New York DEN

Teachers are invited to join WMHT’s Listening Project’s Conversation with Educators in Albany on Thursday, January 22, 2009. The purpose of the session is for you to share what you think about the region’s growth and changes. Discuss the intellectual, educational, cultural and infrastructure gaps that exist within the region or that will be created in the future. As an educational leader from the Albany area, your perspective and opinions are very valuable and WHMT wants to hear from you.

If you are interested, you’re invited to attend the focus group on Thursday, January 22nd from 4:00-5:30pm at a professional marketing research facility in downtown Albany. Free parking is available. As a token of appreciation, dinner will be provided during the session. For more information or to sign up email education@wmht.org or call 518-880-3444.

Great things are happening over at Animoto!

1. Image Pacing Control

You can now dictate the speed of your images within any full-length video. Want to create a high-intensity action flick of your pics? Try setting the image pacing to double speed. Need each photo to be more carefully appreciated? Try half speed. Fun!

2. Animoto iPhone App

Create Animoto video shorts on-the-go with our new, free iPhone app. Just snap photos and use the app to turn them into vids right there on your phone. Birthdays, nights out in the city, your irresistible new puppy, at a restaurant with friends…anything you have/take pics of! (Btw–works for iPod Touch, too.) http://iphone.animoto.com

Do you use Kidspiration with your students?  Well, the company that created the program is having a 45 minute webcast on January 15th from 3:00 - 3:45 pm to model how your students can learn to write on demand using Kidspiration®. Lucy Belgum, the Education Development Manager for Language Arts, will host a complimentary 45-minute webcast demonstrating how to:

• Use visual techniques to plan writing that is mindful of audience, purpose and form
• Engage students in the process of writing paragraphs that contain supporting details
• Target, plan and write to the components found within the various modes of writing using graphic organizers

Register Today!
Date: Thursday, January 15, 2008
Time: 12:00-12:45 p.m. Pacific Time, 3:00-3:45 p.m. Eastern Time

If you are unable to join them, don’t worry - the webcast will be archived and available shortly after the event concludes.

Welcome to the pack

Laura Benin and Rachael Singh!

for joining us!

This message comes from Vicki Davis (http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/).  For those who don’t know, Vicki is a very positive influence in the world of Web 2.0 in education.

—–

Hello everyone -

I hope you’ll take a second to help a group of my very passionate ninth graders who have named themselves the Digiteen Dream Team - http://digiteendreamteam.blogspot.com

They have been using Google Lively as part of the Digiteen Project teaching digital citizenship (http://www.digiteen.net), however Google has announced it will shut lively down on December 31st..

The students have created a blog at http://digiteendreamteam.blogspot.com, and are planning a protest for this Wednesday from 2:15 - 3:00pm (EST) in Lively (the room will be listed on their blog just before going live).

They are asking for as many people as possible to create an account on lively - www.lively.com/.  That gets attention.  You can also start your own Lively room, sign the Lively petition, or write a letter - my student letter is going to be up on the blog this week - they are going to ask for a few more months to see if we can get more classes using it.  You and your students can also send your own letter to Google about the use of lively in education.

I know Lively has really not been considered by many for use in education, but I think it should have been and should be.  I know you’re busy but if you can spread the word, please do.

Best regards and thank you for your time,
–
Vicki A. Davis
Blog:  http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com

Discovery Education and the Association of Public Broadcasting Stations of New York (APBS) have announced that they have renewed their partnership to deliver PowerMediaPlus, a video-based online education service, to educators and students across much of New York State. The one-year agreement, through June 2010 ensures that thousands of schools and over a million kids will have access to the digital resources provided through this service.
Contact your local public television station for more information on EdVideo Online. To find your local station, visit www.tv_station.htm. For more information on PowerMediaPlus or any other Discovery Education service, please visit www.DiscoveryEducation.com or call 800-323-9084.

Attention Pre-K and Early Childhood Teachers!  I just received this e-mail from WMHT:

Each year, the national organization Pre-K Now produces a video conference for early care and learning advocates and supporters across the country. Last year, more than 2,000 people participated at sites in 35 states; including sites in Albany and New York City. This year, Winning Beginning NY and WMHT, are pleased to offer this free opportunity to attend “Breaking Down Barriers to Quality Pre-K.” We’ll feature success stories from communities where Pre-K advocates are conquering common implementation challenges that can impact the quality of programs. Time during the broadcast will be reserved for local brainstorming and planning to apply shared lessons, discuss other challenges, and celebrate victories in our area. Following the broadcast, there will be a discussion at WMHT with early care and learning experts.

 
WHEN: Wednesday, December 10 from 12:30 PM - 3:30 PM WHERE: WMHT Educational Telecommunications Register here http://events.preknow.org/page/event/detail/wrvd . Or call 518.880.3400

I received a very informative e-mail from the people at Teacher Tube. It made me very happy.

I hope it makes you happy too! Happy teachers make for happy students!

Read on…

From the Teacher Tube E-mail Newsletter:

If you have not visited TeacherTube in the past two weeks, you need to check us out. We are extremely excited to share with all of our community members that TeacherTube is performing at our fastest speeds even though our visits have doubled in the past two months. Our tech team is constantly working to provide the most efficient software and hardware solutions to keep the site performing at a high level. Our community continues to grow by the hundreds everyday. We have over 900,000 visits per month, over 170,000 members and have over 35,000 public videos that you can use in your classroom with students or for professional development with staff. You have made TeacherTube one of the most sought after free resources for teachers all over the world. We at TeacherTube say thank you. You are making a difference in over 220 countries.

There have been discussions among educators for TeacherTube to expand our resources and allow teachers to upload more than just video. I am formally announcing TeacherTube is currently working on new features that will allow teachers to upload photos, audio, and docs. Docs will be documents such as PowerPoint presentations, PDF files, word documents, rich text files, etc. We have held off on offering more resources for two reasons. First, we needed to have our software function more efficiently so that you would have a better experience while using TeacherTube . We have resolved the vast majority of our software inefficiencies. Secondly, we needed to design and implement a database structure that could handle scalable growth. Our tech team has designed a solution and it is scheduled to be implemented before January 1, 2009.

It is an exciting time to be an educator!

Jason Smith
CEO / Co-founder
TeacherTube, LLC