Siemen’s Teachers as Researchers

Dates: June 20 – July 2, 2010

Have you ever wanted to be part of scientific research team? Have you ever wanted to bring the excitement of authentic research into the classroom? Siemens teachers as Researchers (STARs) will provide the experience, resources, and contacts you need to do just that!

Apply now.

Deadline for applications is March 1. 2010.

Program Description and Benefits

Siemens Teachers as Researchers is a two-week residential professional development program, all expenses paid*, in which teachers will engage in mentored research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. STARs provides middle school and high school STEM teachers the opportunity to engage with top scientists and researchers on short-term research projects about current topics of national interest that are related to ongoing research at the laboratory.Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is America’s largest, multi-purpose, national research laboratory. Its primary research areas are neutron science, advanced materials, biological systems, energy, national security, nanotechnology, chemical sciences, nuclear physics, and high performance computing. ORNL is home to more than 50 scientific centers and specialized facilities, including the Spallation Neutron Source, National Center for Computational Sciences, Joint Institute for Neutron Sciences, Joint Institute for Biological Sciences, Bioenergy Science Center, Center for Nanophase Material Sciences, National Transportation Research Center, and the Tennessee Solar Initiative.ORNL mentor scientists will design short-term research projects on current topics of national interest that are related to ongoing research at the laboratory. Working in teams of 4 to 5, teachers will collaborate with ORNL scientific teams to conduct assigned research projects. DOE-ACTS teachers at ORNL will provide additional leadership and resources to help you incorporate research into your science and math classrooms.In addition to the research immersion, you will have additional educational enhancements in the form of seminars, mini-workshops, tours, and field trips to focus and expand the research experience.

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The Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA), the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) and Discovery Education announce a new partnership creating the It’s 21. Just Pass initiative.

Designed to reinforce the message that the legal drinking age is 21 and challenge high school students’ knowledge about the laws and consequences of underage drinking, It’s 21. Just Pass has launched in 21 cities across the country.

It’s 21. Just Pass challenges high school students to learn the risks of underage drinking, test their knowledge and win amazing prizes. For more information, visit http://www.its21justpass.com.

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I’m having such an inspiring time at ICE 2010 in St. Charles, IL.

Yesterday’s DE Boot Camp Workshop was fantastic and I had a blast working with educators from across the state.

Today I am facilitating three spotlight sessions  — two “Power Up Your Professional Learning Network” and one “Teaching the iBrain” in the New Orleans Ballroom.

I posted the take-away resources for both sessions online.  Click here to download them.

The ICE2010 Twitter feed has been so dynamic today.  If you aren’t attending in person, be sure to check the #ICE2010 Twitter hashtag.

Special Announcement: Come to the Discovery reception tonight to learn about new resources including Planet Earth and LIFE http://links.discoveryeducation.com/ICE2010 .

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I’m here in St. Charles, IL, for ICE 2010 – facilitating a Discovery Education Boot Camp full day workshop.  Here are the take-away resources from the workshop.

Discovery Educator Network

Discovery Education streaming -  Links to service overviews, demonstrations, and efficacy research

Discovery Education streaming Getting Started Guide
Discovery Education Classroom Resources -  Links to free resources, sponsorships, and competitions

• Puzzlemaker
• Lesson Plans
  
• Siemen’s STEM Academy
• Web 2010
• CDW-G Conquering Technophobia (Web 2.0 in Education)
• ReadyZone H1N1 – Continuity of Learning
• Ready Classroom – Emergency Preparedness
• ThinkGreen Classroom
• New Teacher Survival Guide
• Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educators
• Curriculum Center
• Brain Boosters
• Worksheets to Go
• Learning Adventures
• NASA at 50
• Understanding Epilepsy
• Discovering Diabetes
• Parent Corner
• Discovery Student Adventures
• Scotch Science Fair
• Siemen’s Science Day
• Siemen’s We Can Change the World Challenge
• USADA True Sport Award Program
• Fuel Our Future Now – STEM resources, Dash+, and Automotive Xprize

Web 2.0 Applications

• SlideShare
• VoiceThread (pricing page – upgrade to educator status)
• Glogster
• Wikispaces
• Google Docs
• Animoto
• Blabberize
• Go Animate!
• timetoast
• ShareTabs
• Wordle
• WordSift
• GreatSummary
• Zamzar
• Vidly
• QuietTube

