You and your students could win fabulous prizes for your classroom with a 1-take music video!

http://links.discoveryeducation.com/videochallenge

What’s up?
Launching today, the Dr. Lodge Music Video Challenge asks students to select one of Dr. Lodge McCammon’s standards-based songs, determine the dance moves, and film the music video in 1-take.

What could I win?
One grand prize winner will receive a school assembly with Dr. Lodge McCammon, a Flip camera, and thirty backpacks for the winning classroom.  Ten more finalists will receive Flip cameras and sets of classroom backpacks, too!

Why would I do it?
If fabulous prizes and national recognition aren’t enticing enough, Dr. Lodge’s songs are standards-based and focus on specific content areas.  The challenge is open to all students – from elementary to high school grades.  Nothing could be more fun, engaging, and…educational.

I’m in.  What’s next?
To participate, register anytime between January 30 and February 26.  Review the rubric, and utilize the resources available to you and your class.  When you’re ready, upload your video, and be sure to vote for your favorite from the selected finalists!

There must be more information.  Where can I go?
For everything, including important dates, judge’s rubric, resources, and other contest information, visit:

http://links.discoveryeducation.com/videochallenge

NCCE 2012 – Seattle, March 13-16!

Steve Dembo and Hall Davidson are featured speakers at this action-packed conference, and no doubt they will be sharing all kinds of great ideas and resources that will keep your fire ablaze!

Early bird registration is available until February 10, 2012.  Visit the conference registration page today.  Don’t miss out on these great sessions!

Steve’s featured speaker sessions:

Going Mobile
Wednesday, March 14, 8:30 AM – 11:30 AM
Students are bringing their cell phone, iPods, PDAs and PSPs to school and we respond by forbidding their use or treat confiscation. However, these are the tools of the new generation and educators must change and consider how to utilize and embrace these new online learning tools. Learn how to create websites designed for portable devices as well as some innovative ways mobile devices are being used in education. It’s time we start taking advantage of the technology that students are hiding in their backpacks right now and using them to support good teaching and learning!

TheNewYou.Com
Wednesday, March 14, 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm
As it becomes increasingly important for our students to have a positive presence on the internet, it is critical that educators lead by example. In this workshop, we will create an online home for yourself, incorporating social media, avatars, video and more. The takeaway? YourNewHomeOnTheInternet.com!

Hall’s featured speaker session:

Web 2.0 and Other Digital Tools for Administrators and Superintendents
Wednesday, March 14, 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm
he tools of Web 2.0 make an administrator’s job easier, faster–and more enjoyable. Exploit tools for communication, monitoring, visioning, social networking and sharing. Twitter, apps, and cellphones offer unexpected benefits. Change the way you work while (importantly) modeling 21st century skills. Content creation, texting, and social sites – they’re not just for students.

Very soon after I had just sent a message out to my Digital Storytelling students alerting them to a good sale on editing software for PC’s, I sat down next to Steve Dembo to hear a keynote speaker at Iowa’s edtech conference. Within minutes Steve showed me a free, web-based alternative to the late (temporarily, I hope), great JayCut.com. It’s called WeVideo and they have even added a YouTube component (http://www.youtube.com/create_detail/WeVideo). With just a minimal experiment of my own to speak from, I have to say that it’s an easy, more powerful alternative for those PC users of the two versions of Movie Maker. It doesn’t have the green screen capability of JayCut (as of this writing at least) and it does depend on your Internet connection, but the price and the creativity it gives you far outweigh those minor “inconveniences.” Sign up now and take advantage of the larger, free accounts that they are offering during this introductory period.

And don’t forget Discovery’s Virtual Conference tomorrow morning to get some great ideas for your new found video editing capability. Sessions begin on the hour from 9 AM to 3 PM EDT.

The best part of the day though was the last hour (at least for me). This hour brought the introduction to Iron Den. Iron Den is just like Iron chef… but totally different. Three teams were chosen. Each team was led by a DEN Leadership Council Member. Those people where April Adams, Beth Weeks and Me… Lea Anne Daughrity. The team’s had two additional members chosen from the audience. Although I didn’t get to meet the other team’s team members, my team was made up of myself, Unique and Ciji.

We were given an overall theme of photosynthesis and asked to create an intro to a lesson on this topic. Finally, we were asked to include a secret ingredient. That ingredient was a picture of a pig. Hmmm! With 35 minutes left, the teams ran off to there own corners and discussed, planned and created their product. The time limit was challenging and it definitely got the blood pumping! In the end we had three great presentations. April’s team chose to create based on all of the activities of the day.

Beth’s team included some of the day’s elements and created a glog for the lesson.

Our team created the entire thing on the iPad using Puppet Pals, iMovie, the camera and keynote. All three deserved a round of applause but just like Iron chef, there can only be one winner. Here is the winning submission:

Iron Den

All in all, it was a great day. The teachers from the Metroplex enjoyed their day of learning and fun and many walked away with some great prizes. The most important part though, was all of the great networking that went on and all of the sharing of ideas and passion.

