Northwest

I joined the DEN in July of 2006. I feel that this was one of the best professional jumps I have made recently in my career. My first steps into the DEN came from my interest in implementing Discovery Streaming (United Streaming at the time), more effectively in my class. In the DEN, I found lots of incredible resources and I was hooked. By August of that year, I was already presenting district wide workshops on how to enhance learning with Discovery Streaming. I then headed to the forums, blogs and webinars. This is when I feel DEN became more than a wonderful resource for me as a teacher, but I became an active member in a professional learning network. My daily routine included reading and commenting on blogs and forums and checking out all of the wonderful ideas, sites and tools I learned about from reading blogs. I think that I have an account with every Web 2.0 tool Steve Dembo has ever presented.

One such Web 2.0 tool introduced by Steve Dembo was Twitter. At first, Twitter seemed a little silly and it still is at times. But within Twitter a network of teachers and ed tech professionals has developed. Educators in this network use their 140 characters to ask questions, share ideas, build connections between classrooms and promote events. What both DEN and Twitter remind me is that I am not a Lone Ranger. Perhaps the teacher in the next room is not quite ready to make the steps I am trying to make into the world of digital learning, but there are teachers a few keystrokes away who are very willing, knowledgeable and excited to collaborate with me and help open the world to my classroom.

I was thrilled to have the opportunity to attend a Discovery Education National Institute last summer and to connect with other DEN members at NCCE last year. Face to face is great and the more opportunities we can have like that the better. But, one exciting thing happening in this highly collaborative environment is that even if you can not attend a conference face to face, there are more and more ways to attend virtually. Last summer, I benefited from wonderful conversations in the blogs of people attending NECC in

First up, the DEN Virtual conference being held across the country on Feb. 2. For those of you in the

Feb. 2, 2008, NWRESD in

If you are unable to attend in

Feb. 26- 29 NCCE in Seattle

Join the DEN for some face to face networking. At our DEN event. (more info coming about time and place.) If you are unable to attend look for blog posts and podcasts from the conference.

Yesterday on Twitter, I read a New Years Resolution/ Challenge between two bloggers.  Their challenge was to take one good photo every day.  Well, this being January 2, I have already missed out on this challenge.  But it did get me thinking about ideas and implications for my classroom.  What if I challenged myself to take one photo a day to add to our daily blog?  I often do take photos and include them in our blog, but what if I challenged myself to try to think of a summarizing picture of the day?  This would force me to look at my teaching and the learning each day with new eyes.  Each day I would be reflecting on the unique learning moments that happened throughout the day.  This reminded of me of when I was teaching abroad and keeping a journal.  (Before blogs.)  I would often do things that I might not have done if I hadn’t been looking for a good journal entry.  Swimming with penguins, flying into Somalia on a UN Cargo jet and eating cui are far more interesting than the hum drum of daily life.  What if I looked at the learning in my classroom in the same way?  Not that my classroom should be a 3 ring circus, but that learning should be invigorating, engaging and challenging.  I could even set goals for myself, like, today, I am going to take a photo of students who are engaged or students who are making connections, etc.   

I then thought further, what if I challenged my students to be involved in the process.  Perhaps, one day a week we would look at the photos and as a class pick one photo that best represents our learning that week.  This could lead to a writing activity.  Or perhaps I could challenge my students to take a few minutes at the end of each day to reflect on their day by drawing a summarizing picture.  Students could create a visual journal to share their learning. I like the idea of focusing on new learning with this activity.  But you could also have students select one photo from the news each day, reflect on that and add that to a time line.

So many ideas.  Do you have more to share?  Would love to hear your comments.

As I was contemplating this idea, I thought of a few applications that could be used with this picture a day idea.

OurStory.com is a collaborative timeline project.  Students could add photos and text each day to create a class timeline of the year.

VoiceThread is another great application for sharing ideas with words and pictures.  Several students could comment on one picture.

Blurb.com whether you collect your photos in a blog, a timeline, VoiceThread or other, you can compile your year in photos into a bound, library quality book!

As we get our new blog rolling, I am really interested in knowing who might be visiting our blog. This last week on Twitter, a wealth of great information, I learned about FeedJit. Feedjit is a widget you can place on your blog or website to track how visitors arrive at your site and where they are from. This could be useful information for you as a blogger to find out how people are arriving at your site. It would also be neat for students to locate visitor locations. I know that my students love our Clustr Map which places a dot on a map anytime someone visits our site. By the way, they just reset the Clustr Maps for a new year, so it is time to start repopulating our maps. If you have a Clustr Map on your website or blog, let us know in a comment so that we can visit your site and feed your Clustr Map.