Tutorials and Learning Resources

• Glogster
• VoiceThread
• Diigo
• Google Tools (Docs, Earth, Maps, Calendar, Reader, etc.)
• Digital Storytelling
• Digital Storytelling with Web 2.0 
• Blogging
• Podcasting
• Wikis
• Digital Learning Networks
• Copyright and Fair Use
• Project Based Learning (Challenge Based Learning) / Why Teach With Project Based Learning? / EL Project-Based Learning / BIE PBL
• Discovery Education – My Admin
• Discovery Education -My Classrooms
• Discovery Education – The Builders
• Widgets for the DE Builders 

Presentation Tools

Video Tools

Mobile Tools

Image Tools

Community Tools

The Best of the Rest

Are you looking to bolster STEM learning in the classroom? Do you want access to top STEM scientists, thought-leaders and innovators? Then you’ll most definitely want to apply attend the Siemens STEM Institute! The Siemens STEM Institute is a one-of-a-kind immersion program that promotes hands-on, real-world integration of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in the classroom. Fifty teachers will be selected as STEM Fellows to attend this all expenses-paid*, week-long professional development experience, hosted at the world headquarters of Discovery Communications, located just outside of our nation’s capitol in Washington D.C. Fellows will be exposed to leading scientists, thought-leaders, personalities and innovators whose work across STEM disciplines shape and define our world today.
The week will be filled with guest speakers at the forefront of STEM, field trips to leading institutions where Fellows will observe real-world applications of STEM subject matter, and opportunities for networking and collaborating with peers from across the nation. In addition to broad-based STEM applications, each Fellow will be assigned to a thematic working group that will provide additional deep-dive exposure.

You don’t want to miss this incredible opportunity. The deadline to apply is April 16, so don’t wait!

Apply now

Become a Facebook Fan of DSA on Facebook and you could win a FREE trip!

Teachers (grades K-12) and parents of students ages 10-18 are eligible to win a Discovery Student Adventure “Ultimate Summer Field Trip” to Italy and Greece just by becoming a Fan on Facebook ! Go to their Facebook page, join the fan club and you will be entered to win! Plus, increase your chances of winning with every friend you invite. Lucky winners will act as guest bloggers and videographers as they rescue loggerhead sea turtles, white water raft the Lao river and make pottery with locals in Caltagirone . Up to 5 trips will be awarded, two for teachers and three for students. Travel dates to Italy and Greece are July 5-19, 2010.

From Steven Dembo:

“From personal experience, I can attest that DSA provides the most unbelievable trips you can imagine.  Trust me when I say this is an opportunity that you do NOT want to pass up.  Visit their Facebook page and become a fan now!”

Welcome to Casper, Wyoming!  I’m joining the rest of the Discovery team at the Wyoming Technology in Education Conference – EduTech 2010.  We’ll be running two sessions at the conference.

Navigating the Stream – Tips and Tricks for Discovery Education streaming

Whether you are new to DE streaming or are an “every day, every lesson” user you will learn something new about this comprehensive digital curriculum solution.  Join us to explore the rich media resources, exciting classroom applications, and inspiring competitions and sponsorship programs.

Discovery Educator Network

Discovery Education streaming -  Links to service overviews, demonstrations, and efficacy research

Discovery Education streaming Getting Started Guide

Discovery Education Science – Links to service overviews, demonstrations, and student access and assessment information

Discovery Education Science Getting Started Guide

Discovery Education Health – Links to service overviews, resources, and efficacy research
Beyond the Stream – Integration Strategies for Discovery Education streaming

Finding and playing video segments is one of the many ways you can use the Discovery Education streaming library.  But did you know that your DE streaming resource includes a built-in Interactive Atlas, Calendar, hundreds of Writing Prompts, thousands of quiz questions and a whole lot more?  During this session you’ll learn how to integrate the DE streaming tools in new and exciting ways to reach your 21st century student.  See how teachers and students are integrating videos, images and audio clips into their curriculum by looking at their samples and learning how to create your own.
Beyond the Stream – Presentation

Discovery Education Classroom Resources -  Links to free resources, sponsorships, and competitions

• Puzzlemaker
• Lesson Plans
  
• Siemen’s STEM Academy
• Web 2010
• CDW-G Conquering Technophobia (Web 2.0 in Education)
• ReadyZone H1N1 – Continuity of Learning
• Ready Classroom – Emergency Preparedness
• ThinkGreen Classroom
• New Teacher Survival Guide
• Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educators
• Curriculum Center
• Brain Boosters
• Worksheets to Go
• Learning Adventures
• NASA at 50
• Understanding Epilepsy
• Discovering Diabetes
• Parent Corner
• Discovery Student Adventures
• Scotch Science Fair
• Siemen’s Science Day
• Siemen’s We Can Change the World Challenge
• USADA True Sport Award Program
• Fuel Our Future Now – STEM resources, Dash+, and Automotive Xprize

About a month ago I discovered a Web 2.0 literacy tool, WordSift.

