Pennsylvania

Discover, Deliver, Document!
From May 1, 2006 through June 30, 2006 you can earn rewards for reporting events (event = 3 or more people) that have taken place or you are going to host involving unitedstreaming.

DISCOVER – Through the “Tip a Day in May” learn exciting ways to enhance your classroom instruction with unitedstreaming

DELIVER – Share this new knowledge with your colleagues

DOCUMENT – Report the event to your Field Manager and earn tickets

For each reported event from January 1, 2006 through April 30, 2006 you will receive 1 ticket.  For each reported event between May 1, 2006 and June 30, 2006 you will receive 5 tickets. 

Prizes:
• Weekly prize: Field Manager’s Special (awarded once a week from May through June)
• “Tip a Day in May” Prize (awarded once at the end of May)
• Presenter’s Paradise

What is an Event?
Any time you share the power of unitedstreaming with other educators (3 or more), you are hosting an event.  Yes, you learn a lot in those formal one hour (or more) professional development trainings – and that is an example of one event. However, how much do you learn when you’re at the lunch table talking with fellow teachers about something you taught in class today?  Or, what if you’re in a planning session and you share a video that meets that lesson’s needs? Guess what, those little informal sharing sessions are events!  Here are some other examples:

• Share an integration idea over lunch
• Demonstrate a skill to your peers, department or staff before, during or after school
• Conduct a hands-on workshops in classrooms, computer labs, training centers
• Showcase sample student work or projects at Open House or PTA meetings
• Discuss ways to use digital media during planning sessions with members of school or district instructional committees

Use this form to report your events…
Download den_event_summary2.doc

A Tip a Day in May
To help you earn tickets the East Coast Team is going to provide you with a “Tip a Day in May” to share with your colleagues all the way to the end of June so you have a chance to win a little boon.  Check your state’s blog each day in May for a new idea or better yet, subscribe to the blog and have them sent to you automatically.

Upload Resources and WIN a Trip to NECC in San Diego!
Between April 19 and May 19, 2006, Discovery Educator Network members may earn rewards by uploading resources to the Discovery Educator Network website resource library.

The top 10 uploaders will win a scholarship to attend NECC this July. 

Any Discovery Educator who uploads at least 2 approved resources will win a USB hub.

More details and directions on how to upload your resources can be found on the blog.

Want to be published in the Discovery Education Resource Guide?
We need a paragraph about how you can use unitedstreaming to help support the topics below.  Pick one or two of the topics and send me your ideas.  I will bully my way to get them into the Resource Guide en route to making you a star.  However, as always, I need them in one week (by May 5).

Women’s Equality Day Aug 26
Labor Day Sep 4
Grandparents’ Day Sep 10
Hispanic Heritage Month begins
Constitution Week
Ramadan begins Sep 24
Child Health Day Oct 2
Columbus Day Oct 9

From May 1, 2006 through June 30, 2006 you can earn rewards for reporting events that have taken place or you are going to host involving unitedstreaming.

DISCOVER – Through the “Tip a Day in May” learn exciting ways to enhance your classroom instruction with unitedstreaming

DELIVER – Share this new knowledge with your colleagues

DOCUMENT – Report the event to your Field Manager (Download den_event_summary.doc )

What is an event?
Anytime you share the power of unitedstreaming with other educators (3 or more), you are hosting an event.  Yes, you learn a lot in those formal one hour (or more) professional development trainings – and that is an example of one event. However, how much do you learn when you’re at the lunch table talking with fellow teachers about something you taught in class today?  Or, what if you’re in a planning session and you share a video that meets that lesson’s needs? Guess what, those little informal sharing sessions are events!  Here are some other examples:

• Share an integration idea over lunch
• Demonstrate a skill to your peers, department or staff before, during or after school
• Conduct a hands-on workshops in classrooms, computer labs, training centers
• Showcase sample student work or projects at Open House or PTA meetings
• Discuss ways to use digital media during planning sessions with members of school or district instructional committees

For each reported event from January 1, 2006 through April 30, 2006 you will receive 1 ticket.  For each reported event between May 1, 2006 and June 30, 2006 you will receive 5 tickets. 

Prizes:
• Weekly prize: Field Manager’s Special (awarded once a week from May through June)
• “Tip a Day in May” Prize (awarded once at the end of May)
• Presenter’s Paradise (awarded in July to one DEN member in the East Coast region)

Tip a Day in May
To help you earn tickets the East Coast Team is going to provide you with a “Tip a Day in May” to share with your colleagues all the way to the end of June so you have a chance to win a little boon.  Check your state’s blog each day in May for a new idea or better yet, subscribe to the blog and have them sent to you automatically.

So…DISCOVER, DELIVER, DOCUMENT!

Upload Resources and WIN a Trip to NECC in San Diego!
Between April 19 and May 19, 2006, Discovery Educator Network members may earn rewards by uploading resources to the Discovery Educator Network website resource library.  The resource library will ultimately be on the best aspects of the DEN and it is up to us to make it happen.  Take some time to share your resources (e.g., PowerPoints, Google Earth files, CPS files, Inspiration Maps, anything that another educator will find valuable re: the use of media in instruction) with colleagues from all over the world.

The top 10 uploaders will win a scholarship to attend NECC this July. 

Any Discovery Educator who uploads at least 2 approved resources will win a USB hub.

