DEN: Florida

This weekend was the Tech or Treat virtual conference.  I hope that you were able to attend a few of the sessions that were offered.  They were all excellent.  However, if you missed one of the presentations, they will archive them on the DEN site starting next week.  One that you can catch right now via prezi is Steve Dembo’s session on “Putting the Bling in the Builders”.  Here is the url: http://prezi.com/fnkmiywv3s4w/   Steve shows you how to use Blabberize and a lot of other tools that will help you take assignment builder to the next level.

Another great treat that Den has in store is set to happen next week. There are two great DEN events happening in Florida.  The first one is November 5 at Boomers in Boca Raton(https://lrougeux.wufoo.com/forms/boomers-in-boca/). The second event is being held on November 7 at Sea World in Orlando. The Sea World event may already be on wait list, but I would see if there are any spots left. To register go to : http://jotform.com/form/92785037601#http://jotform.com/form/92785037601

I hope you will enjoy the treats from Discovery and I hope to meet some of you next week at the Sea World event.

The new school year is just around the corner and I would like to take a moment to welcome every back to school.  There are some new and exciting changes to DE Streaming this year that you will definitely enjoy.  How many of you are aware that you will be able to create a class for your students in DE Streaming?

To check out all the new changes to DE Streaming, just click here for seven pages of information. The Florida Blog will be updated weekly with great information to share.  If you are not already receiving email updates, you can sign up by entering your email in the upper left hand corner of this window.

 Good luck this year and I look forward to a great year with the Florida DEN!

Debbie Bohanan

NEFEC (North East Florida Educational Consortium)  recently purchased Discovery Education Streaming Plus and Discovery Media Share for all 15 member districts in North East Florida. The Discovery team held train the trainer sessions in Lake City for NEFEC members responsible for training in their home counties on July 20 & 21, 2009.  Welcome to teachers/staff in the following counties: Baker, Bradford, Columbia,  Dixie, Flagler, Gilchrist, Hamilton, Lafayette, Levy, Nassau, Putnam, Suwannee, Union. PK Yonge DRS, Florida School for Deaf & Blind.

On June 24th and 25th, representatives from all fifteen of NEFEC’s member districts participated in the Summer Drive-In Conference entitled, “The Power of Less: Making the Most of Your Return on Investment”. This one-day, technology-centered event was held at Columbia High School in Columbia County on the 24th and replicated at Matanzas High in Flagler County on the 25th.

The conference consisted of two speakers that are on the cutting edge of integrating technology into best teaching practices, Hall Davidson from Discovery Education, and John Kuglin from the Eagle County School District in Colorado. Both speakers discussed the implications of technology on today’s learners, and the presentations touched on everything from professional networking sites to Twitter and cloud computing.

The day also included several districts showcasing their use of technology in planning and teaching to the individual learning needs of all students. Some of these presentations included:

DEN pre-conference was an awesome day of learning. We held school at DEN Headquarters in Silver Spring,  MD. DEN head quarters is a beautiful place, if you are ever invited GO!!!  Even though,  we were treated as students on this day (being required to have Hall passes) we were definitely  given a fantastic day of EDUCATION. Two classes I attended and recommend:

Learning Through the Funnies with Brad Fountain

Learning Through the Funnies presentation

Top Ten FREE Web 2.0 Sites with Steve Dembo

View his presentation here

For those of you unable to attend, DEN has linked some of the presentations: Discovery School at NECC 09  Remember you can use these presentations as events with your faculty & staff .

Now is the time for change and the National Educational Technology Plan is the place to start.  At NECC 2009, a collaboration event was created to gather “high impact, researched-based recommendations” from teachers and education professionals that would help drive the future of education and technology.  Today’s students need a plan to bring their education up to speed.  Your opinions are requested by July 12, so let your voices be heard.  Click on the link to join this web-based outreach event.  https://edtechfuture.org/?page_id=316.  

Day 2 of  Den Leadership Council Symposium

Follow us here http://dmantz7.edublogs.org/cover-it-live/

Agenda for today:

• What is DEN? New Application Process
• Building an Event
• Regional teams
• Sharing
• Lunch (regional)
• 2DP at 1DP
• STAR Adventures
• Closing

More information to follow!

