Meg’s Musings

Or, just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water. (Cue “Jaws” music.) Discovery Education (courtesy of MA’s own Geeky Bird Matt) put on another fantastic day of collaboration, food, prizes, professional development, and did I mention food and prizes!?!
Leadership Council member, Jen Dorman, gave a fantastic presentation on building a better builder. She demonstrated lots of great ways to use the builders to differentiate your quizzes and assignments. I especially liked the idea of embedding various widgets such as: VoiceThread, YouTube, swivel, blabberize, polldaddy, and bubbl.us into the assignment. Thanks also to Jen for the head’s up that Voki now has some less than appropriate ads placed on their (and your) creations.
Beverly demonstrated the many uses of photostory, moviemaker, and adobe premiere elements for digital storytelling. I especially liked her suggestion of having each student do one slide at the beginning of the year as an “about the author” for all year. Also, I will definitely take everyone’s picture in front of the green screen that first week. Great time saver idea.

Other people attended break-out sessions on Personal Learning Networks and Power Point. So many great ideas and so little time. We wrapped up the day by signing Matt’s posters on one great thing we learned ( Only one, Matt?), one thing we wanted to learn more about, and our ideas/wishes for webinars. Then, it was off to dinner outside the mansion at Monmouth University, pictures with the bride and groom, and a few more ideas shared….Check Matt’s Blog for personalizing closed caption videos and even for creating captions for videos without them. Looking forward to some working time tomorrow!

       Day one of Discovery Educator Network Summer Institute….Wow! That’s a mouthful and every syllable is well deserved. A leisurely lunch was followed with renewing acquaintances and meeting new colleagues. Pennsylvania DEN, all 12 of us, toured One Discovery with our own Geeky Bird, Matt Monjan.  During our tour we snapped lots of pictures to create our own DEN Boom de Yada.  After a few extensions, thanks Lance, we settled in for the showing. What an amazing display of collaboration and digital media….not to mention  FUN!! Dinner and bed? Oh no!! Dinner was followed by dessert sessions. Yes, Lance, the key lime pie was awesome! But even better were the moviemaker shout out, animoto, closed captioning, and GIMP sessions. Cool new tools…and there are four more days!!