AKA Riptide Furse

Image by DiscoveryEducation via Flickr

Augustine Writer (Lance Rougeux - RL), presents ‘More and Muir Tech Tips for Teaching About a Greener Tomorrow’.  Let’s face it, the green revolution is here and our students are helping to lead this movement.  Sustainability is an engaging topic for every grade level and subject area.  Join us, this Wednesday, to find out how you can help your students change the world during the course of a school day using the digital tools they love.  Customized placemarks in Google Earth and digital posters with Glogster.  Virtual labs about alternative energy sources and digital storytelling projects with a green screen.  You’ll learn a new idea for every day of the week.  We’ll also discuss the free resources available through the Siemens We Can Change the World Challenge – the first of its kind national K-12 student sustainability competition.

Wednesday, June 10 - As always, we’ll see you at 5 p.m. SLT (7 p.m. CST, 8 p.m. EST).  http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduisland%20II/132/131/22

And of course how is the sleuthing going?  Look for more iDiscover clues at 2 DP, twitter, and our blog.  Have you guessed  ”who dunnit?”  - Find out at the big reveal party on June 17th!!

Technorati Tags: deninsl,discovery education,education,green,environment,classroom,second Life,sl

https://docs.google.com/View?id=dtp6fnh_99ghck7mdg

…continued from Geocaching with an iPhone – Part 3

We’re continuing our look at the menus available on the iPhone Geocaching App . The following the menu continuation under Cache Info.

Hints will show you any hints that the cache owner would like to give to help people on their adventure.

Again hints can totally give away a location or be more cryptic than any other clue.

Jumping down to Find Nearby Caches, this will show you your location (blue ball), the location of the cache you are currently looking at the information for (blue marker) and all of the nearby caches (green markers).

View on External Map takes you to the menu where you get the menu wheel to choose which mapping service you want to use.

More in the next post…

Technorati Tags: education,iphone,geocaching,Discovery Education,DEN

…continued from Geocaching with an iPhone - Part 2

On the previous menu we saw Navigate to Cache. Touching that menu item takes us to a map screen.

It will show you as a blue ball and the cache as marker with the cache ID above it. The buttons at the top determine what you are looking at – you and the cache, just you, or just the cache.

The View Compass button at the top allows you to see a compass with a direction pointer as to which way to walk toward the cache.

I find that switching between Map view and Compass view is helpful because it refreshes your location in relation to the cache. I tend to forget to use the longitude and latitude at the bottom although once you figure out which way to travel so the numbers get closer to matching it does make finding a cache easier.

Backing up to Cache Info menu again, touching the Description menu item shows something like this.

Again keep in mind that the description may be practically nothing, i.e. it’s under some leaves to something shown above listing the different stages and problems to solve.

Recent Logs will look like this picture below.

Remember that warning about spoilers. Part of the fun for people is working to find the cache. People sometimes put too much information in their logs. But for a counterpoint if you are having trouble locating a cache reading through the logs may indicate that the cache is now missing in action or moved.

We’ll look at the rest of the Cache Info menus in the next post.

Technorati Tags: education,iphone,geocaching,Discovery Education,DEN

Continued from Geocaching with an iPhone – Part 1

From your result list when you tap on one of the caches you will be shown a page with information about the cache.

So here we see the name of the cache and who placed it along with the unique geocache identification number, latitude, longitude and approximately how far away it is from the place you searched. Pay attention to Difficulty and Terrain as it can help you avoid getting frustrated and giving up. Some caches can include long, hard hikes and hard clues that involve multiple layer puzzles to figure out.

The next few lines are links to other information about the cache. Navigate to Cache will take you right to a map showing were you are and where the cache is.

Save for Offline Use allows you save the info to your iPhone so you see it if you don’t have a connection or want to save battery by turning off your network connection.

Description will give you more information about the cache that may also include clues to help you find it.

Recent Logs will show you notes from other geocachers that have either found or not found the cache.

