As I was trolling through the EduBlog Awards this year, I was thrilled to see the DEN represented a few different times! In particular, the DEN in Second Life team has been nominated for the Best Educational Use of a Virtual World! Major kudos for the nomination, but now let’s see what we can do to earn them an Eddie! Stop by and give them a vote, and do it the Chicago way… Early, often and with others!
I also saw a few other STARs represented there as well. Jennifer Dorman, our Fall Virtual Conference lunchtime keynote, is up for Best Individual Blog for her ClioTech blog. Dave Kootman is up for Best Class blog, Vicki Davis, the CoolCatTeacher herself, is up for Best Teacher Blog, and yours truly has had Teach42 nominate for Best EdTech Support Blog and Best Individual Blog.
So support your fellow DEN members and cast some votes in their direction!
I’m sure I’m missing some. There are 16 categories and dozens of nominees. If you’re nominated for an Eddie and I missed you, leave a comment so I can update the post with your link!
Posted on December 3, 2008 in General News by admin
December 17th is going to be a phenomenal day for webinars here at Discovery Education. We’ll be closing the calendar year off with two holiday treats, one for you and one for your students. In the morning, the Science Channel’s Michio Kaku will do a special webinar for you to share with students in your district, and in the evening we will be connecting you with digital storytelling guru extraordinaire, Jason Ohler!
Michio Kaku is a best selling author, host of two national weekly science radio programs, and frequent guest on television shows including Larry King, 60 Minutes, 20/20 and many more. He has hosted numerous series for the Science Channel and is currently increasing people’s Science IQ every Sunday night in the series “SciQ“. If you’ve ever seen Michio speak before, you know that he has a brilliant ability to break down incredibly complex theories and explain them in ways that anybody can understand. On on December 17th, he’ll be sharing his ideas directly with you and your students! This is your chance to connect your students to one of the most dynamic scientists on the planet, and even have him address their questions directly! It’s an opportunity you won’t want to miss.
But that’s just the morning! In the evening, we have a holiday treat just for you. The featured speaker for December’s EdTechConnect is none other than Jason Ohler. The author of Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning and Creativity Jason is one of the nation’s premier digital storytellers and an incredibly popular presenter. By combining passion, humor and intelligence with 25 years worth of experience, his presentations do more than simply inspire and engage you, they demonstrate practical ideas for transforming your classroom. Register today and join educators from around the world in learning from this dynamic educator.
What an awesome turnout for the NSTA regional conference in Portland. I guess it helps when you have the Mythbusters kicking things off. Just in case you weren’t one of the 2500 teachers in the room, you can check out the Mythbusters’ keynote here.
I was able to ask a few of the questions STARs submitted to the blogs last week so THANK YOU for posting. I did see some more questions appear after the presentation, but fortunately a few of those were asked by members of the live audience.
The Discovery Education product development team is constantly looking for ways to make Discovery Education streaming better and better.
And you guys play an important role in the direction of our site! Along that vein our Product Development team is hosting a Focus Group Webinar tomorrow evening at 5pm EST. It will be open to teachers from around the country. During the webinar they’ll be seeking feedback on a redesign of the My DE page.
So if you would like to provide feedback to the team and leave your stamp on the new page, please sign up for the webinar and give us your two cents!
To keep it manageable we’re going to tap the roster at 20.
To sign up all you have to do is click here and follow the registration steps. As always - thank you so much for your support!
Posted on November 19, 2008 in Uncategorized by Matt Monjan
Are you a fan of the Mythbusters? Think your students might be? Well, they’re going to be special guests of Discovery Education at NSTA tomorrow and Lance is going to be hosting a Q&A with them. While he has plenty of his own questions to ask them, we thought we’d open it up to you and your students!
Leave a comment with a question that you or your students would like to ask the Mythbusters and Lance will ask them it during the session tomorrow. Rumor has it that he’ll be trying to get a few autographs to give away as well, so there MAY be prizes involved here!
Congratulations to Maryann Molishus (STAR DE from PA) who was recently recognized with a Milken Family Foundation Award.
The Milken Family Foundation National Educator Awards program provides public recognition and financial rewards to elementary and secondary schoolteachers, principals and other education professionals who are furthering excellence in education. By honoring outstanding educators, the program strives to attract, develop, motivate and retain talented people to the challenge and adventure of teaching.
Posted on November 12, 2008 in Uncategorized by Lance Rougeux
Classrooms around the globe will wish NASA a happy 50th birthday as part of an all-day virtual birthday party on Thursday, Nov. 13. The effort is the result of partnerships among NASA’s Digital Learning Network, the United States Distance Learning Association, Polycom, Inc. and Discovery Education.
The virtual party begins at 9 a.m. EST with live videoconferences occurring every hour on the hour until 6 p.m. Schools from Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan, Mexico, India, Slovenia, New Zealand, and the United States will participate in the live digital connection. The party will also be webcast live at http://dln.nasa.gov/dln/ so that all may join in the learning and fun.
In preparation for the event, Discovery Education invites educators, parents, and students to visit its NASA at 50 website, located at http://discoveryeducation.com/nasaat50/. The site features video clips that will be incorporated into the virtual birthday celebration, as well as teacher’s guides that accompany each video clip. Video clips can even be downloaded to portable media players for viewing at school, at home, or on the go.
We hope you join in on the celebration via webcast tomorrow! Just go to: http://dln.nasa.gov/dln/
Posted on November 12, 2008 in Uncategorized by Lance Rougeux
”The best way to predict the future is to invent it.“ - Alan Kay
Next week we’ll be having a very special EdTechConnect presentation, featuring one of the father’s of modern programming. Alan Kay is a technology pioneer who has consistently been at the forefront of the computer age. He was one of the first researchers to realize the significance of mobile computing in education, and his ideas have been a major influence in the OLPC project.
On Wednesday, November 19th, Alan Kay will be our featured speaker on EdTechConnect, a free webinar series from Discovery Education. While this is open to all educators, I strongly recommend you only share the link with colleagues of your that have an open mind. Alan will most certainly stretch the way you think about education. Register yourself and then pass the link along. I know I say this often, but this is one webinar you will NOT want to miss!
”The important thing here is that the music is not in the piano. And knowledge and edification is not in the computer. The computer is simply an instrument whose music is ideas.” - Alan Kay
If you want a sneak preview of Alan as a presenter, check out his recent presentation on Ted Talks.
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But that’s just the morning! In the evening, we have a holiday treat just for you. The featured speaker for 
Are you a fan of the Mythbusters? Think your students might be? Well, they’re going to be special guests of Discovery Education at NSTA tomorrow and Lance is going to be hosting a Q&A with them. While he has plenty of his own questions to ask them, we thought we’d open it up to you and your students!
