DEN: Florida

What a great day so far.  A group of 40 educators have gathered together for a day of discovery at Sea World.  The first task of the day was to search the park for an animal of your choice and collect waypoints and information.

Once the group returned to the classroom, they began building information about their Sea World animal and adding additional resources from Discovery to their project folder.

Check out the link to the agenda for our day of discovery.  Additional resources will be added after the event.  Thank you to everyone who helped make this a great event.  The Florida DEN Rocks!

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:

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.  

Debbie Bohanan, Carole Gooden and I represented South Florida at the National Leadership Conference July 11th - 14th at Discovery’s Headquarters in Silver Spring, MD.  Debbie had this to share:

First I would like to say thank you to Discovery for a wonderful opportunity to network with fellow educators across the country and share our knowledge with one another.  It was wonderful to attend a workshop that inspired you to go out and create something wonderful to share with your students and teachers. 

When we arrived, they placed us in groups with teachers we had never met before.  My group consisted of two people from California, one from Pennsylvania, and one from Virginia.  We had three field managers working with our group from North and South Carolina and Pennsylvania.  We learned so much from each other and I can’t wait to share our project with you.

Our assignment was to create a project with our group around the theme America Revealed.  We decided to focus on the Presidents and their monuments. You can view our project at http://discoveramerica.wikispaces.com. 

During our conference, we had many motivational speakers that taught us the importance of digital storytelling (thanks Hall) and the need for Global Collaboration(thanks Alan).  We realized that our students need to work outside of the walls of their classroom and interact with students, teachers, and experts all over the world.  If we want our students to be competitive in their world, they must learn the importance of global communication and collaboration. As educators, it is our job to teach it to them.  We also learned that students have stories that need to be told, using technology, we can share those digital stories and enhance the educational experience.

The technology was amazing!  I learned so many new skills that I can’t wait to implement in my classroom.  We received a wonderful gift from Adobe and learned how to enhance editable video clips using chromo key.  This allows us to place people into existing videos.  Imagine showing a video clip to your students and you appear in that clip.  You will definitely have their attention!  We used PhotoStory for digital storytelling and unleashed its learning potential.  You can use PhotoStory for quizzes, unit introductions, presentations and so many other possibilities.  We explored wikispaces for creating interactive, online units.  These are easy to make and the best part is they are free!  Check out www.wikispaces.com to create your own space.  Google Earth was used for creating virtual fieldtrips and unitedstreaming images can be added to the map!  Flickr is a free space for uploading photos and frappr maps allow you to create interactive maps. 

Podcasting was introduced to us by Steve Dembo and the educational opportunities are unlimited.  If you have a video device, you can download unitedstreaming clips.  Creating your own podcast only requires a microphone and a computer.  It was so simple and you can post a podcast to your website for parents and students to download to their computers, ipods, or MP3 players.  I’m sure we will be hearing more about them in the education community.

I would like to thank Karen Seddon for introducing me to the world of Discovery and Unitedstreaming.  You have enhanced my teaching and opened so many doors that I never even saw before.  I am inspired to share my knowledge with others and Discovery has definitely recharged my batteries!

Thank you Discovery for putting on such a wonderful conference and providing a forum for collaboration and a chance to create a global community. 

I look forward to continuing my learning through discovery.  Enjoy your final weeks of summer and have a great school year.

Debbie Bohanan
Technology Coach
Reedy Creek Elementary
bohanand@osceola.k12.fl.us

As always, I am
Ubiquitously yours,
Karen

After a week’s vacation in Jersey, I have had the privilege of being a small part of a huge DEN event this week, the National Leadership Conference!  South Florida is proud to have Carole Gooden (St. Lucie County) and Debbie Bohanan (Osceola County) represent us all in one of the most unique professional development opportunities ever. In fact, let’s let Carole and Debbie tell you in their own words.   Carole will go first.

Workshops and conferences are not new to me. After all, I have been in the business of education for over four decades. The Discovery Education Network National Leadership Conference, however, falls in a different category from anything I have ever participated in before. It was a truly humbling experience to be included in this gathering of outstanding educators from 21 different states. These were people who obviously had checked their egos in a bin somewhere, and had come to Discovery Communications headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, eager to learn new things, and anxious to share whatever knowledge they possessed. The technology expertise that was assembled in the room each day was, in a word, awesome! Topping it off, our hosts treated us like very honored and well respected guests.

Discovery Education had brought us together to build our skills in working with digital media, because they recognize that if we really want to educate our children for the 21st century, the old methods are no longer adequate for the task. It is imperative that we provide today’s students with updated tools and strategies to ensure that they will be able to function successfully in the global sandbox that this world has become.

Discovery must be commended for its willingness to invest financial and human resources in identifying, training, and supporting a nationwide cadre of educators to use the latest technologies to prepare our youth to take their rightful places in the 21st century. What a wonderful example of a corporation doing its part to make sure that, indeed, no child is left behind.

