DEN: Florida

If you attended the Sea World Day of Discovery, you received a trial version of Nettrekker, compliments of Danielle Abernethy and Nettrekker.  This is a valuable resource and our own DEN LC Member Tom Turner will be presenting a session on how to use Geocaching and Nettrekker at FETC this year.  If you would like to learn more about this valuable resource and how to use it in your classroom, Danielle will be conducting two webinars on Monday, November 23rd. For those of you who are out of school that week, there is an early session at 11:00am and then a second session at 4:30pm for anyone who has to work that day.  This webinar will be a how to session and should be a great learning experience.  To register for the event, click on the time for your session, either 11:00am  or  4:30pm,  and you will be connected to the registration page.   The sessions will last approximately 1 hour.

Please watch the video of our Palm Beach School Districts for the MILLIONTH stream….

Hello World!

The November 7th Sea World event was a great eye-opener!

Our group’s quest was to find out as much as we could about sharks for the day.  We spent several minutes hunting and finding the ‘Shark Den’ and once we arrived, we watched the sharks swim and took many pictures!

From there, we went back to our ‘training room’ and created a glogster page with our shark information.  We added a link to an animoto video and researched the internet for great shark information.  Continuing with the theme of sharks, we found a website that had shark games!!

Follow our teams efforts…. here we go!

http://ascienceteacher.edu.glogster.com/Dennys-DOD/

By the Way…. Denny is our ‘Mascot’ for the FL DEN Leadership Council… watch for many many more visits and theme related events with Denny!!

This was posted on the National Blog…but was asked to pass along on state blog:

Walk to support our Armed Forces and their families

Today’s the day. In about 2 hours the trusty family car will be loaded and on the road north to Atlanta. After a quick stop in Wildwood, FL and Camp Wildwood Girl Scouts Camp to pick up my daughter I’ll be on I-75 and ready to settle in for the constant droning of pavement under the tires. I will unfortunately miss edubloggercon today. My original plan was to be there a day early, but my daughter was lucky enough to get into the girl scout camp that she ‘really’ wanted to, and who am I to say no to something like that.

With the changing of the Braves/Tigers game tomorrow night, I will be able to attend the pre-con event at Stone Mountain, GA. I’m very much looking forward to seeing everyone again from Discovery Education and all my friends and colleagues coming in from around the country. We’ll see you in about 24 hours!!

Tom.

I had the pleasure to meet STAR DEN member Jillian Gay on Tuesday at the Day of Discovery at the Peabody here in Orlando. She was ‘uber’ nice when asked if she would guest blog her experiences from Tuesday’s event. So in her words:

I’ve dedicated myself to staying focused on
anything buy school for this first month of summer, however, I jumped at the
invitation to a Day of Discovery at the Peabody in Orlando. The food alone was
worth it.

Lance kicked off the day with some stories from his
own teaching experiences, which helped me as a teacher see another example of
why Discovery Communications truly belongs in the education field. He also gave away a couple of DEN lab coats
which got everyone motivated to learnJ

We spent the morning between sessions that gave an
in-depth view of Discovery Education Science Connection, one of which was
presented by the program’s designer Robert Onsi. If you haven’t seen it, you’re really missing
out on the ability to give your students a serious multi-sensory learning
experience which is directly correlated to the state standards. The setting was one in which we were able to
ask specific questions about Science Connection and give our input. The afternoon was spent discovering
Discovery Education’s Think Link Assessment tool which can be used across the
curriculum to assess, score, and assemble student data, whereby making more
time for teachers to actually teach (novel ideaJ). 

Lance wrapped up the day with some cool tips for
classroom teachers to integrate technology (which included offering snacks to a
lion) and a closing activity that tested even the biggest brains. 

Between the uber yummy food, opportunity to
discover, cool prizes and the food a Day of Discovery was worth every second of
missed beach time. Thanks, DEN!

