Approximately 30 DEN members and interested educators gathered recently at the EDCO Seefurth Center in Waltham to celebrate the cornucopia of Discovery digital resources and the many web 2.0 resources, especially Glogster Edu! Discovery’s DEN Director, Lance Rougeux, kicked off the session with an overview of Discovery resources and the new search features. Participants expressed particular interest in the Builders and how to set up classrooms to assign individual work for students using DE assets. Glogster’s Education Director, Jim Dachos, joined us to share some of Glogster Edu’s new features. We will update you on some of the new Glogster features in a future post. Time for sharing ideas and resources, prizes, and a great lunch all contributed to a fun and productive day. Many thanks to Rick Atkins from EDCO for hosting our DEN event!
A day of learning, creating, and sharing is scheduled for Tuesday November 17th at the EDCO Seefurth Center in Waltham. Highlights of the day will include learning about the digital resources available through Discovery, creating a Glogster, and discovering how to share and collaborate with others. The Day of Discovery is jointly sponsored by Discovery Education and EDCO and was organized with the help of Donna Criswell, the chair of the Massachusetts Leadership Council, Rick Atkins, EDCO Director, and Lance Rougeux, Discovery DEN Director.
Don’t forget, you’ll always be able to find them within the DEN Educator Resources section as well, if you’d like to embed them in your own blog or website.
Thank you Steve and all the presenters for another series of wonderful, informative sessions!
Massachusetts DEN STARs will be doing three presentations at MassCUE this week. All their presentations will be on Wednesday. Kathy Schrock, Director of Technology for the Nauset Public Schools in Orleans will be a spotlight presenter. She will be addressing Winning Strategies to Conquer Information Overload.
Beth Knittle, the District K-12 Technology Integration Specialist for the Barnstable Public Schools will be presenting with her colleague, Cristine Spence-Dilley. They will be presenting Media in the Math Resource Room.
A group of DEN STARs from Sudbury will also be presenting on Wednesday. Their topic is Putting the Tools in the Hands of the Kids. The presenters are: Donna Criswell, Technology Curriculum Integration Specialist; Sara Fischer, Teacher; Laura Burney, Teacher; Megan Bowhers, Teacher; Liz Kerrigan, Teacher; and Amie Abdal-Khabir, Teacher.
One of the resources Justin Karkow shared during his presentation was Share Tab. Instead of just seeing a list of urls, you actually see the home page of each site as a thumbnail. It adds a visual “touch” which enhances the display. Thanks to the Pennsylvania State Blog (They must have been working overtime!), I was able to gather many of the web sites that were mentioned during the conference. I added a few of my own. I am sure many are familiar to you, but hopefully there are a few new ones for you to peruse.
The DEN’s Fall Virtual Conference - Tech or Treat was replete with many great treats. For seven hours participants learned many tricks for using Discovery Education and Web 2.0 resources to enrich our student’s educational experiences. Don’t worry if you could not attend today. Each session was recorded and will be archived and available on the National DEN blog in about a week. Please pass the information to others at your schools.
Sara Fischer, 5th Grade Teacher, Israel Loring Elementary School, Sudbury, MA 01776
Sara has worked on many technology related projects throughout her 8 eight at the Loring Elementary school. Sara’s teaching skills are exemplary and apparent in the day to day happenings in her classroom. Her students are attentive and eager to learn because Sara makes learning meaningful and encourages student involvement in every aspect of her classroom. Sara is an “Activ” teacher who has completed a Promethean “Train the Trainer” course, making her a highly effective interactive whiteboard classroom teacher and trainer in our district. Sara is also A STAR Discovery Educator! She designs every lesson using the tools provided to enhance the curriculum and make it come alive for her students.
Sara has incorporated wikis (online classroom conversations) in every subject matter in her classroom. Students contribute to any number of content related topics using the laptops assigned to this school’s 5th graders during the day as well as from home. This has enabled several of her more reticent students to contribute in ways they never could before. Her students have also created a variety of podcasts which are accessible via her classroom web page. All of her students have voice…
Sara incorporates Discovery Education’s video resources in both her teaching and her student’s learning. As an example, her class recently completed a long term research project on the Aztec, Incan and Mayan cultures that took them to traditional resources in the library as well as resources online. The final product was to create a movie that incorporated a handful of short video clips from Discovery’s resources, editing them, adding text and other features to make a movie presentation of their team’s topic. What was so unique, and a perfect example of Sara’s knowledge of what it is kids need to learn most effectively, is that she gave the students the video clips with the audio removed. Students wrote scripts and then recorded their own voices over the clips they chose to form a coherent and powerful presentation. This technique allowed students to more powerfully and authentically reflect their understanding of the content. They also used FlipVideo cameras to videotape each other speaking the glossary terms which were added to the end of each movie. Sara confidently puts the tools in the hands of her students!! Yeah Sara!
Join thousands of educators online as the DEN team goes house to house to explore the many digital treats available to educators today.
The day will feature special presentations from Justin Karkow and Steve Dembo along with a host of other great sessions guaranteed to satisfy your digital sweet tooth.
As part of the day’s festivities we are offering up three HD flip cameras for the best costumes that day. Whether you are attending in-person or online, get dressed up as your favorite Discovery personality and you could win a flip cam for your classroom.
Schedule
(All times ET)
9 AM
Can I Help You With That? The Student as Collaborator, Creator and Director with Justin Karkow
10 AM
Do You Have the Audacity to Podcast?
11 AM
Thinking Outside the Slide
12 PM
Putting the Bling in Your Builders with Steve Dembo
1 PM
What on Earth is a Gloggle?
2 PM
Be Nice and Share: Publishing Your Media-Infused Projects for the World to See
3 PM
Can I Help You With That? The Student as Collaborator, Creator and Director encore presentation with Justin Karkow
Robin Talkowski is a Reading Specialist at the John Glenn Middle School in Bedford.She has been teaching for 15 years.Robin also provides a number of professional development opportunities for her colleagues on Project CRISS and Thinking Maps.She also services as the facilitator for the year long New Teacher Induction Institute.Robin has a master’s degree in Reading and a doctorate in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy.
Robin’s interest in technology stems from her commitment to engage her reluctant readers in the learning process.She is constantly seeking ways to teach the essential skills and strategies used by effective readers by incorporating technology and web 2.0 resources.Robin’s use of video techniques for visualization practice, podcasts to improve fluency, and video clips from Discovery to increase background knowledge are just a few examples of how technology enhances her classroom instruction.In 2005 she presented a workshop at the New England League of Middle Schools titled “The Marriage of Reading and Technology.”Robin has participated in the DEN National Institute in 2008 and 2009.
Kathy Dziok – Team Member
This is my 10th year as technology coordinator/computer teacher at St. Stanislaus School in Chicopee. We have approximately 400 students, with 2 classes of each, K-8. I am responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of 40 computers, 3 mobile carts with laptops, and one SmartBoard in our lab.
I have been a member of the DEN since 2006, and have attended the premiere of Planet Earth at the Museum of Natural History in New York in March of 2007, and the Discovery Institute in June of 2007. I have done various trainings as a STAR educator for DEStreaming in my school, as well as in many of our area private schools, and have thoroughly enjoyed and believe in all of the wonderful educational materials Discovery Education has to offer. I absolutely love learning and teaching about our world through the various products Discovery Education provides to our children. Our teachers are excited about the ability to use short video and materials to introduce a unit or subject matter by immediately capturing the students’ interest and attention using Discovery Education materials. Thank you DEN for helping our teachers to collaborate in such a unique and exciting way!
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