Using Discovery Education’s resources throughout my day has become so second nature to me that I almost take the value it adds to lessons for granted.  In everything that I teach, the first place I search for resources to add meaning and understanding is discoveryeducation.com.  I use it for real world connections to math concepts, building background for literature, making history come alive, and creating deeper meaning for science topics.  With DE I can take my students on virtual fieldtrips to anywhere on our planet or even the Universe.  Through games, songs, virtual labs, videos, images, and more, my students have an interactive and media rich environment that engages them and deepens their understanding.  DE provides the capability to make learning 24/7 through the Discovery Student Center and Builder Tools.  My students LOVE their portal to Discovery Education! It would be difficult, if not impossible, to do all of this without Discovery Education and its products and services.

As my class explores slavery in 1857, they develop an appreciation for the value of their learning.  Using the Discovery Education resources adds to the value of my students’ learning experiences every day.  Thank you for giving my students the power of a media rich and meaningful education.

Link to related Theme Pages:

Black History Month http://player.discoveryeducation.com/index.cfm?guidAssetId=080261da-6ee9-413b-808e-f783a92f69e3

National Underground  Railroad Freedom Center http://player.discoveryeducation.com/index.cfm?guidAssetId=7706E2AB-8165-4281-B9B9-FD4754ACCC05&blnFromSearch=1&productcode=US

Photo Citation

Oval Portraits of Slavery Opponents.  Prod. Corbis.  Corbis, 2012.Discovery Education. Web. 4 February 2012. <http://www.discoveryeducation.com/>.

The blog entry did cause me to start thinking of the one way I have firmly kept my classroom door closed. I have never voluntarily invited a colleague into my room to observe my teaching. I provide professional development for my colleagues all the time, so they see my teaching skill and style. So why am I hesitant to open my door when my skills mean the most — when I am teaching my students?

I am scared. What if I mess up? What if the students act out? The flip side of this is what if I am missing something that someone could help me with? What if I can become a better teacher? And as they say, “No guts, no glory!” So, I am slowly inching my classroom door open. I shall invite a colleague into my room … or maybe I will videotape myself and ask colleagues to help me critique it. Either way, it will be done. How about you?

As educators we must help our students develop coping skills, strategies for reflection, and how to learn from mistakes… not just academically but at a social level as well. Remember, “They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” Experimentation, inquiry, exploration, discovery are all based on searching until you find a solution or multiple solutions… and still seek a better solution. You cannot be creative or innovative if you are afraid of failing. We have to model risk taking in our own learning and teaching.  That’s what I love most about the Discovery Education learning community… always helping me push the edge of the envelope!

For an inspirational TED Talk, view Diana Laufenberg: How to Learn? … From Mistakes. Diana talks about the changing role of the school, and how we have to move from a culture of “one right answer” and “fill-in-the-bubble tests.” Schools need to provide experiential learning, empower student voice, and embrace failure. As Sir Ken Robinson said in his Schools Kill Creativity TED Talk, “If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original.”

I know this funding resource for educational projects has been shared on DEN blogs in the past, but I would like to share my recent experience with this organization.  In August, I created a project page to raise funds for two digital cameras for my students to use with a focus on math.  It takes a little time to write up a proposal and project description, but it is nowhere near as complicated as writing a grant.  Here is a link to my project page, http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=610634.  Your project will be checked and approved by Donors Choose volunteers and then your project page is created.  It is up to you to spread the word about your project via your website, newsletters, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

For my project there were a few donations from the parents of my students, but the generosity of strangers is amazing!  Out of the ten people who donated to the project seven donations were from people who had never met me or my students.

One of the requirements of the DonorsChoose program is to write thank you letters to your donors and send photos of the students using the requested materials.  My class is excited to write and thank the people who supported us with their donations.  The importance of showing gratitude is a valuable lesson my class is learning from the DonorsChoose program.

We received our cameras last week and my students were so excited!  Not only will my students enjoy using the cameras in class, they have also learned several valuable lessons.   I think the most valuable lesson they learned through this experience is the importance of giving something back to our communities, locally and globally. THANK YOU, DONORSCHOOSE.ORG!