Thanks Jillian for agreeing to share your thoughts. One of the great things about the DEN is meeting new people. Little did I know before this week, we will be working no more than a couple of miles from each other! Our own little DEN area in Poinciana!

Tom.

One thing that I’ve come to love in the year and a half that I’ve been a DEN member is seeing and being with members of the Discovery Education team. Top to bottom some of the most energetic educators that I’ve come across, and with one goal in mind, making our jobs as educators easier.

I had the occasion today to take part in Orlando’s Day of Discovery at the Peabody Orlando.
It was a great turnout of DEN and non-DEN members for a look at Discovery Education Science Connection and how it can be seamlessly integrated to support the science curriculum here in Florida. Lance opened up the day with sharing some of the challenges we educators face in today’s classroom. From there we broke into 2 groups and were shown the ins and outs of Discovery Education Science Connection by Bob Onsi while Lance discussed Formative assessments using Science Connection.Please read this post on the National Blog about helping shape the future of Science Connection by lending a hand

What would a Discovery event be without food? We were supplied a great lunch at the Peabody, and personally having worked in Five Star Hotels on I-Drive before, I just love Convention Catering food.  I wish I’d taken a picture of  the cookies that were there, they were about the size of hockey pucks. They didn’t last long, as when I went back to take the picture, they were already gone.

After lunch a panel discussion was held where we had Marilyn Gavitt from Martin County, Ruth Paine from Clay County and Sue Wetherington from Hernando County shared their thoughts in the use of Discovery Education Science Connection in the classrooms to date. There was a time for open questions and comments, great many points were shared and discussed. I’m working on cleaning up the audio this afternoon and hoping to get in contact with a few of the attendees to do some post-interviews with them for a podcast. (Believe it or not, I’ve not done one to be published yet, so this should be interesting!)

I had to leave shortly after this session to pick up my son from Pre-K so I missed out on the end of the day. However, I do know that each person in attendance did receive a copy of the Planet Earth DVD box set. When I pulled my copy out when I got into the car, my daughter couldn’t wait to start watching it. Thankfully we had the DVD player in the car and she started right away.

Thanks to Lance and the Discovery Team for putting on such a great day.
__________________________________________________________________________

Here’s the .pdf from from Bob Onsi’s morning presentation as promised: Download ScienceConnection_CurriculumCoverageMarch2007.pdf

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Little did I know that I would receive this event announcement following the heels of my last post about professional development and teacher leaders. Next Tuesday will be a Day of Discovery at the Peabody Orlando on International Drive (Download fl_desc_day.pdf)

Highlights for day include:

• Opening Presentation - "Don’t Look at the Duck! The Wonderful Challenges of Today’s Classroom"
• Breakout sessions on Breakout sessions on Discovery Education Science Connection, Discovery Education Think Link Assessment, and Wired 24/7: Technology Integration Tips for Science Instruction
• Lunch/Networking
• Interactive closing

The day begins at 9 AM, with a continental breakfast and lunch to be provided. And what’s attending something and getting something as well. All attendees will receive a Planet Earth Box Set (home version).

I’m already booked, to be a part of this event, email Brannan Kenny.

At FETC last year, Karen and I were wowed when Steve asked us to hold a dinner in honor of the National Blog winners. Not only did we have such great bloggers as Frank LeBlanca and Wesley Fryer, but we also had Will Richardson at the table. Some of the DEN members took that time to write as many notes as they could on anything they could find, evidenced in this picture.

Aren’t you jealous that they got to learn from one of the master’s about blogging, podcasting and wikis? Well, now is your chance to learn from Will Richardson from the comfort of your own computer! He is this month’s featured speaker on the EDTechConnect series.

Discovery Education is pleased to feature the world’s foremost expert on educational blogging, Will Richardson on Wednesday Dec. 13 at 5:00PM EST.

