (and all of us) understand certain legislative activities; the “Black Cloud” Environmental Studies game played by high school students from Los Angeles and Cairo; and “Always With You”, a mobile-phone network that enables micro-funding to young African social activists.

The deadline for this year’s competition is October 15, 2008, so start honing your application-filling-out skills now. –AMANDA FRENCH

2008 Digital Media and Learning Competition

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Grants for energy education projects

Free money: Toyota Tapestry Grant for Science Teachers

Win gas money for your next educational excursion with Target Field Trip Grants

If there’s a bright side to America’s energy crunch (and that’s a big “if”), it’s that it’s a fine reason to teach about energy. And those lessons might be worth some serious cash. Progress Energy will dish out up to $75,000 for projects dealing with energy education.

Potential topics include solar power, recycling programs, energy audits, a lab excercise about electricity, or whatever plans you can think of that don’t involve a hamster wheel. For more ideas, visit Progress Energy’s blog entry on DonorsChoose.

If you’d like some of this free money, apply by October 15. You’ll need to sign up for a free DonorsChoose.org account. Then, just submit your project ideas, including the tools you’ll need to help your students learn a thing or two about energy. -BILL FERRIS

North & South Carolina Teachers: Progress Energy to fund up to $75,000 in hands-on energy education projects this year!

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Depend on the Kindness of Strangers: DonorsChoose.org

Win gas money for your next educational excursion with Target Field Trip Grants

Free money: Toyota Tapestry Grant for Science Teachers

Photo credit: Rob__ on flickr

Have rising gas costs put a stop to field trips at your school? More and more schools are cutting back on field trips to save money. Pity, since you can find so many whiz-bang learning opportunities outside the classroom. If your great field trip ideas are at risk, consider applying for a Target field trip grant. The retail giant will gole out 5,000 grants of up to $800 each this school year.

You can apply online anytime before November 1. You only get one submission, though, so make it count.  “Visit the zoo. Go backstage at a local theater. Tour a museum,” suggests the website. Of course, if you really want to win one of these, you could propose a trip to your local Target retailer. Or a nearby national park, that would probably work, too. -BILL FERRIS

Target Field Trip Grants

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Free money: Toyota Tapestry Grant for Science Teachers

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Toyota and the National Science Teachers Association want to give you a bunch of money. All they ask in return is you use it for an awesome project.

If you’re a middle school or high school science teacher, you should apply for a Toyota TAPESTRY Grant, which I assume is an acronym for something. Toyota and the NSTA will award more than half a million bucks to teachers who propose “innovative projects that enhance science education in the school and/or school district.”

The grants will take the form of 50 large grants (as in $10,000), and 20-32 mini grants ($2500). That’s a lot of dollars. More importantly, that’s a lot of projects, which means you’ve got pretty decent odds of winning some money for your classroom. For full details, click here. You’ve got until January 21, 2009 to come up with something, which is plenty of time to make your idea a good one. -BILL FERRIS

Toyota TAPESTRY Grant

Right now, your high school seniors are probably stressing out about the difference between the cost of college and the amount of scholarship money they received. If you’re a guidance counselor or a teacher who doesn’t want your students to have to decide between buying books or food, show them these financial aid options, courtesy of studenthacks.org. They’ll find information about Pell Grants, Stafford Loans, plus lesser-known options like Plus Loans, as well as Social Security for students unlucky enough to have a deceased parent.

This list is a good resource for students scrambling to fund their education. Juniors can also use it as a primer for all the financial aid rigmarole they’ll have to go through next year. By exploring financial aid options, your students will have the money they need for school, and the peace of mind of not worrying how they’ll pay for their next meal. -BILL FERRIS

How to Find More Cash for School – 9 Financial Aid Options via studenthacks.org

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