More about DonorsChoose- http://www.donorschoose.org/about

The English Companion Ning (ECNing) was initiated by one English teacher and has grown greatly over the years. There are many groups that you can join within the Ning depending on your teaching responsibilities. For example, there are groups for teaching Reading, integrating Technology into your teachers, as well as teaching specific novels.

Edmodo.com has established learning communities within their domain. Lesson plans and ideas are generously shared here.

Read, Write, Think has been around for a long time. It is co-sponsored by the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English. You can almost always be assured of high quality lesson plans that are shared on this site.

A ning that I have joined recently is Curriculum 21 developed by Heidi Haynes Jacobs of Curriculum Mapping fame. If you are interested in curriculum development and the common core there are groups here for you to join.

My newest favorite site for sharing is the Teaching Channel (about which I have written before). This site shows video of teachers in their classrooms. What a great way to share … by opening up your classroom for the world to see. I always gain some new ideas and insights here.

What are your favorite sites for sharing ideas and lesson plans.

I have presented many workshops for teachers, and offered support pages (MEDIA CART) for attendees.  In my workshops, I was proud to share ways in which students and teachers could get maximum value out of their technology – without the use of interactive whiteboards.

Fast forward to last May.  Hello SMARTBoard!  I found myself even more lucky, to have been one of the first in my building to receive a child-height-level SMARTBoard in my classroom.  Was I able to perform all of the wonderful activities I had used before?  Absolutely!  However, I couldn’t help but feel I wanted more out of such an expensive piece of equipment.  I set a goal at the end of last year, to spend my summer searching for innovative strategies to get the most out of my IWB.

I searched the Internet high and low, and found many innovative uses for interactive whiteboards in classrooms all over the world. In my quest to find strategies for using the IWB throughout the school day, I downloaded countless presentations, watched endless webcasts, and read a tremendous amount of blog entries from teachers with super ideas.  Come August, I had collected some great resources.  Unfortunately, none of them spelled out exactly how I should manage the SMARTBoard in MY classroom as a learning center.

Thankfully, September is a month where teachers spend time teaching routines and expectations, and my students were able to interact with our board each morning as we took attendance.  Quickly they learned that if they tossed their name from the bottom of the board, it would bounce off the top and (hopefully) land on the lunch choice they wanted. They also learned what to do if the board did not respond. They learned what to do if the editing boxes showed up. They learned what to do if they inadvertently brought up a menu.  They learned how to rotate their names.  They learned… while Mrs. Brooks has horrible hearing, she has incredible eyesight, and always noticed when they were off-target. HEE!

Before I knew it, October rolled around, and my goal of having each student touch the SMARTBoard in a meaningful way, 8-10 times per week, was hanging over me.  I quickly realized – while currently each student was using the board 5/week, the “meaningful” part was quickly evaporating, because they now had the hang of attendance-taking!

How is it that one takes the leap from where they feel comfortable, to where they stretch themselves and learn more?  By taking a risk, of course!

I still remember the day I sat my students down and leveled with them – I told them I wanted to use the SMARTBoard as a daily learning center – a SMARTCenter, so to speak.  I told them how I was totally and completely terrified. The noise! The confusion! The movement! Did I mention the NOISE!??! I told them there would be particular students assigned to help them each week, and how important it was that we all work together to pull this off.  That particular day was a math lesson, where reviewing measurement was the goal.  I had students circulate through their assigned “number order”, where each one was given the chance to demonstrate his or her ability to measure to the nearest quarter-inch. As I worked with individuals and small-groups (my normal math routine), I was able to keep one eye on the work being done at the SMARTBoard.  Though the noise level was a bit higher that day, I considered the day a success and announced we would bravely try this again the next day.