Further down on the page we find more menu items.

Hint shows you any hints available. This may be grayed out if no hints are available or the hints may give too much away and spoil the fun.

Inventory can show any special objects that the cache may include such as travel bugs or geocoins.

Post a Field Note allows you to post a note about your adventure such as whether you found the cache or not.

Find Nearby Caches will show you other caches that may be close to the one you are looking at right now.

View on Geocaching.com will show you the cache information in the web browser on the Geocaching site.

View on External Map will allow you to view the the cache location to your location on Google Maps or Live Search Maps or Yahoo Maps.

We’ll take a look under the hood of each one of these in the next post…

Geocaching with an iPhone - Part 3

Technorati Tags: education,iphone,geocaching,Discovery Education,DEN

One of the best applications I have on my iPhone is the official Geocaching App
from Groundspeak. The way it integrates the controls found on most handheld GPS units along using the huge database and tools of the main Geocaching web site is tops of any other iPhone app I have seen.

If you have been geocaching before and have an iPhone, you’ll want to check this app out. Even though it costs $9.99 it is well worth it. If you have never been geocaching but have an iPhone this app makes it easy to get started and helps you join the community of people that get out and go.

This should serve you as an introduction to the app for the iPhone to show you just what all you can see and do with this on your geocaching adventures.

You can see above that this is one of the menu screens from my iPhone. The Geocaching app uses the Groundspeak logo and can be found in the 2nd row.

Touching the icon brings up the front page reminding us that Geocaching can be dangerous.

For beginners to Geochacing remember this “With over 810,076 geocaches hidden worldwide, there is likely one nearby waiting to be found.” This is how easy it gets. Your next screen assumes the obvious, you want to go geocaching. So let’s find some that are near you. the My Current Location will use the iPhone GPS to find where your location is in relation to it’s vast database of hidden caches.

You can also search by a cache code you have been given or looked up on the web site or search by address. Looking up by address can be helpful if you want to scope out a place you will be going in the future, say on your next vacation.

However you search, the next screen will list the caches in that area with the closest first. Tap on the one you want look for or find out more information.

Continued Geocaching with in iPhone – Part 2

Technorati Tags: education,iphone,geocaching,Discovery Education,DEN

Northrop Grumman has announced their schedule for Flights of Discovery for 2009. Teachers who apply and are accepted will have a chance to experience near zero gravity.

This is similar to a microgravity flight I went on in 2007 with NASA. Although this one isn’t with NASA the amount of learning and experience teachers bring back to the classroom is unmatched.

Applications will be accepted until all the spots are filled. Find out more information here.

http://www.northropgrumman.com/corporate-responsibility/corporate-citizenship/weightless.html

Here are my pictures from the DEN Virtual Conference at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, PA. My thanks to Matt Monjan for allowing me to tag along. Also our hosts, the Pennsylvania DEN and SLA were great.

CRSTE Day of Discovery – Literacy 2.0

Sponsored by CRSTE and Discovery Education

Register:
https://discoveryed.wufoo.com/forms/crste-day-of-discovery-literacy-20/

When: May 30, 2009

8:30am – 3:30* pm – lunch is provided

An additional special session will be held for Staff Developers, ITRTs, Technology Coaches, and Curriculum Staff – 3:30 – 4:30 pm

Where: Washington-Lee High School

1301 N. Stafford St. Arlington, VA 22201 (just a few blocks off of I-66)

Registration Fee: $25

Registration will be open April 20 – May 11 on the CRSTE web-site

Session Titles

• 50 Ways to Use Discovery Education streaming
• Two Roundtrip Tickets to Anywhere: Google Earth and Discovery Education streaming
• Digital Storytelling and Discovery Education streaming
• Get Interactive with Glogs, Voicethread & the Discovery Education Builders
• Powering up Your Professional Learning Network
• Professional Development and Second Life
• Literacy 2.0
• Building Internal Capacity with Professional Development and Discovery Education
  *Special session for Staff Developers, ITRTs, Technology Coaches & Curriculum Staff
• Discovery Education is Pretty Suite – Lunch Time Speaker Session

Find out more about CRSTE at http://crste.org

This may be useful for people in the Northern Virginia School Districts. This is a very easy grant to write and win. Just write it to the rubric that is included in the grant proposal document that follows the flyer.

