Day of Discovery FETC Jan. 2013

Day of Discovery for FETC conference in Orlando, Florida today was another great networking and learning experience brought to educators by Discovery Education. The event took place at the Wonder Works.

Steve Dembo kicked off the day with his presentation: 22nd Century Skills…Today! Bringing Future Tech into the Classroom. He asked the question “Why is everyone focusing on the 21st century? That skill set is over a decade old. Rather than looking back, we need to look to the future and identify technology trends that educators need to know about.

” Have you  heard the expression “Everyone can have their 15 minutes of fame”? Steve said that it needs to be changed to “Everyone can have their 15 people to share their fame.” You don’t need a large audience on the Internet but you need an audience to share with.

Steve then talked about companies who are looking to hire people that have a positive presence online. People seeking employment need to sell themselves online today and in the future. Ask yourself – when someone looks at your resume, does your voice come through? Have you done a Google search and seen what is online about yourself? What would employees find online about you? What can you do to express your voice when seeking employment? Steve showed websites of people promoting themselves. He showed and discussed Eric Shenringer’s blog. He is a principal in New Jersey that has an Internet presence for himself and his school. Parents, teachers and students follow his blog and comment on it. This has greatly improved community communication at his school. The Internet allows your voice to be heard beyond the resume.

Steve continued to talk about how teachers can work with students to develop a positive digital image of themselves, a personal portfolio. Kids are sharing everything already over the Internet. What is interesting is that what they share has a lot to do with school. Over 30% of their sharing is about school and assignments. Steve shared samples Twitter messages from kids: “If you are in my reading class I need help with the project”, “This is what I listen to when I do Algebra homework”, “Just finished my homework”.

Steve went into Bloom’s Taxonomy Revised pyramid with Creating on the top. He said that it should be Publish on the top. Publishing is sharing what you create. Creating is no longer enough, it needs to go one step further to Publish.

QR codes were discussed next. You know those square crazy square design you see now in ads, magazine articles and books? They are really URL links to a website, photo, music on the Internet. It takes less than a minute to create a QR code today and have become widely used. An app called AURASMA can turn anything into a QR code. Take a photo of the object using AURASMA and you can link it to the Internet like a QR code.

Steve’s closing words were “You can not predict the future classroom but you can invent it.”

Today’s Edmodo code is zxo1hs. Take a look to see what people have shared. See what the “collective brain” contributed to Edmodo.

Thank you Steve for an inspiring Keynote.

Long Island Ducks

The keynote speaker was Eric Scheninger. He is a principal at a high school in New Jersey. He is using Social Media as a principal and teachers and students are using personal mobile devices in his school. He gives “shout outs” on Twitter to teachers and students when he observes them doing something good. It has become a “Badge of Honor” to get a “shout out”. He keeps his school community informed and in the “loop”. He has students, parents and community members that follow him on his school Twitter account, his website and Blog. He has written a book about how to use Social Media for the administration, teachers and students.  Take a look at his Twitter, Blog, website and book – interesting. 

Below are links for Eric  
Article from USA Today – http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2011-07-24-schools-social-media_n.htm
Book – http://www.solution-tree.com/products/communicating-connecting-with-social-media.html
School twitter account – @NMHS_principal
Website – http://ericsheninger.com/esheninger
News report and video – http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/10/19/new-milford-high-school-has-students-using-cell-phones-as-mobile-learning-devices/
Principal Blog – http://esheninger.blogspot.com/2011/10/instructional-upgrade.html

I  called a friend of mine who is a MAC person and we shared our stories. We were one of the first people to get MacIntosh computers for our classrooms. We were both teaching Computer Arts, him in middle school and me at a high school. We had bonded over our new Mac Plus machines. When the Mac Plus came out, it was a big deal to us because suddenly we could do all these great multimedia things we had not been able to do before. We both had the Mac Plus computers in our classrooms along with the Apple IIGS machines so for 1986 we had the “best” for teaching computer arts. We were out there as tech ed leaders, or at least we thought so at that time.

Cover of BYTE Magazine Mac 1984

I have been using Macs and all things Apple since those days in the late 1980′s. Steve Jobs has been called a modern day Edison. You have to wonder if he had lived another 30 years, what would have come out of his mind? For what ever reason, it was his time to pass on and leave us wondering what could he have done if he lived a longer life?

He may not have changed the world for everyone but he changed my world. He had the vision to bring Graphic Design to the computer. Other companies created the software but he created the machine. Maybe it was the time he spent at Pixar that helped create his vision.

He knew what we wanted when it wasn’t even in our mind – iPod, iPhone, iPad.  He geared Apple to the consumer, he gave us great designs, reliable products, ease of use and made us happy. Jobs not only geared his equipment to the consumer but he always kept education in his vision. Apple has always been there to promote their products for educational purposes.

I worry about Apple, the company, now that Jobs is gone. Will it still be the same? Will it be as cutting edge? Who will be the next Edison in our lifetime or will there be another? Apple will be okay for at least a few years because Jobs laid out his vision for the coming years. But what comes next?

