Arizona

As the National Geocaching event approaches, I post this video of the fun had in

Tucson during our DEN day of educational geocaching so as to share the fun.  Join us!

Two notes:

1.  I love the Media Share capabilities in the DEN. I love that it has so much storage. I love that so many people are using it and populating it with great resources. I love that it enables me to easily create a link. I love that it gives embed coded that we can paste into Google Earth or our blogs and get a video linked. Good stuff!  –I just wish I could figure out why embedding code makes the page all crazy re-formatted???

2.  If anyone would like cute flyers to advertise a Geocaching event you are doing, please send me a note and if I get a chance I will post it to the blog beforehand.

SlideShow Digital Story made on PhotoPeach

Tucson teachers got a wonderful introduction to Geocaching with the DEN STARs from the Statewide Instructional Technology Project on Saturday. Allen Swanson, a hard-core geocaching enthusiast, and Emily Mann led teachers through the DEN and its great resources and landed on the fabulous postings about Geocaching already in the Educator Resources like Steve Dembo’s posting about Geocaching 101 and an introductory PowerPoint. -Lucasvan’s Presentation for his class on Geocaching is a great starter too.

We then hoofed it to Reid park an chance to get our hands on the devices, learn how they work, more principals and culture of geocaching, marking and finding waypoints and for practice hunting down a micro-cache and a smaller cache–both cleverly hidden.

Now more adept with the technology, we went into the zoo for a virtual multi-step cache where we had to find clues on signs about animals and unscramble them to get a password to a locked document. It was challenging with interference from overhead trees, but when we had more than one unit and took the time to mark the specific waypoint, it got better–and we got better.

Lunch was a lovely time for debriefing and giggling about the fun we had. Marana and homeschool teachers are rearing to share this with colleagues and get it going with their students.Thank you Discovery, Justin and Lance for the support and adventure!

Geocaching with the STARs on PhotoPeach

Hey Tucsonans!  We have a great event and day for you! - To the rest of Arizona: let us know and we can bring this fun experience your way.

On May 16th we will be introducing educators to educational geocaching and all the great resources in Discovery that deepen the lesson. We will be meeting at Starbucks, 3421 E Broadway for an introduction to the DEN and then heading to Reid Park Zoo to experience the great fun of a puzzle cache. We will use coordinates to gather clues that will unlock a document. You are bound to learn a ton, catch the fever of the geocaching rage, and come away with great ideas for creating activities for your students.
Follow these links for more information or see the attachment:

• Geocaching with the STARs Registration and Information
• All about Geocaching by Dr. Alice Christie
  
• To learn more about the sport of geocaching and find geocaches near you, go to geocaching.com

We look forward to seeing everyone and diving into the adventure!

Thanks to Deena Jorgenson for snapping these photos!

Hey, we had a great time in Snowflake this morning. Let’s see if my new glogster poster works….and is there some news about who is going to S.F. Institute this summer :)? You’ll see me there!

The DEN webinar series has been one of the highlights of the last few weeks.  I’ve seen&heard Tony Vincent telling us all about iPods in the classroom; witnessed the magic of  “Movers and Shakers”  like Traci telling us about her wonderful use of Google Earth with Glogster to embed activities and links into her 1st graders’ journeys around the world learning about frogs and toads; Bernajean Porter sharing her wonderful  knowledge about digital storytelling and getting to the “Soul” of your message; Matt “Geekybird” sharing his amazing site within Discovery geekybird.com and its perfect resources  for learning all the tricks for using and presenting on Discovery resources that reside within his “Bird House” (They Might Be Giant Fans will appreciate the allusion). http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/matt.monjan/the-bird-house-your-source-for-geekybird-stuff/
Don’t miss the upcoming opportunities to learn more about using and sharing Discovery in effective and integrated curriculum-focused ways in your classroom.
Rumor has it that Discovery will be hosting a National Geocaching Day on May 23rd.  Stay tuned for updates.
Phoenix has it going on during the Culinary Festival.  http://www.scottsdaleculinaryfestival.org/  Educators are invited for food, folks, fun and digital storytelling. It is on us!  Come join us and become a star.

Join us in person or virtually for the “Spring into Action” DEN Virtual Conference Saturday, April 25 2009 7:30am – 1:00pm Snowflake High School (for a group gathering) or in your own home - virtually 

Spring Into Action with the DEN and join thousands of educators who are passionate about integrating media into their instruction and collaborating with each other to improve student achievement. During this unique (and free) professional development event you have the flexibility to attend online or in-person at one of many regional events hosted by the DEN Leadership Councils.

Register at this link.   If you want to join the local group conference, please use the pulldown menu for “event location” on the registration page and click “AZ Snowflake”

You are encouraged to bring your own laptop, flashdrives, USB camera

Our bowling night was loads of fun. Many of us had met in previous conferences or trainings, but had never just “socialized” and let loose. A few in our crowd looked as if they had actually bowled before, but some of us were more familiar with the gutters (just as a bowling term). The pizza prompted dreams of future events, including the Scottsdale Culinary Festival - watch for some delicious digital storytelling as “reporting” and another meet and greet as a “Starbucks with the Stars”.

It was great to meet so many of you at our recent Day of Discovery, and what an exciting day that was! We’ve had so much positive feedback, we thought we would organize another social event to get to know each other - bowling!  Of course we’ll document our adventure in photos, but I’m hoping no one snaps a photo of me releasing the ball!

We’ll need you to RSVP for this event so we can order food and reserve the lanes.

Happy Monday!   On behalf of the entire Discovery Education team, thank you for helping to make Saturday such a great day.  I hope that during the day, you were able to pick up a few tips and tricks on using Discovery Education streaming.  I will be working with the AZ leadership council to post pictures to the blog early next week, so be sure to drop into the DEN , register to become a STAR and see what great ideas and opportunities are coming your way.We would GREATLY appreciate any thoughts and/or feedback that you would like to share with us about your experience.   You can do so by clicking here  and sharing them with us on-line.  THANK YOU in advance for taking time share your comments with us!!

We are looking forward to a big 2009 in Arizona and we hope to see you again soon.  

All the best,

Justin Karkow
DEN Account Manager
Discovery Education
4201 Congress St., Suite 245
Charlotte, NC 28202
P: 704.557.2407
C: 704.763.0581
Toll Free: 800.323.9084 x811-2407

Note from Vicki: To retrieve your PD certificate for the day, logon to IDEAL, click “my Courses’ button at the top of the window, find Day of Discovery, click to open, scroll to the middle of the page to find the print options.