Northwest

Northwest Educators gathered in Mount Vernon, Washington to network during the DEN Virtual Conference on Saturday, October 25.  This was the first Discovery Event in the Mount Vernon area and it was a huge success.  17 teachers in all from Edmonds, South Whidbey, Everett, La Conner and Mount Vernon had a great day of professional development and networking.  Our heads were spinning after Jen Dorman shared great ways to build and learn from an online Professional Learning Network.  Out of the 17 teachers there, only 2 were STARS, so we shared the wonders of the DEN and the great benefits of becoming a STAR.   Many were interested in building the DEN and pursuing STAR status.  We all enjoyed Halls presentation on Cell Phones in the classroom.  Lots of great and challenging ideas.  Steve Dembo, as always had great ideas to share.  Actually, “share” was the them of his presentation.  It is not enough just to have great ideas, we should be sharing our ideas and great projects with others. After a great lunch, some of the group went Geocaching in downtown Mount Vernon.  For many, this was their first attempt at this great activity.  Others continued with the virtual conference watching inspiring and informative presentations by Jannita and Matt and Brad.  These presentations will all be archived on the DEN site. I know that many of us are anxious to go back and watch again.  Lots of great information and a little bit of time. The most exciting thing about this event was the group of teachers who joined together for the first time and shared ideas, networked and made plans to meet again.  This is what the DEN is all about, great ideas, great people and great support.

We had a great time of sharing with the NorthWest DEN on Thursday night during the NCCE conference.  It was wonderful to meet DEN members face to face and share the wonders of the DEN with newbies. Thanks Kim, Mike, Scott,  Jennifer and Amy for making this a great event   More on NCCE soon.

DEN members were treated to an Evening with the STARS during last week’s ITSC Conference in Portland. Some of our wonderful STARs shared ideas about using digital media and building learning communities in a Dining with the STARS event. Thanks to Jennifer Gingerich and Amy Lundstrom for sharing the news of this great event.

 

 

Twitter.com

Do you get enough time to collaborate? Is it easy to connect? Do you get answers when you need them?

If you answered “NO” to any of those questions, then this service may be just right for you! Twitter is a “microblogging” application (note the prefix “micro”) that allows you to connect with friends, collagues, and people with similar interests around the world by posting short (140 character maximum) answers to the question “What are you doing?” It’s easy, useful and fun.

 

Educators who build their networks in a deliberate fashion can leverage this network for professional benefit by sharing ideas with an international audience, extending collaboration opportunities (I posted a link to a Voice Thread about Landforms and had several people from other parts of the US, Europe, and Asia post photos and comments), asking for help and extending help to others. After you sign up for an account, start to follow me! My username is “alundstrom”. Connect to other educators by “following the breadcrumb trail” (thanks to @teach42 for that term) from person to person, or search for a common interest.

 

Post your username as a comment below this entry so other northwest DEN members can find you!

Contributed by Amy Lundstrom, STAR Educator and Instructional Technology Coordinator for the Bend LaPine Schools. www.amylundstrom.com

——

SMART Board Lessons Podcast (http://pdtogo.com/smart/)

Winner of the EduBlogs 2007 Award for ‘Best Use of Audio’, the SMART Board Lessons Podcast provides:

— updates on the latest news in the world of interactive whiteboards

— a strong orientation toward teacher support and effective pedagogy

— a page-by-page tour of a weekly interactive whiteboard lesson

— at least two interesting, valuable Web links

Check out in Episode 30 how a teacher uses unitedstreaming in her math class.

(http://pdtogo.com/smart/?p=40)

shared by Tim Haag, STAR Educator from Albany, Oregon

http://albanytech.edublogs.org/

—–Two Lines of Video in Adobe Premiere Elements

A Neat Way for Creating Videos with Discovery Education Streaming

Students often download Discovery Education Streaming clips to import into Microsoft’s Moviemaker or Apple’s iMovie and use their product as part of their formative or summative assessments. Both of these programs only have a single video line. There are some movie-making products, such as Adobe Premiere Elements and Apple’s Final Cut Express, which include 2 or 3 lines of video and audio.

These additional lines allow the student to put a picture-in-picture in their videos, such as putting an old newsreel video from Discovery Education Streaming on top of a graphic of a current-day HD television. All the student needs to do is to put the newsreel video on one of the video lines, the graphic of the television on another video line, resize the video by clicking on it in the preview screen and grabbing the handles that appear, and stretch the graphic of the television to the same time length as the newsreel video line.