NOVATEC09 Grant Flyer

NOVATEC09 Grant Proposal - Get more Business Documents

Anyone that knows me knows that I look down on anyone that uses Internet Explorer as a web browser. It’s klunky and slow and the main reason they give is “it came with the machine”. Soooo 20th century. Time to move on and up to a higher intelligence. Firefox alows you to do addons or extensions. This hopefully will show you how wrong you have been in using IE.

Foxmarks - Bookmarks and passwords synchronizer. Foxmarks is your perfect connection between home and work. An bookmark you make one computer instantly is a bookmark on another computer. They recently added password sync too. You make a login on one machine and it is synced so Firefox remembers it on your other machine. Just remember to load it on each machine you use wth Firefox.
http://www.foxmarks.com/

Autocopy - This is hands down the first addon or extension that I add to a new install of Firefox. Think about it. It’s so logical and makes so much common sense. 99% of the time you highlight something you copy it it right? YES so why not have that put to the clipboard automatically. This does it. Just highlight anything and you can paste it anywhere. Truly is one of the MUST HAVES.
http://autocopy.mozdev.org/

Adblock Plus - Are you concerned about kids clicking on ads and ending up someplace they shouldn’t? This blocks most attributes of ads on web pages so they almost never show up.
http://adblockplus.org/en/

Cooliris - Cooliris is well uh er just COOL. Any website that loads their code allows ou to browse or show picutres in a 3d sense. It is an awsome way to show pictures or to just browse and find a pic you want to use.
http://www.cooliris.com/

Tab Mix Plus - Last but again one of the first to install is Tab Mix Plus. This gives you so much conrol over your tabs it is unbelievable. Always want a new link to open in a new tab. You got it. Want a tab to reload every 3 minutes? You got it.Take control of your tabs with tab Mix Plus.
http://tmp.garyr.net/

Do you have a favorite Firefox extension?Let me know in the comments.

Technorati Tags: addons, extensions, firefox, browsers

The Smithsonian in Washington, DC does value teachers. One of the many things it offers to teachers is the annual Teachers Night. Teachers get special treatment including discounts in the stores. This year the event happens on Friday, November 14, 2008, 7 to 9:30pm and FREE Admission. So if you’re in the area put it on your Google Calendar.

 http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/educators/professional_development/teachers_night.html

Are you a brand new teacher? Are you an experienced tacher looking for new resources that the younger teachers alrady might know about. Here is a site that is part of Discovery that works both ways. Give yourself time to explore this web site. Loads and loads help and ideas.

http://www.discoveryeducation.com/survival/survival_tool_kit.cfm#a2

http://www.brainrules.net/

This is a direct copy cross post from the Second Life Leadership Council Blog.

Always wanted to attend a Book Group, but just were never able to find the time, location, group?  Here’s an opportunity for you to join this virtual Book Group from the comfort of your own home!

Join Beth and Laelia for ‘Book Talk: Brain Rules’, a weekly (every Monday) gathering for the month of October as we discuss, share, and debate the merits of John Medina’s ‘Brain Rules’.  This evening we will cover chapters 1 - 3.  Taken from the Brain Rules website (www.brainrules.net): “Most of us have no idea what’s really going on inside our heads. Yet brain scientists have uncovered details every business leader, parent, and teacher should know—like the need for physical activity to get your brain working its best. How do we learn? What exactly do sleep and stress do to our brains? Why is multi-tasking a myth? Why is it so easy to forget—and so important to repeat new knowledge?”  Join us as we explore in depth the concepts in each chapter and how we can change what we do in our schools and in our classes to enable our students to learn better.