Who: Will Richardson is known internationally for his work with educators and students to understand and implement instructional technologies and, more specifically, the tools of the Read/Write Web into their schools, classrooms and communities. A public school educator for 22 years, Will’s own Weblog (Weblogg-ed.com) is a primary resource for the creation and implementation of Weblog technologies on the K-12 level and is a leading voice for school reform in the context of the fundamental changes these new technologies are bringing to all aspects of life. His critically acclaimed, best-selling book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Tools for Classrooms (March 2006, Corwin Press) is already being used by thousands of teachers to reinvent their practice, and his keynotes, presentations and workshops to audiences around the world communicate a fresh and inspiring vision of what schools can and must become. He is a founding partner of the Connective Learning Group which is dedicated to assisting educators contextualize and implement Read/Write Web tools into their schools and classrooms.

Topic: A Web of Connections: Why the Read/Write Web Changes Everything
Having the world of information at our fingertips on the Web was in itself a powerful transformation, but being able to contribute our own knowledge and ideas and collaborate in the construction of content is even more powerful. What needs to change about our curriculum when our students have the ability to reach audiences far beyond our classroom walls? What changes must we make in our teaching as it becomes easier to bring primary sources to our students? How do we need to rethink our ideas of literacy when we must prepare our students to become not only readers and writers but editors and collaborators as well? How do we best put to use the reams and reams of "digital paper" that this new "writeable" Web provides?

Cost: FREE!
This webinar will be limited to the first 200 people!  Registration will be available at school.discovery.com/edtechconnect
If you have any questions about EdTechConnect or registration, contact Steve_Dembo@discovery.com

I cannot wait to get the report from Marilyn and Eileen in Leon County from their Learning Adds Up event tonight because I’m sure their event was just AWESOME! I attended one closer to home, and while Brook’s getting the blog ready for Stephen, I have to share with you some favorites from tonight’s session in Polk County’s Alta Vista Elementary.

This school has 3 wonderful STAR Discovery Educators (Brook Peabody, Jill Gay, and Ted Eldridge) who joined us for tonight’s event. We were expecting a small turn out and were pleasantly surprised that every computer seat was filled with a family. The students were watching Jeff Corwin and Magic School Bus videos, one was trying out WebMath for Elementary, and then others found the Brain Games.

What I liked was the Advance Search features. This school, as many schools in Florida, has a large population of Spanish Speaking families. In the advance search you can actually narrow down the search for Spanish Translated. This was a nice feature for many of the families.

What’s your favorite feature of COSMEO?

Manual Guide for STAR Members

Mark Hall, a fun-tastic South Florida STAR, mentioned in a comment that we almost need a manual for all that’s available. He’s right, and that’s one of the reasons we started making the STAR Webinar or video + test mandatory. It helps make sure you know of your benefits. Here’s a refresher of some of those benefits:

*STAR Members have access to uploading and downloading RESOURCES on the DEN website
*STAR Members can create a blog within the DEN website. Click on your profile and then on the left hand side you should see a link to the AUTHORING CONSOLE
*STAR Members can receive 4 training kits a year and win prizes for turning in events/trainings they conduct at their school/district/state/national level
*ALL members can participate in the DISCUSSION BOARDS
*ALL members can read the latest RESOURCE GUIDE online
*ALL members can COMMENT to BLOGS
*ALL members can register for EVENTS on the calendar
*STAR members can post events on the CALENDAR (and request one of their training kits at the same time)
*Some events are limited to ONLY STAR Members, such as Florida’s Pre-Conference Event, DEN Institutes, and more to come!
*STAR members receive a nice WELCOME KIT to get the started with the DEN.
*STAR Members can request assistance from Karen (South) or myself (North) with special events in their area at no additional cost. Any other training requests from non-STAR members would actually go through Training or Professional Development.
*STAR Members receive special promotional offers through the year, one being the InFocus Projector and the second being the eInstruction Offer
*STAR Members can sign up for EXTRA CREDIT to further enhance their technology skills and to also earn more prizes for use in the school.

Okay, I’m leaving some things off, but this is just a start. You tell us - what are some of your favorite benefits that you have taken advantage of as a STAR Member?