Since then, I haven’t looked back.  We now use SMARTCenters during math and science lessons.  Students have learned to rely on each other, and I have learned more and more ways to individualize instruction.  I have observed real thinking and learning as I watch a student approach a difficult problem from across the room.  No longer is the SMARTBoard a distraction in the classroom – it has become “Technically Invisible”, where students have come to accept it as just another tool. Our video demonstrates how we have come to manage a SMARTCenter in the classroom:

I have been inspired by my students to come up with new ideas and new ways of reaching them through the use of SMARTCenters. Learning is a process, for all of us, and I can only imagine where we’ll be, come June!!  Stay tuned!

In fact, our year-long journey is being documented in our Technically Invisible blog page:

Interacting With the Whiteboard

These amazing resources are great for higher education or adults, but in our K-8 district, I promote the iTunes store to teachers as a resource for rich, multimedia content.  You don’t need to stay within the more typical ‘higher ed’ content within iTunes U… You can find audio AND video podcasts such: Reading Rockets (Meet the Author, Meet the Experts, Watch and Learn), Lit2Go, StoryNory, How Stuff Works, Aesop’s Fables, Nova, Why? The Science Show for Kids, and more.  The easiest way to sift through the ton of resources is to simply type in a keyword search for a topic and you will get results in any/all categories in which there are resources.  I choose Podcasts (which are available in audio or video) but there are also books, apps, and other formats available to you… Enjoy!

“Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract.  And they’re very beautiful.”

Like most educators, once I start reading an interesting post, I get caught up in a world of curiosity that leads me on an unmapped path. Sometimes I forget where I started and hours go by. Some would say I was wasting my time … not so. This self-directed learning is a trait we want to share with our students.

One recent journey started with a Middle Web blog post about a plant interactive which led me to the Birmingham Grid for Learning (BGfL) site. They post a “Video of the Week” that totally drew me into exploring David Lynch’s video, “Ideas are Like Fish.” The BGfL video is a short sound bite added to beautiful underwater video. Of course, this did not tell the whole story. The next stop was searching for the source of the sound bite, a David Lynch presentation based on his book, “Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity.”

Today I had to go back to BGfL to see this week’s video. The visit did not disappoint. It was a TED Talk by Brian Cox, “Why We Need the Explorers.” The rationale behind these weekly postings as stated on the site:  “BGfL will be featuring a video each week which can expand the teaching and learning experience. Video is one of the most powerful tools for teaching and for learning. Why? Because visual learning offers an alternative learning style that engages the user instantly and powerfully, allowing effective communication of complex information.”  Of course, those of us that are passionate about Discovery Education already know this. Student access to Discovery Education Streaming will help them on their search for “the big ones.”

I am always impressed with the generosity of fellow educators when it comes to sharing their best practices and resources.  Just visit a few of the vast number of teacher websites on the Internet to see the great ideas found there.  Some sites even have teacher resource pages set up as a platform for sharing with fellow educators.  My website’s teacher resource page can be found at http://www.myteacherpages.com/webpages/mrsthonus/teacher.cfm

Discovery Educator Network is a generous professional learning network, and I visit the DEN often to check out the blogs and webinars.  But today I was BLOWN AWAY by one of my other favorite PLN resources, Edmodo, http://www.edmodo.com!

Last night, I had a colleague from my school ask for a book recommendation for a 4^th grade boy.  I didn’t have any ideas but let my colleague know that I could probably get some recommendations for her through my PLNs.  I posted a simple request for book recommendations to the Language Arts group on Edmodo and within a few hours received 23 replies!  On Edmodo there are various groups one can follow; Language Arts, Math, Social Studies, Science, Creative Arts, Computer Using Educators, Kahn Academy, Special Education, Health and PE, and of course Discovery Education among others!

It is amazing to think that educators I have never met face to face took the time to share their expertise and recommendations with me.   I copied the discussion thread and sent it along to my colleague with this additional note, “I told you that I put out a simple request for the book recommendation and the Language Arts Edmodo group came through with 23 replies!!! The question actually sparked some interesting conversations.   These recommendations and conversations come from teachers from all over the USA and the world.  We really don’t need to feel isolated in our little corner of the world anymore!”

Professional generosity coupled with the Internet make a powerful combination!  Thank you everyone for your willingness to share your best with the global teaching community!  We are our own best resources!