Here is a link to an example of this process. In this video, I have created a “digital picture frame” effect within a still graphic of a mantel. http://youtube.com/watch?v=KxkOJqYzNu4

shared by Kathy Schrock, Discovery STAR Educator from Cape Cod, MA

http://kathyschrock.net/

Voice Thread http://voicethread.com

This is a wonderful and simple tool for online digital storytelling. Upload your photos and then record your voice, or better yet the voices of your students — telling their stories, explaining their thinking, sharing their poetry, and more. Then invite people to view or contribute to your voicethread. Make sure to click on the Go Pro link to sign up for the K-12 Educator account!

 

shared by Jennifer Gingerich, STAR Educator from Canby, Oregon

http://web.mac.com/jennifergingerich

 

February 2, was a great day for the DEN.  DEN members from around the world joined in both face to face and virtual meetings.  I was unable to attend our Portland event due to being totally overwhelmed with preparing for a school play.  I really doubted that I would have time to even attend virtually.  But I woke early on Saturday morning and joined in with the conference already beginning on the East coast.  I jumped in about at 6:30 am PST.  I know, crazy.  But wow!  What a gift.  Once I began watching the presentations and participating in the back chat, I was hooked.  So, while I busily created teacups and candlestick costumes for Beauty and the Beast, I was able to participate in a world class event.

Just in case you couldn’t make it Keynotes: All of the sessions have been arhived. 
Lost in Translation, presented by Lance Rougeux (Learn about how to transl8 what our Digital Natives are saying.)
Revenge of the Digital Immigrants, presented by Hall Davidson ( Great ideas and thoughts about how our students think and learn.)

Virtual Breakouts:
Building a Bigger Builder, presented by Matt Monjan (Lots of cool features with the builders including adding widgets to the builders.)
The Bionic Lesson, presented by Mike Bryant (Spice up lessons with digital media. Learn about adding code in Google Earth)
50 Ways to Spin a Digital Story, presented by Steve Dembo (Blabberize was a new and fun tool for me.)

Would love to have a guest blogger share their experiences at the Portland event.  Leave a comment if you would like to share and I will get in touch with you.

There is a  new feature in Google Docs Spreadsheets called forms. It basically allows you to share a Google Docs Spreadsheet as a form with others and the data they enter in that form is automatically added to a Google Docs Spreadsheet. So rather than sharing a spreadsheet with others, you can send them a form to fill out and the data they enter is automatically entered into a Google Docs Spreadsheet.  I can think of lots of great ways to use this at school.  I’ve already sent out a survey to the parents of my students asking questions about our recent school to work activity.  You can e-mail the form or you can post a link.  I have created a survey for the Northwest DEN blog readers.  The survey will serve two purposes.  It will give us an opportunity to see how this new tool works and it will give the Northwest DEN Leadership Council valuable information to serve you better.  Please take the time to fill out our survey. 

NorthWest DEN Survey

We hope you all enjoyed the virtual conference today! We thank you for coming out despite the snowy start this morning! We have a few questions for you:

Would you like to attend another DEN event?

What topics would you like us to offer?

What time of the year and location would you like the event?

Will you be attending ITSC or NCCE this year?

Please respond by posting a comment on this blog.

Thanks Jennifer Gingerich for your hard work as our Northwest DEN Leadership Council Events person for putting together this great opportunity. Here is some more detailed information about this wonderful professional development opportunity.

If you want to be a virtual attendee only, register at the following link:

http://Community.DiscoveryEducation.Com/virtualconference

The virtual program includes an opening and closing keynote, as well as three other sessions at the following Pacific times:

9:00-10:00 AM Keynote 1 - Revenge of the Digital Immigrants

10:00-11:00 AM Session 1 - 50 Ways to Spin a Digital Story

11:00-12:00 PM Keynote 2 - Lost in Translation

1:00-2:00 PM Session 2 - Web 2.0: Building A Bigger Builder

2:00-3:00 PM Session 3 - The Bionic Lesson: Revitalized, Redesigned, Rebuilt

Keynotes

Revenge of the Digital Immigrants: Teaching with Media Technology” presented by Hall Davidson

§What veteran teachers suspected the research has finally proved: 21st Century students are different. With different attention spans, higher IQ test scores, and social networks, their sophistication comes earlier—with a different skill set. There is a silver lining: We can teach this “New Brain” more effectively, more efficiently, more engagingly. We have the technology! Media has evolved and education must evolve to match.

Lost in Translation presented by Lance Rougeux

§How many of your students are bilingual? An easy way to find out is through a simple math formula. Take the number of students in your classroom and multiply it by one. There’s your answer. All students today are bilingual and d 4n tongue dey knO so weL L%kz fune & cn b kind of hard 2 rED, @ lEst 4 adults. So how do we meet the needs of our students when we’re the second language learners in the classroom? In this kickoff session, we’ll take a look at ways we can use media and other technologies to help get us up to speed and speaking their language.