For more details, check here.  Also, here is a document that might help you with your uploading (courtesy of Dick Marchessault):

Download upload_tutorial.doc

Coming Soon: New unitedstreaming and Science Connection!
Take a look at the flyers below to see what is in store for the new unitedstreaming and Discovery Education Science Connection.

unitedstreaming:
Download us_factsheet_v3.pdf

Science Connection:
Download science_sheet_v6.pdf

DiscoveryEducatorNetwork.com
Some numbers you might find interesting about our site…
Unique visitors in April (to date): 5,732
Texas, Florida, and California all have over 500 visitors. 
Pennsylvania, Illinois and Maryland have over 300 visitors.
We have had 128 visitors from Canada, 36 from the UK and 28 from Australia. 
We’ve had at least one visitor from over 50 other countries.

Learning Adds Up
Below you will find a flyer on the Cosmeo fundraiser.  It explains how much schools can make, what percentages, etc.  Check it out!

Download learnign_adds_up_with_cosmeo.pdf

Discovery Days in PA
Just a reminder…if you are interested in a free day of professional development or in helping out at one of our May events, let me know.

May 8: Northeastern Educational IU 19
May 10: Montgomery County IU 23
May 16: Carnegie Science Center (Pittsburgh) with Pirates game to follow.  Check out the cool hat you’ll get if you come to the game with us!
May 18: Lincoln Intermediate Unit 12

More on the Google Earth Front
In case you haven’t seen how the formal partnership between Discovery and Google will work, take a look.  You can get the kmz file below (must install Google Earth first).

Download nationalparks.kml

DEN Challenge: Capture the Inner Harbor
The Inner Harbor Challenge is almost here!  I sent out an email to all who expressed interest.  Make sure to reply by today if you are still coming.

Online Graduate Courses with unitedstreaming
Several partnerships have been developed with accredited universities to offer courses that feature unitedstreaming.  If you are in need of some extra credits, check below for more details.

Download summer_06_grad_courses.pdf 

Have a wonderful Earth Day (no jokes this week, Earth Day is serious business)!  Enjoy.

Between April 19 and May 19, 2006, Discovery Educator Network members may earn rewards by uploading resources to the Discovery Educator Network website resource library. 

Grand Prize 
The Discovery Educators who upload and receive approval for the most resources to the resource library during the term of the contest will win an Educational scholarship* to attend the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in San Diego July 5-7, 2006. Ten (10) Grand Prizes will be awarded. 
 
Participation Reward
Discovery Educator Network members who upload at least two (2) approved resources to www.discoveryeducatornetwork.com between April 19-May 19, 2006 will receive a USB hub.   

*Scholarship is defined as airfare, hotel and Conference registration for July 4-8, 2006.  Discovery Education is not responsible for additional out of pocket costs including meals, extra room charges, or transportation in or around San Diego.   

Contest rules:
Download UPLOADCONTESTRULES.doc

Thanks to Kim Smith for sending me a great resource for doing this abbreviated weekly update.  Click on the picture to the left for your weekly update fix and have a pleasant and relaxing weekend. 

If you want to make your own, click here.

Steve Dembo, our online community manager extraordinaire, developed some chicklets for you to use on your own blogs or websites.  Now, if you are like me, you’re still wondering how you can post gum to your blogs and websites.  So, here is the explanation from Steve…

We have created a few chicklets that Discovery Educators can add to their personal blogs that identify them as part of the Educator Network.  Many bloggers put chicklets on their blogs to identify websites that they belong to, display affiliation with a group or to provide links to their information (like RSS feeds or IM accounts).  For an example of what these look like, you can see them on the right hand side of Teach42.com.

These chicklets can be inserted into any web page or blog that teachers have access to the html code.  To add them to a blog, they simply have to copy and paste the following code into the appropriate spot.  Clicking on the chicklet will take people to the DEN website.

 
Code for Chicklet 1
<a href="http://www.discoveryeducatornetwork.com">
<img src="http://blog.discoveryeducation.comDiscEducator-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Discovery Educator Network" title="Discovery Educator Network"/></a>

Code for Chicklet 2
<a href="http://www.discoveryeducatornetwork.com">
<img src="http://blog.discoveryeducation.comDiscEducator-2.jpg" border="0" alt="Discovery Educator Network" title="Discovery Educator Network"/></a>

Hi, all.  I hope April is treating you well.  Personally, I kicked it off with a trip to Chicago to Delaware to Harrisburg and am minutes away from going to Philly.  But, I couldn’t leave you update-free…

Upload Resources and WIN!
One of the biggest goals right now for the DEN worldwide (yes, we have a DEN in Australia now if you haven’t noticed), is to get as many quality resources uploaded to the Discovery Educator website as possible. We will be announcing the promotion very soon but if you want to get a head start, visit the site and upload a resource or two or three.

Prizes will be given to all Discovery Educators who upload at least two resources by June.  And, I can’t disclose anything specific yet, but there are also some really BIG prizes that will be awarded to several extra lucky Discovery Educators.  Stay tuned! 

Days of Discovery in PA
Over the coming months, we are partnering with many PA Intermediate Units to offer full-day professional development sessions around the many uses of unitedstreaming in the classroom.  If you are interested in attending one of our Discovery Days, let me know.  You have VIP status.

Here are a few dates and locations that are confirmed as of today…

May 8: Northeastern Educational IU 19
May 10: Montgomery County IU 23
May 16: Carnegie Science Center (Pittsburgh)
May 18: Lincoln Intermediate Unit 12

DEN Summer Regional Institute
All DEN members who applied for the regional institute in Valley Forge will be contacted via email on Monday, April 10. 

DEN Challenge: Capture the Inner Harbor
More details about the Inner Harbor Challenge will be sent out next week, so if you expressed interest to me I’ll be in touch soon.

Discovery Partners with Google Earth
A formal partnership has been arranged between Discovery and Google to integrate streaming video of historic sites and other spots around the world through Google Earth software.  Google Discovery Education for more details or check out today’s Washington Post. 

Have a great weekend and send someone a monk-e-mail.