We’re in the money

Technology Funding Sources

There are many ways to fund your technology integration projects. In this blog post I will disscuss three main areas that will help to bring in the “money” so to speak.

Grant Resources

There are many private organizations that will provide money to schools to enhance the ability of the school to educate its students. There are also US Government programs created for this purpose as well. Usually, the more “in need” a school or district is, the better chance they have of obtaining a grant. Some of the money available can be used to purchase equipment or can be used to pay for professional development of teachers.

Welcome to U.S. Government Grants
This site gives great information about  grants that are available to schools .
http://www.us-government-grants.net/article_info.php/articles_id/34

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
This site gives great information about the grants that are available.
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/ForGrantSeekers/

U.S. Department of Education’s “Enhancing Education Through Technology” initiative
$2.25 billion in federal E-rate program supports discounts on telecommunications services, Internet access, and networking for schools and libraries.
http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/os/technology/index.html

HP Technology for Teaching Grant Initiative
This site introduces the K-12 HP Technology for Teaching grant initiative. This will provide each member in a team of 5, a tablet PC’s, a digital camera, digital projectors, and a printer to share.
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/grants/us/programs/tech_teaching/index.html

Grants.Gov
This site is all about federal funding. Under the “finding grant opportunities” section there is a search you can use to find sources of funds for your projects.
http://www.grants.gov/

American Honda Foundation
This site provides information about the foundations goals and funding criteria. They have a quiz that you take to see if your program matches their funding criteria.
http://corporate.honda.com/america/philanthropy.aspx?id=ahf

Southeastern Council of Foundations
This site provides information about the council which has grown to include over 70,000 foundations which manage 500 billion in assets.
http://www.secf.org/s_secf/sec.asp?CID=4975&DID=10728

Teachers Count
This site provides information about various grants avaialable for the classroom, ranging from art to science and technology.
http://www.teacherscount.org/teacher/grants.shtml

Mayer Memorial Trust
This site provides not only provides grants but they also provide resources to help you write the grant proposal.
http://www.mmt.org/

Grant Writing Assistance

Finding sources for grants is easy.  The hard part is actually writing the grant and making sure the grant fulfills the requirements set forth by the organization.  Below are some great resources to help you in your grant writing process.

http://712educators.about.com/od/grantwriting/Grant_Writing.htm

http://www.schoolgrants.org/tips.htm

http://www.seanet.com/~sylvie/grants.htm

Obtaining Resources for Technology in Education: A How-to Guide for Writing Proposals, Forming Partnerships, and Raising Funds

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~moursund/Books/GrantWriting/index.htm

Hardware Resources

There are many companies and organizations that will provide computers to schools for free or at low cost. These same companies also offer deep discounts on hardware to low income students and families, as well as to educators. According to ISTE’s Digital Equity Toolkit, these discounts are “made possible by pooling the buying power of growing numbers of learners, educators and educational organizations nationwide.” While discounts abound, quality does not disappear. Hardware is provided by companies such as Dell, Gateway and Promethean.

Freebyte.com
This site has much to offer in the area of free stuff.  This particular section deals primarily with free or low cost computers.
http://www.freebyte.com/free_computers/

Computers for Learning
This program transfers excess Governmental computers for use in educational institutions.  You must register and show a need.  Then the program will assess your situation and see if they can help.
http://www.computers.fed.gov/school/user.asp

Dell Corporation’s TechKnow Program
This program offers refurbished home computers for selected low-income or at-risk students.
http://www.dell4k12.com/program_detail.php?pi=4

 

Software Resources

A major cost to having more technological hardware, is the cost that comes with having great software to enhance education. Most software require licenses in order to be used on different machines. While the cost of these licenses decline as the number of machines increase, it still will add up to a hefty chunk of change to legally supply all the computers in a school or district with valid licenses.  A very viable way to get around this is to use “Open Source” software.  This software is free to use by everyone and in most cases does the same thing that the commercial software does.

Freebyte.com
This site has much to offer in the area of free stuff.  The first section on this page has many links to various free software.
http://www.freebyte.com/

OpenOffice.Org
This is the site for the free productivity suite.  This is a valuable tool for any school.
http://www.openoffice.org/

Freshmeat
This site has the largest index of cross platform open source software.
http://freshmeat.net

 

Thanks for reading,

Shannon Doak