California DEN

As another great year comes to a close, we have to share a few highlights of the great things we’ve done this past school-year. We’ve had some fantastic events including the OC CUE Techfest, Virtual Conference, the California Poppy Festival, and KOCE Day of Discovery. Best of all, we won an DENny award for the Most Creative DEN Event for the Grunion Run.

Our first DENny!

Looking for fish at the Grunion Run.

Female grunion laying eggs in sand.

We’ve also had some changes in leadership. Genny Kahlweiss has taken the reigns as our fearless leader and we are excited to have Matt Monjan as our DEN manager. Congratulations to Matt on the birth of his new baby boy Benjamin last week! Word is that he’s cuter than Matt.

We also sent two of our teachers, Ken Shelton and Carolann McGuire along with Jannita D. to Australia on a Discovery Student Adventure and have another traveling to China in August. (yep, that’s me!)

If you haven’t checked out the new developments to Discovery Education Streaming, like the ability to use Flash and the upload resources, summer is the time to catch up. Check out what’s new at DE. Register for the Back to School Preview webinars happening in July.

Thanks to everyone who makes this the GREATEST region in DEN. Everyone do the happy dance . . .

• How many times can the newspaper you read today be recycled?
• How much can one compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) save in electricity costs over its lifetime?
• What single innovation is causing more people to recycle more products than ever?
• Which clean alternative energy source is created by landfills?

How much energy can you save by recycling one aluminum can every day for a month?

Find answers to these questions and raise your students’ awareness of environmental issues with ready-to-use classroom materials, lesson plans, worksheets, puzzles, quizzes, and activities at ThinkGreen.
ThinkGreen is a site created by Waste Management and powered by Discovery Education.

Visit the Earth Day Network to learn how make every day an “Earth Day.”

Thanks to Jen Dorman for the blog idea and johnlauresa for use of the photo.

“The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind – computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers. But the keys to the kingdom are changing hands. The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind – creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers. These people – artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers – will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.”

~Daniel Pink

Daniel Pink, bestselling author of A WHOLE NEW MIND, will describe how three powerful economic forces are putting a premium on right-brain abilities in the workforce. He’ll describe the six artistic, empathic abilities that now matter most — and discuss how educators are beginning to surface and sharpen those abilities in students.

Daniel is a contributing editor at Wired, where he has written about topics ranging from grassroots solar power to the rise of Wikipedia to the economics of creativity. His articles on business, technology, and economic transformation have also appeared in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and other publications.

A popular speaker, Dan lectures to corporations, associations, and universities around the world. He’s provided analysis on dozens of television and radio broadcasts -including CNBC’s “Power Lunch,” ABC’s “World News Tonight,” NPR’s “Morning Edition,” and American Public Media’s “Marketplace.” And as an independent business consultant, he’s advised start-up ventures and Fortune 100 companies on recruiting, business trends, and work practices.

RSVP at http://tinyurl.com/2y6f9c

I’m sure those of you who are blog savvy have heard the news of Discovery acquiring HowStuffWorks.com . If you’ve never seen the site, it has tons of useful info presented in a manner that kids can enjoy. I’ve had my fourth graders do many different mini-projects and papers using HowStuff Works as a resource. FYI, although the site has had declining viewership over the last few years, it still fetched a nice little sum of $250,000,000 and ranks among the top 2,000 most visited sites online.

So, anyone who would like to start their own website, drop me a line and we’ll see what we can do. I could use a chunk of that money

In support of those affected by recent occurrences, Discovery Education has altered the color scheme of the blogs.  Please see the following statement for further information:

Virginia Tech family members across the country have
united to declare
this Friday, April 20th, an “Orange
and Maroon Effect” day to honor
those killed in the
tragic events on campus Monday, and to show
support
for Virginia Tech students, faculty, administrators,
staff, alumni, and friends. “Orange and Maroon Effect”
was born several
years ago as an invitation to Tech
fans to wear orange and maroon to
Virginia Tech
athletic events. We invite everyone from all over
the
country to be a part of the Virginia Tech family this
Friday, to wear orange and maroon to support the
families of those who
were lost, and to support the
school and community we all love so much.

