Iowa Discovery Educator Network

Spring Into Action at the DEN Virtual Conference

Spring Into Action with the DEN and join thousands of educators who are passionate about integrating media into their instruction and collaborating with each other to improve student achievement. During this unique (and free) professional development event you have the flexibility to attend online or in-person at one of many regional events hosted by the DEN Leadership Councils.

When?Saturday, April 25, 20099 AM to 3 PM EDT
Where?Participating ICN sites or in the comfort of your own home.
How much?Free.

The day will feature a special presentation from Chris Lehman, Principal of the Science Leadership Academy in the School District of Philadelphia as well as a great lineup of sessions from STAR Discovery Educators and the DEN team.

Registration opens on Thursday, April 2.

In-person Events at the Virtual Conference
The Iowa DEN Leadership Council is planning an in-person event to accompany the virtual sessions on April 25th.

Check the blog for all the updated information.

I just recently found out about this online tool. You can think of it like a giant, never ending piece of paper where you can zoom in and create a path for students or teachers to follow. You can embed pictures, text, audio, etc. Visit http://prezi.com/ and take a peek at the various ways you could incorporate DE Streaming videos, pictures, etc. in self created timelines, stories, etc. I think this will be a great teacher resource as it comes out of beta mode.

Australia, South Africa, and China + 9 DEN STARs + 36 DEN STAR Students + Your Dream Come True = A Discovery Student Adventure!

It’s the ultimate equation for DEN STARs and definitely our dream come true for you!  We are thrilled to announce the launch of the Discovery Student Adventure Program.

What’s a Discovery Student Adventure you ask?!?  Well, imagine being able to sign up and take your students to one of 8 amazing trips to the Arctic, Australia, China, Costa Rica, Ecuador/Galapagos Islands, Italy/Greece, New Zealand/Fiji, and South Africa.  These trips are free to the educators and are of cost to their students.  These inaugural trips will launch during the summer of 2010.

But that’s 2010… what about 2009?!?!  Can I get a virtual drum roll please….

Let me introduce to you the opportunity of a lifetime….. The Discovery Student Adventure Pilot Program. In order to gather marketing materials and test run the incredible itineraries….. Discovery will be sending 9 DEN STARs to one of 3 locations (Australia, China, and South Africa)  But that’s not all… it gets better… each of these DEN STARs will be able to bring 4 of their students at NO COST!  That’s right DEN STARs… these trips are free for you and your students! (Note: We are looking for 5th-12th grade teachers and students ages 10-17)

I have seen the itineraries…. and all I can say is be prepared to be blown away.

What do you need to do to participate?!? Stay tuned as we will be posting a link to the application on the DEN National Blog in the coming weeks.

Here’s some of the official wording…

In 2010, Discovery Education will launch Discovery Student Adventures, education-based international trips for students to eight destinations including:  Arctic, Australia, China, Cost Rica, Ecuador/Galapagos Islands, Italy/Greece, New Zealand/Fiji Islands, and South Africa. 

To effectively integrate educator feedback into these inaugural trips, a select group of educators will have the opportunity to travel with Discovery in the summer of 2009 as part of a one-time special opportunity to pilot a Discovery Student Adventure trip.

Educators will serve as chaperones to a group of students, and will also be an integral part of selecting the students for these pilot trips. Travel program will be at no cost to the selected educators and students.  We are looking for students ages 10 through 17 and educators that teach 5th through 12th grade.

The three pilot trip destinations are Australia, China and South Africa.  Trips will provide for a variety of enriching and experiential activities from cultural exchanges, to community service, to science and exploration, to physically engaging adventure activities. 

So what do you think?!?  Do you want to join us for a Discovery Student Adventure?!?

If you have never used or heard of Yaplet I would suggest giving it a try. Yaplet allows you as well as your students chat on any website at any time. If you are assigning students to find a particular DE Streaming clip they can use yaplet to chat with each other about the clip they are searching for. It allows for peer collaboration within the computer lab as well as anywhere else in the world with computer access. You can monitor your students by joining the chat or by simply watching what students are typing to one another. This is a great tool for students to use to look at and evaluate other internet resources.

For veteran users of DE Streaming you are probably fully aware of the quiz builder tool. However for those of you who are not I would highly recommend using this as a powerful formative assessment tool in your curriculum. It can be used in a variety of ways but I like to use it for students who are absent or are planning to be absent.

Quiz builder allows you to create custom quizzes based off of DE Streaming video clips. The quiz is assigned a url and/or a code. The url can be put on your own website or blog where students can access it, take it, and the best part is that your students results are e-mailed to you upon completion.

I have begun to build a set of quizzes for each unit I teach. My goal is that I will have one for each unit and students may use it as a back up plan for lectures they may miss and are unable to come in before or after school. I am also hoping that students who are present will be able to use them as another resource for comprehension and understanding.

If you haven’t had the chance to check out quiz builder I would highly recommend it. Have a good Thanksgiving Break!

  The World of the Digital NativeThe 2008 Annual Educational Technology Conference at the Downtown Marriott in Des Moines this Sunday 10/19 -Tuesday 10/21. We are very fortunate to have two great keynote speakers, Hall Davidson and Alan November. If you are planning to go to the conference feel free to look at the conference program to start planning your day. There are also some handouts already published by some of our 2008 presenters on the ITEC website that you may wish to print out before or after you attend.If you would like to take a peek at our keynote speakers background feel free to do so by clicking HERE.

I have been recommending this site for a few teachers around the school lately who want their own websites. In the past we were using publisher because it was the only web developer tool we had already loaded on our computers.With Weebly you can build your own site, upload it to the web, host it on Weebly’s servers. You can even embed video and audio clips. You can even embed web widgets with a simple copy and paste.The interface is very intuitive and easy to use. There are several templates to choose from and you can add your own pictures to add a personal touch to any template.The best part about this is that it is FREE. If you want you could upgrade to the pro version where you would have access to cool features like password protection on any page of your site. This could be a useful tool for embedding DE Streaming clips for students. They could simply go to your site, type in the class password and view the clips you would like them to watch. However, you could still create links to each clip and have them type in their Iowa AEA online password.Needless to say this is a great tool to build custom, quick, easy, and effective websites for personal or professional use.

This online resource is an educational search tool that connects students and educators to more than 300,000 educator-approved web resources that support the complete K-12 curricula and the 21st century learning skills. Teachers will save time searching by finding just the right resource to differentiate instruction for their students with resources that are arranged by readability. Students will save time searching by finding resources suited to their learning style to make learning fun!

Students may use their Iowa AEA Online login for netTrekker d.i. Educators are encouraged to setupa unique personal account.

For those of you who own an iPhone or iPod touch I am sure you are aware of all of the amazing application available for the two devices on the iTunes App store. I recently came across gFlash+, which is an app that allows you to create flash cards for both devices. If you haven’t seen it yet check out their website by clicking here. 

I plan to use this device to create quizzes over DE Streaming videos as an optional study tool for students who have the device. They will be able to login to DE Streaming and watch the assigned clips and then access the quizzes I have created using their phone or iPod application.

World Book Web - Free Webinars

World Book will be offering free webinars during August, September and October on the World Book Web suite of products.

The World Book Web products listed below are provided, via Iowa AEA Online, free to Iowa K-12 schools by Iowa AEAs:

• World Book Kids (preschool & middle school)
• World
  Book
  Online
  Reference
  Center (middle school & high school, this is changing to World Book Student in September)
• World Book Advanced (high school & college)

All

http://www.aea10.k12.ia.us/media/electronic.html