Lee Kolbert - Chair
Debbie Young Bohanan – Blog Coordinator
Melissa McBride – Events Coordinator (South)
Tom Turner – Events Coordinator (North)

Blog Team
Tracie Belt
Marie Coleman
Michele Futch
Cheryl Watford
Cheryl Woolwine

Events Team
Dawn DeWitt
Janet Hallstrom
Trudi Lawless
Ruth E. Manlandro
Carol Papuga
Cheryl Woolwine

Four of the Florida, DEN Leadership Council members are enjoying a few day in Silver Spring, Maryland at Discovery Headquarters; Lee Kolbert Den Chairperson, Tom Turner Events Coordinator for N. Florida, Melissa McBride Events Coordinator South Florida, and Cheryl Woolwine events/blog team member. As usual Discovery is treating us like royalty.
YOU CAN FOLLOW DEN LC LIVE AT: http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/pennsylvania
MORE TO FOLLOW CHECK BACK LATER!

I received this on Friday from Melissa McBride (still Lander to me but she knows that!). Palm Beach County will be hosting a Day of Discovery down there. The date is Saturday, March 28th and the beauty of this event is that it is FREE! Register  here by March 13. You can also view the agenda here.

Email myself or Melissa for any questions (mithrass@gmail.com or melissa.mcbride@palmbeach.k12.fl.us)

Tom.

July 14 – 18, 2008, Lee Kolbert (Palm Beach) and Cheryl Woolwine (Palatka) Florida DEN Stars, attended the DEN Leadership Council Institute, in Silver Spring MD. It was held in the Headquarters for Discovery Education. Once again Discovery out did itself. They treated us like royalty for 5 days. Food was awesome, lodging great, and the networking was the best ever. They always seem to know the right projects to get us to excel and share our techie knowledge. We started out Monday, creating our own version of the Discovery Channel commercial, Boom Di Yada – you can see our version here (South East) http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/tennessee, we only had about 2 hours to complete it. Tuesday was another busy day. Hall started us off with an awesome presentation on using cell phones. We took publicity pictures with Mr. Kinney on the 10^th floor, (for those of you that don’t know that is “SCOTT” to us).  The Den crew put on a carnival sideshow for us with prizes, cotton candy, and a beared woman. Wednesday came and we still did not stop; Steve Dembo’s presentation “Down the Rabbit Hole”, ways to communicate, ways we are doing it currently, and how we see presentations changing (streaming, back channeling, etc.), was ustreamed. Some of our own Den Star members put on presentations for us sharing new ideas, software and websites.  Discovery took us to dinner on the Potamac River – what a wonderful evening. After dinner we toured the monuments. Thursday the fun continued. We were able to visit DCTC and experience the green screen effect. Thursday evening after working all day on projects we had a screening of an upcoming discovery project on Comets. A pizza party followed then Guitar hero and other WII games on the big screen – a good time was had by all.

Friday we shared projects and were a little sad that our time together was coming to an end. We twittered and plurked and streamed and back channeled and …… and shared and shared and shared.

Oh I almost forgot they gave us stuff also. We received a T-shirt from Animal Planet, a polo leadership council shirt, USB hub (cool), and a green screen blanket.

I guess you could say it was a successful week  - it definitely did a lot to improve my Professional and Personal Learning Network.

Special Thanks to Lance, Matt, Steve, Juanita, Brad, Dennis, & Brian, and anyone else that made this week possible.

“I just got home from NY this past week….will share some of my NECC precon and NECC thoughts with you later today”

I missed this announcement from Jannita and Lance in my email 2 days ago. See what happens when I’m on summer break. I forget to look there. The webinars were yesterday, however, I’m sure she’d be happy to answer any questions you have. I will be seeing the DEN team this weekend and will post what I hear.

Discovery Education is excited to announce many new GREAT additions coming your way to streaming! This includes the long awaited and asked for Student Center where your students will have ability to log on and download media, better correlation with your state standards, more refined search, an update builders and my content, not to mention that the base package has increased to 5,000 titles!

For additional questions please contact Jannita at Jannita_Demian@discovery.com

How many of you will be going to NECC this week? I fly out tomorrow morning and will be making it over to edubloggercon at the convention center tomorrow afternoon when I get in. For those of you traveling out to San Antonio this weekend. Please be safe and see you all soon.

On a side note, how many Second Lifers are out there? Just wanting to take an informal poll.