I am extremely grateful to have been invited to participate in the 2006 Discovery Education Network National Leadership Conference. The networking that I was able to do in four days was invaluable, as it allowed me to make connections with other educators from across the nation, that I would not otherwise have made. Additionally, I am eagerly anticipating the opportunities I will have to share with teachers in my district, the skills that I gained in the four wonderful days I spent in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Like every other member of the Discovery Educator Network who heard the keynote speech given by Alan November, one of the brightest minds in education in this country, I accept the challenge to do my part to ensure that we truly change the way we educate  youngsters so that they can be successful in the ever expanding global society in which we live.     Carole Gooden

As always, I am
Ubiquitously yours,
Karen

Osceola County has a wild and crazy group of pioneer teachers who teach in face-to-face classrooms with an online presence using the Digital Interface Vehicle (DIV).  These teachers meet at least once a month and some of them come every Tuesday or Thursday to hone their skills and collaborate to increase student achievement in their classrooms.  As you can imagine when you spend that much time with one another you become more of a family.  DIV teachers are perfect DEN teachers because they love to share resources and learn new ways to use technology in the classroom.  On Thursday evenings, the DIV teachers meet at St. Cloud HS in DEN member Mark Hall’s TV studio laboratory.  The DIV teachers have grown to love Mark so much that on their last Thursday night training for this school year they decided to show him how much they cared.  Needless to say, a picture’s worth a thousand words………

I would like to introduce all of you to one of our most creative DEN members in Florida, Fotini Guzman.  Fotini teaches computer graphics and applications (K-5) at Pleasant Hill Elementary School in Kissimmee, Florida. She did one of the most amazing unitedstreaming trainings I have ever seen.  She limited her training to ten participants because she wanted to make it extra special and she sure did!  Each teacher was asked where they were from and what their favorite candy was.  Fotini got digital pictures of each participant before they came, downloaded a unitedstreaming video about their birth place and created a PowerPoint with their pictures and a unitedstreaming video embedded under their picture. It was amazing. It made the training so personal and gave the teachers a unique look at using video segments in their classroom.  Not only did she introduce unitedstreaming,  took them to the Learning Tool, Teacher Center and more.  Oh, remember the candy?  Each teacher received their favorite candy bar as a treat!

  The teachers at Pleasant Hill know how wonderful it is to have Fotini at their school.  She is the model of teachers connecting with other teachers and sharing what they know. 

Thank you Fotini, for your dedication and service to teachers learning how to integrate technology.   

As always, I am
Ubiquitously yours,
Karen

At Neptune Middle School, the Apollo Team understands that using technology in the classroom really "makes their day," for the students. Tiffany Bonner, Michelle Brooks and Jaime Reynafarje, all DEN members in Florida were presented the Make Their Day award for the integration of technology in the classroom and enhancing their own technology expertise. These teachers are so excited about being apart of the Discovery Educator Network  (DEN) because they appreciate staying on the cutting edge of what’s happening in educational technology.

Tiffany, Michelle and Jaime are also apart of an online team called DIV teachers in Osceola County. The DIV (Digital Interface Vehicle) is an online learning management system for face-to-face classroom teachers. Their students actually have a password protected area that gives them the ability to go online at home or anywhere and review PowerPoint lessons, take quizzes, write journals, view unitedstreaming videos they have seen in class and much more.

Kudos to Mrs. Judy Zieg, principal at Neptune Middle School for having a vision for instructional technology! At Discovery Education, we love to encourage, equip and empower teachers who understand the power of technology seamlessly woven into their lessons. Great job, Tiffany, Michelle and Jaime. We’re proud of you. 

As always, I am
Ubiquitously Yours,
Karen

We hope that you know by now that the Discovery Educator Network is about sharing and caring for the "teachers in the trenches." One of our newest DEN members in Florida is a teacher who really gets it. Jonathan Meyers, Gifted and Technology Resource teacher at Horizon Middle School in Kissimmee, Florida has committed to help teachers understand the world of emerging technologies. Jonathan has created a daily post for interested teachers in Osceola County and has his own blog for an even wider audience. He has taught teachers in a most humorous and articulate manner that hooks in the most novice user of technology. Let’s face it, our students understand most of the technologies available to us today, why shouldn’t we utilize them in the educational forum? Log onto Jonathan’s blog, Tech Bits, and click around to see all the amazing information that he has been adding this whole school year.  Some of the things I’ve learned from Tech Bits is Open Source opportunities, copy lefting and much more. Jonathan really gets it. He is helping us connect teachers to their most valuable resource – each other. If you know about other blogs, websites or resources that will help teachers to learn how to integrate technology, please comment and help us to connect to each other.

As always, I am
Ubiquitously Yours,
Karen