Pennsylvania

Are you heading down to Atlanta for NECC this June?

If so, be sure to check out the PA NECC 2007 wiki for loads of resources.  Add you name to the attendees page.  If you haven’t finalized your travel and lodging arrangements, be sure to see what other PA Discovery Educators are suggesting. 

For those of us not lucky enough to be attending this year, we would love for you lucky attendees to share what you have gleaned by posting it to the wiki. 

Also . . . I am seeking a guest blogger or two who would be willing to e-mail me daily updates from Atlanta to post on our PA blog.  If you are interested, please e-mail me at cliotech@gmail.com. 

For information about the DEN preconference event, be sure to visit the National Blog.

(I published this over at my cliotech blog, but thought I’d also share it with the PA DEN.)

Okay, I admit to my totally contrived blog post title . . . I couldn’t resist.

Who says that we can’t learn from our students? Today, a 7th grade student in my school shared a pretty cool web tip that gave me serious geekbumps. 

Blackle is a search engine powered by Google, though not officially a licensed Google product. It was inspired by a January 2007 blog posting from Mark Ontkush on his ecoIron blog, Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-Hours a Year.

Here is some information from Blackle’ site:

Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. "Image displayed is primarily a function of the user’s color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen." Roberson et al, 2002 We believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Secondly we feel that seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy.

On May 9th, Blackle was the featured site-of-the-day on GeekSugar, though it also appeared on the Energy Roundup at the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ article refuted some of Blackle’s claims:

If dark computer displays use up less energy than white or bright displays, as the Energy Department claims, then it stands to reason that an all-black screen takes less energy to display on a computer monitor than, say, Google’s snow-white welcome screen. In a January 2007 post at the EcoIron blog, Mark Ontkush estimated that Google could save 750 megaWatt hours a year using a totally black screen. Blackle, which is not affiliated with Google, says it was inspired by Ontkush’s post. It claims it has already saved more than five thousand Watt hours (note: this post has been corrected — we earlier wrote that Blackle claimed to have saved five million Watt hours; turns out it’s kind of hard to see a decimal point on a black screen), based ostensibly on Ontkush’s number-crunching about the amount of energy used for each Google search. Energy Roundup does not vouch for the validity of said number-crunching. Paging Numbers Guy. One caveat, though: The energy savings may apply mainly (or fully) to cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors; you may not save nearly as much (or any) energy by switching display colors on an LCD monitor, which already consumes far less energy than a CRT.

So, I’m willing to give it a try. If it does save something . . . it can’t hurt, right?

Many of you have enjoyed the resources in the Get More booklets from unitedstreaming.  Personally, I took about 100 of these booklets home after PETE&C.  I have used them in several faculty workshops and my teachers absolutely love them. 

Unfortunately, I have already run through my stock.  I was lamenting that I might have to print these out from unitedstreaming for the four workshops I am presenting this summer.  Perhaps some of you can empathize.

Matt Monjan to the rescue - In case you did not catch Matt’s latest blog posting on the Implemention blog, I am relaying his offer on our PA blog.

Apparently, Discovery has 20,000 of the Get More booklets in their warehouse and are itching to get them into the hands of motivated teachers across the country.

You can learn more about this opportunity or order these booklets by visiting Matt’s blog and completing the request form. 

By the way, don’t forget to continue reporting all your events (from full-scale workshops to lunch room sharing).  STAR DEs who report at least three events by June 1st are eligble for receive a great DEN baseball cap.  Visit the National Blog for more information about this promotion.  (Those caps will come in very handy at the three summer institutes!)

Thanks to Bridget Belardi, Jim Hopton, and Lance Rougeux who collaborated to bring the AFI Lights, Camera, Education! workshop to Pittsburgh, PA. . . We just wrapped up an AMAZING two-day AFI workshop with Joe Brennan.  Actually, Lance beat me to the blog; he updated the DEN National blog before the workshop had actually ended. 

I really can’t believe how much I learned.  Seriously, I thought myself somewhat advanced when it came to digital storytelling; I’ve presented it at conferences and workshops for several years and thought I had it fairly under control.  Once again, I was humbled by another inspiring Discovery Educator, Joe Brennan.  The AFI curriculum is superior and Joe is a fantastic presenter. 

All unitedstreaming users can access the Teacher’s Guide and AFI Lights, Camera, Education! training materials by searching for AFI or Lights, Camera, Education! 

As with all the Discovery workshops, I left bursting with ideas for implementing the AFI program into my class.  Joe offered integration ideas that I have never considered before . . . Even though my students have been creating digital documentaries for several years, they were mostly sewing together unitedstreaming videos and still photos to create their historical stories.  I hadn’t thought about challenging them with creating an totally original digital story. 

So, once again, thanks to Joe and the rest of the Discovery team.  Check out the DEN National blog for the links Joe provided as well as the videos that the teams created. 

I copied this from the DEN National Blog: