Florida

Received word from Darlene Wolfe here in the Orange County, FL area of an event that might be beneficial to some of you. If you are interested please read further on below the images.

Educators, guidance counselors and administrators may register on line at http://www.fdmec.org/registration/event_012208.htm . More information for this free program is at the registration site ( http://www.fdmec.org and select register for January 22nd event). Since we do have a cut off point due to the size of the meeting area, participants will receive an email confirmation for them to print and show as both parking pass and free entrance to the Science Center.

The program begins with optional tours of Otronicon and the Orlando Science Center . Otronicon explores gaming, simulation and digital media in education and entertainment. A networking hour with snacks follows. Then, we have presentations from educators involved in the changes, industry professionals who will share what they look for in employees, and an update on the Digital Media Banner Center to be housed at Seminole Community College and on the coming programs, and changes in secondary and PSAV digital media curriculum.

Tom.

I just wanted to say thanks to all of you DEN members that showed their support last night in the EdTechTalk chat room while the WoW 2.0 Show was going on last night. As Anne Truger (SL Council and good friend) can tell you, I was a basket of nerves leading up to the show. I think it started about 8pm. I don’t handle waiting very well. We chatted, finished a scrabulous game on Facebook up till it was time for her to get her kids going on their homework. And then I waited some more.

When it came time, the four ladies of the WoW show made it wonderfully easy for me to open up and share my tech. experiences from a support perspective. For those that were unable to make it last night you can catch the show here in podcast form, as well as downloading the chat from edtechtalk.com.

I will be getting on here and posting some more about the upcoming FETC Conference later this week. Thanks again for all your support last night. It made it SOO much easier to do.

Tom.

For you regular listeners of the Women of Web 2.0, tomorrow’s show should be a pretty good one. At least for me that is. As I posted on my personal non-DEN blog over the weekend, I will be guest speaking on the WoW 2.0 show tomorrow night. It truly is an honor to have little old me on such a big show as this one is. Vicki Davis, Cheryl Oakes, Sharon Peters and Jen Wagner do a WONDERFUL job, and I look up to all four of them as tech role models.

You can catch the show tomorrow night here. Alot of the times I miss the show, but download the podcast to listen to while I am out walking for exercise.  Hope to see you all there.

Tom.

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.

Hope everyone’s first day back to school went well. I spent the second half of my day sitting in a district conference room with the district IT staff discussing Clean Sweep vs. Deep Freeze as well as the use of Altiris within the district in which I work. Nothing like a half day on your first day back! So no complaints from me!

I’m a little late in reading about this. Only found out about it from Miguel Guhlin via Twitter. (if you are NOT on twitter, then why not?) Leonard Low shared (see link above here) on how to obtain a free full version of Camtasia Studio (build 3.1.3). I don’t know about you, but being an educator and having the ability to have something for free is pretty nice.

I will make a disclaimer here…I’ve never used the software, so I do not really have a comparison to it’s ease of use, functionality and its features. The main point is that it’s FREE.

Happy Editing!

Tom.

Your Florida Blogger.

BTW, did I mention that it was FREE yet???

Good Morning Florida…I’m writing to you from the lovely Don Cesar Beach Resort over in St. Pete Beach this morning. I thought about writing a post from Nassau, Bahamas over the weekend when I was down there, but the evil eye I got from my wife was pretty tell tale that I was better off thinking twice about doing anything work/DEN related while we were on our family cruise. I want to share a few things with you today, and the first is to wish everyone a Happy Thankgiving to each of you and your families. I’ve a few things to be thankful for this year, so bear with me while I share some of them with you.

1. I’m thankful for my loving family. They bring a smile to my face every morning that I wake up and see them (sometimes even with the kids fighting between themselves!).
2. I’m very thankful for Discovery and the DEN. I’ve made a veritable plethora of new friends over the almost 2 years I’ve been a DEN member. I can not think of a time when I’ve asked a question, searching for help, and not been able to find the answer.
3.  I’m thankful for an administration who’s willing to go out on a limb with a whacky computer guy like me to help the teachers along in bringing technology into their curriculum.
4. I’m thankful for the fresh air in my lungs everyday I wake up in the morning.
5. And for those of you that really know me you will understand this one, I’m thankful for the hair that I have left on top of my noggin. Hopefully the rest of the area will get the hint and start growing again.

Please add to the conversation by sharing what you are thankful for this year. I’d love to continue the conversation.

I did an all call for FL DEN members with DEN blogs in my last post. Please continue to send me an email at: thomas.turner@polk-fl.net if you have a DEN blog here so that I can add you to a list of FL bloggers AND highlight you in a post. I will eventually get the sidebars worked on where you will be linked there for eternity.

Here are the first ones I want to share with you:

• Nancy Keck
  
• Diana Echezabal

That’s all for this morning. Later this weekend I will add more

Tom.

• Are you a Florida STAR DEN Member?
• Are you keeping a DEN Blog?

If you answered yes to BOTH of those questions then I have a small job for you. Debbie and I are configuring the Florida Page to be a source of information for the DEN and a place to share in Florida conversations. So, if you have a DEN blog, please email me at thomas.turner@polk-fl.net and let me know. Put in the subject line “FL and DEN BLOG” so I know what to look for.

Your Florida Blogger.

Tom.