I found a good history of Apple and Steve Jobs:  http://thegadgets.net/2011/10/06/top-inventions-of-steve-jobs-2/

The first night we had a visit from Danny Forster from Discovery Channel show – “Build it Bigger” I had the opportunity to speak with him and ask him questions about his show during dinner. Danny gave a presentation later that evening about his latest projects including the 9/11 memorial in NYC. Check out his website at http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/build-it-bigger/build-it-bigger.html?dcitc=w99-502-ah-1039 .

There was so much that went on for the entire week, that it would take a week to write about it in this Blog. We used Edmodo to collect comments, documents and more during the week. I came home and spent time going through Edmodo and collecting resources from the week. I created a wiki to share with others. I did not capture everything, just some of it. The wiki can be found at http://densi2011.wikispaces.com/

Thanks to Porter Palmer for collecting resources in Scoop it http://www.scoop.it/t/densi2011

On the last day of the conference, I attended the closing keynote speaker and then met some friends to catch a bite to eat before we hit the road to drive home. We went across the street to the Reading Market and left the Market around 5:30pm. We walked in front of the Convention Center and saw all the lights out. It was so sad to see it all closed down so quickly and it all became a memory in an instant. Yes, all the excitement was over but not forgotten.

Now I am looking forward to ISTE 2012. I will be saving my dollars to pay for the plane trip across the country to San Diego and searching for a place to stay that will not cost a fortune. In these hard times, our school district has cut out the luxury of helping with travel expenses so you have to go to plan B to attend ISTE. The last ISTE conference that was in San Diego, some of my family members traveled with me. They had such a good time in San Diego that they are already planning on making the trip with me so I hope they are also saving their dollars to join me.

If you did not attend ISTE 2011, don’t miss the next one, it is worth the trip for any educator. If you can only make it to one conference in a year, make it ISTE

Coming to a school near you!

I attended a Webinar earlier this week sponsored by COSN. The Webinar was to announce the release of the Horizon Report 2011 for K-12. For those who are not familiar with the report, this is a quote from the Executive Summary

“The NMC Horizon Report series is the most
visible outcome of the NMC Horizon Project, an
ongoing research effort established in 2002 that
identifies and describes emerging technologies
likely to have a large impact on teaching,
learning, research, or creative expression within
education around the globe. This volume, The NMC
Horizon Report: 2011 K-12 Edition examines emerging
technologies for their potential impact on and use in
teaching, learning, and creative expression within the
environment of pre-college education.”

This is a MUST read for K-12 teachers and instructional leaders. It identifies the most important technologies in K-12 divided into 1 to 2 years, 3 to 4 years and 5 years. Here is the link to the report.

http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2011-Horizon-Report-K12.pdf

Watch the PhotoPeach slide show from the event at  http://photopeach.com/album/9cifww

Links from Discovery Virtual Spring Conference

April 30, 2011

Complied by Carmella Doty at Maryland LIVE site

1.       Back channel links and resources from the Virtual Conference from Porter Palmer http://bit.ly/iyTThQ

2.       Tim Childers posting from Virtual Conference – Project Based Learning  http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/blog/2011/04/30/time-differentiation-and-online-publishing-dr-lodge-mccammon/

3.       Jan Abernathy – Creative Cougars grade 5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a7QxRvO55s&feature=youtu.be

4.       Lodge McCammom – Friday Institute http://www.fi.ncsu.edu/fizz

5.       Cisco killed the Flip one day before they released their best camera yet http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/cisco-killed-the-flip-one-day-before-they-released-their-best-camera-yet-20110415/

6.       Time, Differentiation and Online Publishing Dr.Lodge McCammon   http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/blog/2011/04/30/time-differentiation-and-online-publishing-dr-lodge-mccammon/

7.       USDA Sports Awards  Competition and Awards http://usada.discoveryeducation.com

8.       This event will be archived. Look for the archived webinars at http://denblogs.com and http://www.youtube.com/user/DiscoveryEducation ****

9.       Tim Childers Project Based  sample – Music/writing/mass media production – cross curricula http://www.screencast.com/t/cMfJXGXjyOXG

10.   The four videos Lodge is sharing (including that first one) are the top row of this link: http://get.onfizz.org/videos

11.   Deanna Duray, welcome to 1st grade video: http://teachertechness.blogspot.com/2010/08/1st-day-video.html

12.   Powerful and Free Tools for Teachers: http://tinyurl.com/rhresources

13.   From Colleen Barnes -http://blabberize.com/view/id/91058

14.   Voice Thread Examples: Heros – Class projects http://my-ecoach.com/project.php?id=15380&project_step=58646

15. Tech Professional Development Wiki http://tinyurl.com/gardnerexample

DEN STAR Winner

The Discovery Maryland Leadership Council sponsored a DEN STAR activity at the Baltimore Museum of Industry on April 12, 2011 as part of the MSET conference.The DEN STARS had the opportunity to visit the museum  complete a savager hunt, meet DEN STARS and have great food served by Mother’s Federal Hill Grill. The hit of the evening was the Maryland Crab Soup.  Each Den STAR had an opportunity to earn DISCOVERY BUCKS by completing a variety of activities. Each DISCOVERY BUCK became a raffle ticket for the great prizes. Thank you to DISCOVERY Education for sponsoring the Maryland Leadership Council and helping to make the event a success for all the DEN STARS.

DEN STAR WINNERS