There are lots of organizations, companies and non-profits offering teachers discounts or free products, software, services or other educational materials and this is the place to get the word out to your colleagues.
Starbucks, as part of their back-to-school campaign, has announced that during the month of September they will be giving teachers a free cup of coffee on. Here's the scoop from the Starbucks Ideas in Action blog:
"It’s not an apple to welcome teachers back to school, but a cup of coffee. In recognition of teachers, Starbucks is offering school teachers, grades K-12 a complimentary tall cup of brewed coffee on Mondays during the month of September.
Bring in your teacher identification to any Starbucks. We appreciate the many ideas you’ve shared on MSI to recognize the wonderful work of teachers."
Find a list of free opensource software at Steve's k12opensource wiki
Some of my favorites: Phun 2D physics sandbox Phun is an educational, entertaining and addictive software for playing around in a 2D physics sandbox in a cartoony fashion. Not just another game, it is intended to bring in interactive physics as an enabling technology for new concepts and usage patterns in creative computing for animation, simulation, narrativity, engineering, art and education.
You can get free hosted moodle at http://ninehub.com
On Voicethread K-12 educators can Create and share unlimited # of VoiceThreads and video commentary, 10 GB of storage, archive original media, upload MP3 comments Animoto for Education gives teachers, grades K-12, unlimited access to the full range of Animoto’s services, both standard and premium, for free Snapgrades offers a free secure online gradebook
New Edmodo is a microblogging platform and communications tool for use by teachers and students in the classroom.
Your "free" advice is always so welcome! I will check out that Edmodo.....never heard of it 'til now...
All I got to offer are these free posters for the classroom. The least I could do, seeing over here nobody is giving away free coffee (costs and arm and a leg. Starbucks here in Korea is about 3.5o for a tall! )
Hi David,
Also not able to offer free coffee, I was tempted to write Noodle instead of Moodle :) You are way too modest!
I forgot to mention the abundance of free EFL resources provided by you and the community on EFL classroom
Hello,
I am new here. We have juste created an association in France, for English Teachers, to propose free (I mean with a free Creative Commons licence) ressources for the classroom. We also want to offer our members the possibility to have access to a wiki and a forum to engage in collaborative creation.
The site : http://www.openenglishweb.org
Much of that was thanks to you! Your advice/additions in those "pioneering" days really helped. We started up only a year ago....my how time flies, seems like yesterday.
I hope you don't mind the splash page -- had to finally do it so that those with slower computers could load the site quick.
Here's another freebie for others. Thousands of books/lessons here on our EFL Classroom 2.0 scribd
Teachers can preview most/many books there and hopefully support our community by ordering in the bookstore. I'll be introducing a bookstore for Classroom 2.0 soon - see it here.
Professor Garfield is a non-profit educational organization created by Jim Davis, the creator of the Garfield cartoons. The site has many resources for educators, including the Comics Lab. You can use the Comics Lab to write, assemble and print your own comic strips.
This might be a good place to remind people of the millions of dollars in grant monies that go unclaimed. All it takes is a good idea. Here is a list to get you started.
The National Science Teacher Association (NSTA) has a fantastic e-Professional Development portal with over 2,600 different self-directed learning resources to help you address your classroom needs.