My technology budget is nonexistent. Do you know of any grants I could apply for, as a dance teacher in a K–12 school?
The number-one clearinghouse for grants is the Foundation Center. If you live in New York City, Washington, DC, Atlanta, Cleveland or San Francisco, you can visit one of their centers for free access to their resources. If you don’t live in one of those cities, you can access their database through their website (foundationcenter.org). Unfortunately, you’ll need to pay for that access: $19.95/month.
A good free site is grantwrangler.com. Its technology section has multiple grant opportunities specifically for educators. There’s even a flipped classroom section! If grant-writing seems daunting, try another direction, like DonorsChoose.org. It’s an online charity for public school teachers to propose projects for crowdfunding. Think of it as Kickstarter for teachers.
Though you’ll need a specific project in mind when you start your search, think bigger than that one project at the same time. A fellow dance educator once asked me about technology for archiving his students’ dances. My recommendation was the app CollabraCam, for which he’d need four iPads. My thought was that he could ask for funding for this project (for the tablets), and then he’d have four iPads on hand to use with other great projects.
Barry Blumenfeld teaches at the Friends Seminary in New York City. He is an adjunct professor at New York University and on faculty at the Dance Education Laboratory of the 92nd Street Y.
Photo courtesy of Barry Blumenfeld
