DEN: Florida

When?
8:00 AM to 1:30 PM (January 23)

Where?
Orange County Convention Center, Discovery Education’s Corporate Room (S220F)

Why?
Professional development, networking, fun, free…need we say more?

How?
To sign up for the event, please send me Lance an email at (lance_rougeux@discovery.com) that contains the following…

* Name
* School
* District
* email

Space for the event is limited, so register asap if you are interested.

Elaine Plybon, blog coordinator for the Texas DEN Leadership Council, needs YOU! The Irving Independent School District in Irving, Texas, for which she works, has an annual Technology Media Fair. This year, the district has opened up several categories for online judging. The hope, above all, is that this will help keep district students excited about technology and about sharing their work with a global audience. This is where you come in. The contest is in need of judges. Anyone who has an interest in technology in education is qualified to be a judge. All the projects can be judged from now until January 7, 2008. There are six categories and levels from K through 12^th grade.  Anyone who chooses to judge can judge as many or as few entries as they would like. Would you consider helping with this cause? You can do so by judging, obviously, but also by sharing the word with other education professionals through your own blogs, twitters, feeds, and other social networking venues. The district would love to see judging from all over the world, so let’s get this DEN machine rolling!
 
To judge the projects, go to http://www.irvingisd.net/mediafaironline and click on the judging link. When judging, please include your name and email address. Your email address will not be published. It will be used for security only. Please expect an email from our administrative staff confirming that the address listed next to your name is a valid email address.

Tom.

Just received this information from Jannita. Wanted to pass this along to you all out there so you were aware of it:

EdTechConnect with Daniel Pink, December 12th 7:00pm EST

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

2)  I am hosting webinars to answer your questions about the DEN Virtual Conference this week… here are the dates and times… the password is 4discovery … just simply go to https://discoveryed.webex.com the day of the webinar… NOTE… times listed are in PST

 Monday 10th 1:30 pm
Tuesday 11th 2:30, 3:30 pm
Wednesday 12th 2:00
***I AM CANCELLING WEDNESDAY AT 4 PST FOR PINK’S WEBINAR

Tom.

Outside of NECC, FETC to me is tops in the area for Educational Technology Conferences. Ours is only about a month and a half or so away. If you’ve not seen the program as of yet, you can check it out here at the FETC website. But what is a conference without some exciting Discovery Connection.

One of my FAVORITE shows is the Jeff Corwin Experience. No, not trying to be a gomer here because I’m the FL DEN blogger and choosing a Discovery Show. I would use as a behavioral reward for my students the chance to choose any of the Jeff Corwin Experience videos located on Discovery Streaming. Personally, I thought it would never amount to anything, but the kids really connected with the way Jeff presented everything in the episodes. So it became a hit, and between the projects we worked on in class and this incentive, my discipline problems were pretty nil.

But I digress as I usually do. Jeff Corwin will be the keynote speaker at this year’s FETC conference. I’m pretty psyched about it because I didn’t think anything could top last year’s keynote,  for those that weren’t there it was Bill Nye “The Science Guy”.  And this coming from someone who literally HATES sitting through keynotes. Being the fidgeter type that I am.

Here’s a release I received from Jannita to share with you all. As soon as I receive more information, I will share it with you all

Go Wild: Animal Planet’s Jeff Corwin Talks About environmental education in the Age of technology

Join Discovery Education at the Florida Educational Technology Conference (FETC) Keynote Presentation on
Wednesday, January 23, featuring Animal Planet’s Emmy-Award-winning wildlife biologist Jeff Corwin for an up
close and personal conversation about his work in the environment and ecology how his experiences can be applied
in the classroom to engage students and inspire an interest in learning.

Tom.

Your FL Blogger.