California DEN

I had a sixth sense about it.  There was just something in the air.  Negativity didn’t stand a ghost of a chance.  At this time, Halloween was just over a week away and I think everyone was secretly hoping nothing would jump out and grab them during their overnight stay at the Hotel Jeffery in Coulterville, California.  They had gathered together for an event that we called "Digital (Ghost) Storytelling at the Haunted Hotel." 

The weather was perfect.  Over twenty educators from northern California met at the Hotel Jeffery late on Saturday afternoon.  After finding their assigned hotel rooms, we had a Meet-and-Greet in the large, beamed conference room where many of us would be working late into the night.  We were fortunate to have a special guest with us for the weekend.  Mark Jeffery, one of our most active northern California STAR Discovery Educators is also a "Jeffery" of the original "Hotel Jeffery" family!  He spoke to our group briefly about the family history of the hotel and the family’s time in the town of Coulterville.

Our educators continued their conversations with each other.  They were a chatty group… maybe it was nervous talking.  When Cherylann Schimmelfennig arrived though, a silence fell over the crowd.  As she took us on a tour of the three story hotel, she began to share stories of the many eerie incidents that had occured over the past three years that she and husband Peter have been the owners.  Could it be possible that there really were 17 ghosts haunting  this hotel?  Would they make themselves known to us during the night? Cherylann assured us that these 17 documented entities were of the friendly type.  Still, eyes seemed  wide and we made sure to stick close together!

After our tour of the hotel, I instructed our educators to gather their jackets and flashlights and head across the street to the Northern Mariposa County Historical Center.  I was surprised that no one asked why they would need flashlights to visit a well-lit museum!  If they were curious, it all became clear as the museum docent took us out into the, now dark, town of Coulterville.  There aren’t many street lights along Main Street.  We walked up the street, stopping occasionally to hear the history of some of the buildings.  As we headed further and further from the main part of town, the whispering began, "Where are we going?"  "Are we going to the cemetery?"  Oh, you bet we were!  This was the end of the road!

Evidently, fear makes you hungry.  After a quiet and cautious walk around the cemetery grounds, we high-tailed it back to the hotel for a multi-course gourmet meal.  Yet again, it was all about the food.

By the time that we had finished dinner (and dessert!) it was way past my bedtime.  But, it was also time to get serious about why we had gathered together… digital storytelling.  We reconvened in our conference room and after a couple of brief tutorials, each educator set to work on creating a digital story about a famous figure from history.  All assignments needed to be completed by 9AM on Sunday morning when everyone would share their new resource.

My last DEN member finally went to bed at 3AM.  (I guess that is what I get for having fabulous, dedicated and talented educators!)  Sunday morning came all too soon.  We had a hearty breakfast and then shared our projects.  While no one reported any ghostly encounters that night, I got to see the spirit of the Discovery Educator Network live and in action.  

Thanks everyone for a wonderful weekend!

Suz

It’s there… we all see it… we all wonder how to use it…. Well, I have heard some very interesting and creative things this past week…

TX Field Manager Chris Marshall shared that one of his educators uses it as Differentiated Instruction.  On the board is a sheet with tiny strips of Assignment Builder urls that match the current theme.  Students simply tear off a strip and log on. Viola!

A Poway Teacher uses it as extra credit.  Her class is learning about the life cycles of pumpkins so she created a url and sent it home with her students. Every day she receives a few emails letting her know that students have completed watching the video!

I LOVE sharing integration strategies!  Feel free to post a few here.

Check out the Turkey Talk Webinars we have planned during November to cover topics such as Assignment Builder.  Join us!

Download november_turkey_talk_webinars_pst.pdf

Another Great Post about Free Tech Tools for Teachers from Guest Blogger Dave Kootman…

Microsoft continues its domination of the office and the school with its flagship productivity suite, Microsoft Office.  We’ve all used it; odds are it’s installed on your computer right now.  It certainly gets the job done, but for $150-500, it can be out of the budget for many students and educators (if you opt for it anyway, be sure to check out the Student and Teacher Edition).

            Enter Open Office.org.  After twenty years of refinements, Open Office.org now offers all the features you love about Microsoft Office… and it’s free!  Open Office comes with elements similar to PowerPoint, Excel, Word and even a powerful graphics program called Draw.  The best part is that files can be saved with the same file extension as MS Word.   You can open or save files as a Word doc from Open Office.  However, be warned that with some complex formatting, some small changes can occur.  In addition, Open Office has the ability to save documents as pdf (sparing you the additional purchase of Adobe Acrobat)

            Many school districts are already saving thousands of dollars each year by using this program.  It’s also a great program to recommend to your students if it is not viable for them to pay for software.  When a new version is released, you can simply download the update and be on your way, instead of buying a whole new program. 

Everyone has to check out the website listed below. Linda Foote of Poway Unified School District, has been hard at work teaching her educators why creating digital story telling is important and how to do it!