Christopher Columbus

Columbus Day will be celebrated October 10, 2011.  I like to begin my lesson on that day reading sections from a letter that Columbus wrote without letting the class know who it is from or that it is Columbus Day.  The letter is a primary document found at http://www.ushistory.org/documents/columbus.htm.  The letter tells of the natives he encounters in Hispaniola.  He talks about the beauty of the land and the gold that is there.  He tells how innocent are the natives he encounters, and how he has to forbid his men trading useless items such as broken dishes for a great deal of gold.  He also discusses how he hasn’t seen any monsters, but has seen people who eat human flesh.  The students become actively engaged with this letter and the discussion and are pleasantly surprised to find it is a letter from Columbus.  We then discuss the value and purpose of primary documents.  There are many ways you can build your lesson from here.  If you go into your Discovery account, everyone has one, right?  Anyway, search “Columbus” and at the top of the results screen, you will see a link – “Columbus Day” with the explanation “Featuring resources selected and created by Discovery Education’s curriculum experts, this theme page offers teacher’s guides, video clips, and more.”  Discovery has provided a wealth of resources right there for you to use.  There are video clips, images, and lesson plans for every grade level.  There are even some audio clips.  Elementary students could illustrate what they hear and import it, along with images from Discovery, into Photo Story, a free download from Microsoft at http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=11132, adding the audio for a great presentation.

For more presentations and ideas, go to http://holidays.pppst.com/columbusday.html and celebrate Columbus Day with lots of new discoveries.

By David Andrade, http://tinyurl.com/edtechguy

Glogster is a very cool site that allows users to create interactive posters called Glogs. I had learned about this a long time ago, but never had the chance to use it or try it out until this week. The free version is limited (50 students), but is still very useful. You could assign groups to work on a Glog together and extend the amount of students using it. The premium versions are not that expensive, with Premium School costing $2 per student per year for an unlimited number of students.

A Glog is very cool – it’s an easy to use interface that uses drag and drop to create an interactive multimedia “poster” containing text, audio, video, images, graphics, links, drawings, data and animations. In other words, it’s a very cool interactive multimedia creation that is easy to use.

Here’s an example Glog from their site:   (http://leonidas75.edu.glogster.com/science4unit1plantreproduction/)

Teachers can create Glogs about different topics in their classroom as a learning tool and students can use Glogs as a way to present what they have learned.

It’s private and safe and teachers manage the accounts.

The site has examples of Glogs and a great help section. Jennifer Dorman also created a great website about Glogster and Glogs. DE’s own Steve Dembo is the one I learned about Glogster from at the CT Day of Discovery last October.

Try it out this summer!

Gotta wonder what’s gonna happen when this gets into the hands of science teachers and their students, or drama teachers, or foreign language pen pals. Family photos and school yearbooks are never going to be the same.

And for companies with video in their DNA like Discovery, this could be really big. Imagine riding in a car and seeing forward and back at any time. and hopefully NOT WHILE DRIVING!

Maybe it’s better if you watch the video an decide what you’d do with this, and then figure out where you can quickly find $98.

Here’s the link just in case.

http://kck.st/lfclXH

I once spent $100 to do this on a laptop with that application, and then another $100 for the update. It was PC only, required extensive training, required a dorky headset mic, and no one else could use it.

I will say (literally) it was pretty accurate. And using this app on the iPad is just as accurate. The only difference now is it’s completely free, no headset, no training. Go figure.

You might not want to write an entire story like this.
Talking out loud, with no one around, well, its weird, but speaking little chunks as you think of them is ok. And at any time, like now, if you get tired of hearing yourself, just bring up the keyboard and start typing.

The app is great on the iPhone, delivering thumb-free texting, but the message must be under 30 seconds and you lose it with your next message.
The iPad version REMEMBERS and saves your speech (text) with NO limits on time. Just keep on chunking; the iPad stores all your rants. You can come back any time and add more, or start something new.

To share with others, or embellish in another app, just copy and paste the whole thing to into a text editing program, email it to yourself, or just text message it to your publisher.
And how do you do that?
Double tap Home, to multi task.
Open PlainText.
Double tap> Paste.

So now we can stop letting typing block the writing. Just tell yourself what you want to tell others and get it in black and white. Miss O’Malley would be very impressed.

But today (actually no one’s really sure when) Apple changed something and now getting iBooks into your iPad is easier than using a library card. 
 
And this is great news if you teach, have 1000′s of eBooks, and a classroom of 25 kids who read. 
There are really 2 problems here: Where are you storing those books?? (I hope it’s not your iPad, or worse your computer) and how do you share them with all the kids? (You’re on your own with the teaching part). 

If you shared last week, you needed iTunes, sync cables, a computer, and maybe email. Students waited in line as you transferred iBooks from your computer, one iPad at a time. This makes WaterBoarding look like Quality Time. 

Today, forget iTunes, ditch the sync cable, and bypass the computer entirely as you move eBooks directly from web (or email if someone gifts you) to iPad, wirelessly.

Here’s a true story:
I felt like a little Vonnegut. 
On a quick trip to www.epubooks.com (free ebooks) I found To Be or Naught to Be – a sci-fi thriller about a future where dying’s been “cured” until you dial 2-B-R-0-2-B for assistance. Whoa!
I tapped Download EPUB (to guarantee page turning magic) and then tapped the Download to iBooks button that suddenly appeared. And there’s the happy ending.

And if you have DropBox (everyone should, it’s free) you can download directly from there too, and secure a place to store that 1,000 eBook iBrary you’re building, neatly shelved, waiting for transfer. When you turn that last page, hit delete and make room for the next.

In your class of 25, they’d go to your DropBox collection and download this week’s Special to their iPads, anywhere, anytime; no overdue or per student book charges (besides FREE, EPUBS are open with no sharing restrictions). 

Your iBrary really gets traction when students start making their own iBooks, something even a first grader can do with a Mac and Pages software. Imagine Lab experiments complete with illustrations, even videos that play as you turn the pages; Science reports will never be the same, especially if students include a few clips from Discovery Education’s archives.

Maybe now we can go back to raving about plot and character development in The Life of Robert Goddard, an iTEXTBook YOU wrote about rocket scientists, complete with a video appearance, with some help from a first grader.