I Tweeted it out and was instantly swamped with questions from fellow educators.

Since then, I have been telling anyone and everyone who will listen about WordSift.

I was working on a presentation called “Oh, the Humanities!” for the TCEA Discovery Education pre-conference, Beyond the Textbook. I was compiling pre, during, and post-reading resources like AutoSummary in Word, ReadWriteThink, Wordle, TagCrowd, and Great Summary that can be used with digital text to help students identify themes, main ideas, and key vocabulary when I stumbled upon WordSift. Unlike many of the similar word cloud tools, WordSift was created with the expressed goal of supporting education.

WordSift was created to help teachers manage the demands of vocabulary and academic language in their text materials. WordSift helps anyone easily sift through texts — just cut and paste any text into WordSift and you can engage in a verbal quick-capture! The program helps to quickly identify important words that appear in the text. This function is widely available in various Tag Cloud programs on the web, but we have added the ability to mark and sort different lists of words important to educators. We have also integrated it with a few other functions, such as visualization of word thesaurus relationships (incorporating the amazing Visual Thesaurus® that we highly recommend in its own right) and Google® searches of images and videos. With just a click on any word in the Tag Cloud, the program displays instances of sentences in which that word is used in the text.

Click here to take a quick video tour of the service.

Here is an overview of how I would use WordSift with a primary source speech available from Discovery Education streaming.

Step 1: Search for the speech and download the transcript.

Step 2: Copy/paste the transcript text into WordSift.

Step 3: Use the word cloud to ask students to identify main ideas, themes, goals of the speech, intended audience, or to develop questions they believe should be answered by the speech. This could be done as a “pre-reading” strategy to develop the structures for “during reading” focus.

Step 4: Identify key vocabulary by creating customized word lists to make the vocabulary stand out as a different color.

Step 5: Isolate words for further discussion by dragging them to the workspace.

Step 6: Use image and video clues.

Step 7: Click on the words to populate the Visual Thesaurus widget.

Step 8: Use sentence context clues to make meaning of the vocabulary in the context of the speech.

Step 9: Place the sentences back into the full text to use nearby context clues.

Here are some quick tips for bringing WordSift into desktop presentations.

Click on the About link on WordSift to see the myriad ways educators have been using the service and visit the educator videos posted under Demonstrations.

For Discovery Education subscribers, you can use WordSift with the Encyclopedia Articles, Speech Transcripts, Reading Passages, and any other media asset types that contain digital text. Quick Tip: If you are using a speech, be sure to check out the Speech Guide that contains media resources for scaffolding and provides historical context for the speech.

Excite Students’ Curiosity About the World Around Them with PLANET EARTH.

Available in Discovery Education streaming in March

Engage and enlighten your students by utilizing Discovery Education’s free comprehensive Teacher’s Guides. Teacher’s Guides contain program objectives, discussion questions, and lesson plans that support DE streaming video content. See examples of PLANET EARTH: Pole to Pole Teacher’s Guides.

Teacher’s Guide Grade Level: 3-5
Teacher’s Guide Grade Level: 6-8
Teacher’s Guide Grade Level: 9-12

Captivate Students Through the Wonders of LIFE

LIFE is the definitive exploration of our planet’s living things and their spectacular and fascinating behaviors. Segmented into concept-level clips that focus on different animals and plant groups, LIFE captures never-before-seen behaviors using the latest in state-of-the-art high-definition filming techniques.

Available in Discovery Education streaming PLUS in March

Click here to watch a preview of LIFE and download an informational flyer.

I’m here in Austin, Texas, at the Bob Bullock State History Museum for the TCEA Discovery Education pre-conference.  We are joined by the phenomenal Texas Leadership Council.  They will be ustreaming the entire day!

Join us online and watch the 2010 TCEA DEN PreCon at:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/tcea-2010-den-pre-con

You can also revisit each of the sessions by viewing the recordings.  Thanks again to Elaine Plybon for streaming/recording them for us!!

Here are the take-away resources from my presentations on integrating DE media into language arts and social studies.

Oh, the Humanities!

Roundtrip Tickets to Anywhere with Discovery and Google Earth

Click here to see the rest of the resources from the event posted on the DEN National Blog.

If you have not had a chance to share you thoughts about the day with us, please click here to do so.

Image Citation:

Stephen F. Austin, the “Father of Texas.”. IRC. 2005.
Discovery Education. 9 February 2010
<http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/>