–Five-day event equips educators with tools to be leaders in educational technology–

 
Silver Spring, Md. (July 19, 2010) – Marybeth O’Brien, a fourth grade teacher at Huntington Elementary School in Brockton Public Schools, along with 75 other educators from across the country, recently spent five days at Bentley University in Waltham, Mass. participating in the Discovery Educator Network Leadership Council Symposium July 11-16. The event was hosted by Discovery Education, a division of Discovery Communications, whose networks include Discovery Channel and Animal Planet.
 
O’Brien is a member of the Massachusetts Discovery Educator Network (DEN) Leadership Council.  As one of more than 20 state councils nationwide, the Massachusetts DEN Leadership Council supports educators’ efforts to integrate educational technology and digital content into curriculum through a variety of activities, including professional development workshops, networking events and regular communications on emerging technology and best practices. In addition, the Massachusetts DEN Leadership Council authors a blog that serves as an information clearinghouse on state-specific education issues. Together, these activities assist teachers across Massachusetts, regardless of their familiarity with technology, as they implement the new high-tech tools available to improve student achievement.
 
During the recent Symposium, participants heard from renowned speakers such as Peter Reynolds, founder of FableVision—an educational resource company dedicated to helping all learners discover their true potential—and Chris Dede, a professor of learning technologies at Harvard University. Educators learned new leadership strategies and presentation methods to encourage and support their peers as they work to integrate the latest educational technologies into classroom activities. In addition, O’Brien had a unique opportunity to network with the members of other Leadership Councils from across the nation, sharing ideas and best practices to help their peers improve student achievement.
 
“We’re pleased that the annual Discovery Educator Network Leadership Council Symposium brought together top educators from across the country for a unique opportunity to grow their educational technology skills,” said Discovery Education Director Lance Rougeux. “Discovery Education is committed to nurturing and empowering today’s educators, and Marybeth’s enthusiasm for integrating digital media and technology in the classroom, and for sharing her skills with peers across the state, supports Massachusetts teachers as they seek to help each student reach their fullest academic potential.”
 
For more information about the Massachusetts DEN Leadership Council, visit http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/massachusetts/.
 
For more information about the DEN, visit http://community.discoveryeducation.com.
 
For more information about Discovery Education, visit http://www.discoveryeducation.com.
 
About Discovery Education
Discovery Communications (NASDAQ: DISCA, DISCB, DISCK) revolutionized television with Discovery Channel and is now transforming classrooms through Discovery Education. Powered by the number one nonfiction media company in the world, Discovery Education combines scientifically proven, standards-based digital media and a dynamic user community in order to empower teachers to improve student achievement. Already, more than half of all U.S. schools access Discovery Education digital services. Explore the future of education at www.discoveryeducation.com.
 

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Photo Caption: Discovery Education Director Lance Rougeux (left) with Marybeth O’Brien at the 2010 Discovery Educator Network Leadership Council Symposium in Waltham, Mass.
Photo Credit: Discovery Education

Greetings DEN Members,

 This summer vacation sure has flown by! There is no better way to get back into the swing of things than by taking a few workshops.  My district sent me to a hands-on Apple Professional Development Podcasting Institute.  As a techie, I was thrilled to be going, for one reason above all others was that we were given the IPOD Classic/Video with an 80GB memory.  This was such a perk! This workshop was well paced, we were all comfortable to ask questions and work with the information given.  We used a great deal of Mac applications like garageband and iphoto.  These programs were so user friendly that it put my PC to shame.  However, this is nothing to hold the PC users back…the members of the class were so helpful that we all pooled our resources and shared quite a few ideas for making this just as easily adapted to that of the PC.  The pc version of garage band is that of Acoustica’s MixCraft 4.  Both programs allow you to create a voice recording, add pictures, music, and sound effects and animate in some ways.  As part of the institute we created little movies using the Aesop’s Fables.  It was really fun, and super easy! I can’t wait to create some great things for my students to use. 

 I would like to share some great websites that we learned about:

www.podomatic.com is a great site that allows you to publish and create your own podcasts.

www.pics4learning.com allows you to download pictures without worrying about copyrights.

www.soundsnap.com has a library full of sound effects that you can download and use again without worrying about those pesky copyright laws.

www.pbwiki.com is a wiki site that allows you to communicate and discuss things with your students…a lot of the teachers in the training were already using this and LOVE it. I can’t wait to try it

As we went through this workshop I realized that I was already creating Podcasts with my students we just weren’t publishing them to a wiki.  So I decided to take some of the projects created by my students last year and turn them into podcasts.  I published them to iTunes.  I was limited at one point because it was not in an iTunes format…rest assured, someone offered a great alternative.  The site www.ZAMZAR.com is a free convertion website.  I simply uploaded my project to this site, identified the file extension I wanted to convert it to (IPOD) and in a few minutes, I was emailed a link to download the new version! It was fabulous!

 I hope you have an opportunity to take a course like this! It was so much fun and so eyeopening to the things you can do!