NECC is just under a week away, and we hope you’re as jazzed for it as we are! Our home on the conference floor will be Booth #3228 and we’ve got a packed schedule there. You’ll be able to see presentations such as:
Discovery the Possibilities with Discovery Educaiton Digital Services
Multimedia Einsteins: Discovery Education Science
Using Multimedia in the Classroom with Mimio
50 Ways To Use Discovery Education streaming
Bring 21st Century Teaching to Your Classrooms: Professional Development that Works
Connecting Formative Assessment to the Power of Digital Media
And who will be presenting these sessions? None other than your favorite DE and DEN presenters, including Hall Davidson, Lance Rougeux, Steve Dembo, Matt Monjan, Jen Dorman, Eren Koont, Alex Morrison, and more!
Don’t forget!! In order to maintain your STAR status, you must report at least two of your events for the 2008-2009 school year by August 31, 2009. We don’t want anybody to lose their STAR status, so be sure you take the time to let us know about all the times you’ve shared the power of Discovery Education with your colleagues!
What is an event ? An event is any time you share the power of Discovery with 3 or more colleagues. Share an integration idea over lunch with your grade-level team. Demonstrate to your peers how you use a Virtual Lab in DE Science. The list is endless. Log in to the DEN website and you’ll see “Report Event.” If you are not sure of how many events you’ve reported send an inquiry to den_events@discovery.com.
Today, the House Education and Labor Committee held a hearing to examine how technology, innovative education tools, and digital content are transforming and improving education in America. The DEN’s very own Scott Kinney, Vice President of Outreach and Professional Development for Discovery Education, served as one of seven panelists who testified as to how technology and digital content can improve American education in the future.
Citing recent research, Scott illustrated that students use technology profusely at home, while most are unable to use that same technology in the classroom. Today’s tech-savvy students function by consuming, processing, and learning from media, in many forms simultaneously. Scott asked the committee to envision an educational system that supported the use of technology in the classroom, therefore, supporting how students learn naturally.
What do you think? If you were asked to testify in front of the House Education and Labor Committee on the Future of Learning, what would you share with them?
Today, Discovery Student Adventures: South Africa took us to the very bottom of the continent, the Cape of Good Hope. Pictured here are Linda Rush, Karen Wells and Jason Cochrane, who have now earned an honorary DENny for being at the southernmost DEN event yet!
To read about our cage dive with great white sharks, trip to the Cape of Good Hope, or adventures with African penguins, visit the DSA: South Africa blog!!
Thanks to our good friends over at Tech4Learning, there are STARs aplenty who received free copies of Frames to use in the classroom. However, what good is a piece of software if you don’t know how to use it? They have graciously offered to host a webinar to help show you tips and tricks for using Frames with your students!
Creating animated movies and digital stories is a fantastic way to engage students in the curriculum. Learn how students can use the integrated drawing tools in Frames to illustrate their own stories, tell digital stories, and create animated Flash® movies.
While I know many of you are counting down the days until summer break, the scientists at NOAA are counting down the days until hurricane season. On Monday, we’ll be doing a very special webinar featuring scientists from NOAA as they share the science of predictions with you and your students!
To attend this webinar, all you need to do is click on the link to register, and then attend using a computer with speakers attached. Your students will be able to ask questions directly of the scientists and discover first hand how science is allowing them to predict when and where hurricanes are going to form. Click here to register.
Want to learn more about how to be prepared for every type of emergency? Visit the Ready Classroom website and click your state on the National Preparedness map!
If you check out the June 2009 issue of Scholastic Administrator Magazine, you’ll be able to read all about how the Discovery Educator Network website has been awarded the 2009 Best in Tech award for Professional Development and Resource Solutions!
We’ve won our fair share of awards (would you believe this is our fourth?), and every time something like this comes up, the first thing I think about is that they’re notifying the wrong people. Instead of notifying us, they should really be sending the congratulatory email to all of you. Take the community out of the website and it’s just an empty shell. It’s the STAR Discovery Educators that have created hundreds of forum conversations, uploaded thousands of Educator Resources, and left tens of thousands of blog comments. We may have built the website, but you’re the ones who have made it great!
So once again, congrats to each and every one of you for helping the DEN become 2009’s best Professional Development and Resource Solutions website!
Over 1,000 people participated in the Spring Virtual Conference this year, many from the very beginning until the bitter end! But just in case you blinked and missed a session or two, we’ve now posted the archives from the day for you to review, enjoy and share with others. If you go to the Virtual Conference page, you’ll find session descriptions, view links and embed codes for each of the sessions from the day.
One thing to note, if you watch the files online, you’ll notice that the chat is a little hard to read. However, if you download the files you’ll find that they were recorded in High-rez and the downloaded versions can be played full screen, which makes the chat very readable.
We’re deep into the heart of Spring Training, and while plenty of people have already shared their resources, we’ve gotten word that some of you are a little confused about how to go about doing so. To help you out, we’ve created a short video that will demonstrate how to upload resources into the Educator Resource Library. Just follow the steps here and you can’t go wrong!
I think the title says it all! It was quite a long day, and my brain feels just a little oversaturated, but more than anything I feel full of new ideas that I can’t wait to try out myself. But that’s me…
Let’s hear about YOUR Virtual Conference experience!
Did you attend an in-person event? How was it?
What was your favorite session? What were your big takeaways for the day?
What could we be doing differently to make this a more enjoyable experience for you?
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Thanks to our good friends over at Tech4Learning, there are STARs aplenty who received free copies of Frames to use in the classroom. However, what good is a piece of software if you don’t know how to use it? They have graciously offered to host a webinar to help show you tips and tricks for using Frames with your students!
If you check out the June 2009 issue of Scholastic Administrator Magazine, you’ll be able to read all about how the Discovery Educator Network website has been awarded the 2009 Best in Tech award for Professional Development and Resource Solutions!