This morning I recieved an FeedBlitz email with updates from the MD DEN blog.  I was TOTALLY blown away with what I found.  Aaron Smith, a DYNAMIC DEN member from back east, wrote about a gentleman by the name of Karl (from the Fisch Bowl Blog… a staff devt blog for his CO highschool) was asked to present to this faculty.  His goal, "to get the staff to really think about what are students are going to need to be successful in the 21st century, and then how it might impact what they do in their own classrooms’.  I remixed content from David Warlick, Thomas Friedman, Ian Jukes, Ray Kurzweil, and others, added some music and came up with the following presentation.  If you want the music you’ll have to download both files…" 

Why should you download this PPT… Because DID YOU KNOW THAT…

• The 25% of the population in China with the highest IQ’s is greater that the total population of North America… Translation for teachers: They have more honors kids that we have kids.
• China will soon become the number one English speaking country in the world!
• The U.S. Dept. of Labor estimates that today’s learner will have 10-14 jobs by the age of 38.
• The top 10 in demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004.  We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist! Using technologies that haven’t been invented in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet!
• In 2002 alone Nintendo invested more than $140 million in research and development!

I have to stop because I could go on and on…. So for more AMAZING FACTS and INFORMATION download this PPT and MP3 file right away.  Then head over to his blog post and let him know what you think and/or post your comments here.

Download did_you_know.ppt

Download didyouknow.mp3

G’day!  Come down under to DiscoveryEducatorAbroad.com to follow Discovery Educator, Josh Wolff’s adventures as he journeys with the cast and crew of the Travel Channel show 5 Takes: Pacific Rim.

Josh will be blogging four times per week, creating 2 webisodes per week, and sharing tons of digital photos as he travels around Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong and other parts of the Pacific Rim. Josh will be spending one week in each location, starting in Sydney where he is right now.  On Wednesday, he will be visiting a school in Australia and welcoming our FIRST international DEN member there!

Students and teachers around the world (this means you too!) can vote on different places for Josh to visit (right now, 80% want Josh to visit “The Rocks, Historic Sydney”.) You can ask him questions on the message boards (Ask Josh!) and have him research things for you too. This is a fantatsic opportunity for students to travel virtually through a Discovery Educator. In addition, their suggestions will influence his webisodes, which will eventually make their way into unitedstreaming!

So, stop by DiscoveryEducatorAbroad.com and check it out!  Feel free to blog about it and share it at your events.

Shhhhhhhhh!  You haven’t heard about the Educational Technology Conference?  Over four hundred educators from central California may not want you to know about this "little" conference developed and sponsored by CTAP Region 6 and CCCUE.  It is no surprise that anyone would want to keep this gem to themselves…it featured "Techno Icons" Mike Lawrence (keynote speaker) and the DEN’s very own Hall Davidson presenting two sessions!  Attendees for the day were treated to a wonderful variety of learning opportunities within the over 75 sessions available to choose from as well as chances for networking with others interested in technology.  This inexpensive ($60) conference also included breakfast goodies and a box lunch (sub sandwich, chips, salad, fruit, cookie, softdrink or water - sometimes it is all about the food!) as well as a hefty, green CTAP computer bag filled with freebies like notepads and pens and trial software (we teachers love the free stuff!)  And, if this wasn’t enough already, you should have seen the raffle prizes!  There were screams of delight when Marianne Pack, director of CTAP6 announced the winners of prizes like digital cameras, InterWrite School Pads, a video iPod and a one year subscription to Discovery Health Connection (guess who donated that fan-tabulous prize?) 

You may want to mark your calendar early this year and be sure to attend the ETC 2007!

Kristin and Melissa had a great time at the Google Earth session presented by southern California DEN manager, Jannita Demian.