Sessions

Web 2.0: Building A Bigger Builder Presenter: Matt Monjan

When teachers embraced Discovery Education streaming they found a wealth of resources including “The Builders” (Assignment, Quiz, and Writing Prompt builder). And now with Web 2.0 applications, “we have the technology to rebuild the builders” (thank you Six Million Dollar Man). During this session we’ll explore three web 2.0 applications, SlideShare, VoiceThread, and TeacherTube and how they can be incorporated into the DE streaming Builders. Now,

armed with this knowledge, you will return to your classroom with new cyber tools for the 21st century.

The Bionic Lesson: Revitalized, Redesigned, Rebuilt Presenter: Michael Bryant

The pieces you know about: Flickr, GoogleEarth, GoogleDocs, Voicethread, Discovery Education Streaming, Slide-Share, wikis, digital stories and cell phones integrated into your rebuilt lesson. You have the ability to transform our standards driven lessons with the above web and hardware technologies. Model lessons will be discussed and improved by connecting the above pieces and your collaboration.

50 Ways to Spin a Digital Story Presenter: Steve Dembo

An in-depth overview of the digital media available in Discovery Education Streaming and 50 different ways to tell digital stories using it. DE Streaming provides your classroom access to thousands of videos, images and audio clips. Learn how to integrate them into cutting edge Web 2.0 sites to make your students’ digital stories come alive!

virtualconferencefinal.pdf

Just a reminder about joining us for the First Annual DEN Virtual Conference this Saturday. 

Connect with educators from all over the country during this unique professional development experience where you can attend, in-person, online or both!

We will be hosting an in-person event at NWRESD in Hillsboro, Oregon from 9:00am to 3:00pm.

The DEN Virtual Conference is a national event that provides educators a unique opportunity to experience Discovery Education’s high quality professional development. Participants have the flexibility to attend the DEN Virtual Conference online or in-person at one of many regional events hosted by the DEN Leadership Councils.

The day will feature keynote presentations from Discovery’s own Hall Davidson and Lance Rougeux that will be broadcast to each of the regional gatherings. In between the keynote presentations, participants will attend breakout sessions presented by local STAR Discovery Educators.

Educators who cannot attend an in-person regional event still have the opportunity to participate virtually in the full-day conference. Special breakout sessions presented by Matt Monjan, Mike Bryant and Steve Dembo will be broadcast throughout the day.

To register for the DEN Virtual Conference or the in-person event in Hillsboro, OR, visit the registration page here. Seats will fill up quickly, so make sure that you RSVP for this FREE and unique opportunity ASAP!

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

Atlanta. This fall, I was able to attend K12online conference which was a virtual conference in which you could and still can attend the sessions at your convenience. I even virtually attended Learning 2.0, which was conference held in

Shanghai,

China. This last week, teachers were attending FETC in Florida and Educon in

Philadelphia. Teachers attending shared what they were learning through blog posts, Twitter and some sessions were even streamed live using UStream. While I was in frigid Washington, I had the opportunity to watch Steve Dembo present in balmy

Florida. The reason this all works is the wonderful nature of teachers to share their learning with others. As teachers, we don’t believe in storing the treasure of our knowledge in a safe. We know that if we share our treasure with others we receive even more. For teachers in the Northwest, there are some great opportunities for developing your PLN (professional learning network) coming your way both face to face and virtually.

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

Portland area, you have the opportunity to attend Face To Face.

Feb. 2, 2008, NWRESD in

Hillsboro, Oregon from 9:00am to 3:00pm

If you are unable to attend in

Hillsboro, you can attend virtually. Register here.

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.

Join us for the 1st ever Discovery Educator Network Virtual Conference on Saturday, February 2nd!

Connect with educators from all over the country during this unique professional development experience where you can attend, in-person, online or both!

We will be hosting an in-person event at NWRESD in Hillsboro, Oregon from 9:00am to 3:00pm.

The DEN Virtual Conference is a national event that provides educators a unique opportunity to experience Discovery Education’s high quality professional development. Participants have the flexibility to attend the DEN Virtual Conference online or in-person at one of many regional events hosted by the DEN Leadership Councils.

The day will feature keynote presentations from Discovery’s own Hall Davidson and Lance Rougeux that will be broadcast to each of the regional gatherings. In between the keynote presentations, participants will attend breakout sessions presented by local STAR Discovery Educators.

Educators who cannot attend an in-person regional event still have the opportunity to participate virtually in the full-day conference. Special breakout sessions presented by Matt Monjan, Mike Bryant and Steve Dembo will be broadcast throughout the day.

To register for the DEN Virtual Conference or the in-person event in Hillsboro, OR, visit the registration page here. Seats will fill up quickly, so make sure that you RSVP for this FREE and unique opportunity ASAP!

We hope to see you there. Add a comment if you plan to attend the Hillsboro, Oregon event.