Northwest

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

This last week the DEN Team was on a traveling roadshow through Washington State. Kim Randall, Dennis Swain and Scott Pionek visited 4 locations and shared about all of Discovery Education’s great features, the power of the DEN and some great tricks and tips for using media in the classroom.  The team traveled to Lake Washington, Puyallup, Wenatchee and Anacortes.  Along with learning how to pronounce all the weird city names, they also had the fortune to see Washington in all it’s glory with the apple blossoms in Wenatchee and the tulips in bloom in the Skagit Valley.  I attended the last night of the Road Show in Anacortes. 30 teachers, almost all new to the wonders of Discovery came and were amazed and what they learned they could do with these great tools.  About an hour and a half in to the tech rich learning activities, the power went out.  We learned that it was more than just a little blip and that power was out in 4 counties and would not be back on soon.  But that didn’t stop our fearless Discovery Education team.  Dennis scrounged up an “old school” whiteboard and commenced to sharing the builders by drawing the website and explaining as he went.  Some of the newbie teachers there said that they actually preferred the low tech approach and had an easier time following.  Scott then jumped in and shared all the other great products such as Discovery Health and Science and Media Share.  Again, the teachers were excited about what they learned and ready for the power to come back on to explore more. After a great dinner and still no power, the ever innovative Discovery team and the very flexible and creative teachers in attendance jumped right back in for more learning.  With one very long extension cord connected to a generator and the pooling of some of our laptops and personal cameras, we broke into teams and created PhotoStories of our evening adventure. Kudos to Kim, Dennis and Scott for pulling off a great evening of learning despite the lack of power.  Flexibility is an essential trait for any great educator.