Want to be impressed…. Go to this website (http://powayusd.sdcoe.k12.ca.us/projects/edtechcentral/DigitalStorytelling/default.htm) and scroll down to "Good Readers" click and be patient as the movie loads! These 1st graders can teach us a thing or two about good readers.

It doesn’t end there… scroll a little further down and click "Time Team" and brace yourself to be entertained and educated as you learn how to read a clock.

Scroll down even further and access great links to a variety of helpful resources for creating your own digital story!

Thanks to Linda Foote and the Dynamic Digital Team in Poway!

Congrats to Randy Kolset of Saddleback for taking Podcasts to a new level with Vocabucasts!  What’s a Vocabucast? You Ask!  A podcast of his students’ vocabulary words of course!  I’d love to compare reading scores after he implemented this great idea!

To check out examples of Vocabucasts and Homework Radio, visit Randy’s website

http://web.mac.com/rkolset/iWeb/ClassroomSite/Room22-Blog/Room22-Blog.html

Did you know that DEN has it’s own Podcasts featured on iTunes?!?  Now you can hear from DEN experts from around the nation reporting to you on a variety of topics.  All you need to do is search "Discovery Educator Network" on iTunes.

Here’s a brief description on our first 3 podcasts…. Let us know what you think… or who you would like to hear from!

DEN Podcast 3: Features a very informative interview with Bernajean Porter, author of Digitales: The Art of Digital Storytelling and the creator of the website Digitales.

DEN Podcast 2: A variety of topics including but not limited to our recent partnership endeavor with Google; The Elmer’s Glue support for schools and science teachers; The T+L Conference in November and what opportunities it provides for educators; Exciting new releases within unitedstreaming; And of course many other exciting insider details on Discovery Education and the DEN

DEN Podcast 1: Focus on Discovery Educators themselves and their thoughts about technology and education.  All of the interviews for this podcast were recorded at the TCEA conference in Texas.

Tis the Season to Cook and Exchange your favorite recipes!  YUMMY! So, let’s all share in the feasting by posting our recipes here… I am feeling a DEN cook off coming your way.

Thanks Jutti Marsh for the 1st recipe that I highly suggest you all check out… It would be a definite hit for students.

Here’s the site that explains more..

http://www.kidskuisine.com/?page_id=8

Stay tuned for an  award winning Pumpkin Upside Down Cake…

"A Year On Earth"

Sunday, Dec. 3

5pm ET

Discovery Kids Channel

Three teenagers…five continents…one mission: to take the pulse of the planet and report back to their generation.  Are they up to the task?

A Year on Earth chronicles the adventures of three American teens: Jamie Fiel, 18, Arsen Ewing, 17, and Tyler Robinson, 16, who have little in common except for a shared concern that time is running out for endangered species and ecosystems in decline. Nominated by their respective science teachers, the teens join Earthwatch research projects around the globe to discover how ordinary people can get involved. They study the most pressing environmental issues of our time, working alongside leading researchers who explore the ecological effects of global warming, the decline of coral reefs, the impact of deforestation, and more.

The three teens in the show chronicle their experiences through video and blogs as they visit:

Bahamas
Costa Rica
Brazil
Sri Lanka
Kenya
Thailand
Malaysia
Australia

If you are interested in involving your class in this environmental adventure, we’re looking for 8 classrooms to help us create a global map of the Year on Earth project.  Using unitedstreaming resources, Google Earth, and other research tools in your classroom, each classroom selected for this project will create a full “Country Study” of one of the countries featured on the show.   Each country study may include:

Google Earth Pin
Research information that includes the following facts:
·        Demographics

·        Primary Industry

·        Cultural review including links, major events,

·        Historical timeline of at least 5 major events in the countries history

Any other creative ideas that your class deems important

If you are interested in having your class participate, please send an email with the subject line of “Year on Earth” to betsy_whalen@discovery.com

Discovery Education would like to thank everyone who made the first Discovery Education Network Podcast a big success.  We received a lot of VERY positive feedback from the first show on Character Education and know that as word spreads even more people will be downloading this new resource.  We also had a number of correct answers to the Podcast Question and the winner is going to be announced via this week’s Podcast as well as their VERY special prize.  This week we are focusing on many new events going on within Discovery Education and the Discovery Educator Network as well as a wonderful interview with Lisa O’Brien a Lead Professional Development Representative that is going to talk about how to effectively utilize the resources available in the Professional Development section of the unitedstreaming site.  You can listen to the Podcast either by subscribing to it via iTunes or by downloading from the DEN National Blog Site. 

Three teenagers…five continents…one mission: to take the pulse of the planet and report back to their generation. Are they up to the task?

A Year on Earth

  chronicles the adventures of three American teens: Jamie Fiel, 18, Arsen Ewing, 17, and Tyler Robinson, 16, who have little in common except for a shared concern that time is running out for endangered species and ecosystems in decline. Nominated by their respective science teachers, the teens join Earthwatch research projects around the globe to discover how ordinary people can get involved. They study the most pressing environmental issues of our time, working alongside leading researchers who explore the ecological effects of global warming, the decline of coral reefs, the impact of deforestation, and more.