Pennsylvania

NOTE: Copied from the national blog. 

As requested by hundreds of people (literally), we have now posted the vast majority of the 2008 DE streamathon presentations as archives! If you visit our streamathon page you’ll see that most of the presentations are now hyperlinked. Click on a hyperlink and you will begin to download a high resolution archive of that presentation. Each archive is about 100-200 MB so the downloads may take a little while. However, we wanted to make sure we provided them to you in high resolution so you’d be able to see all the live demonstrations just as they happened the day of.

We hope that you enjoy attending sessions you couldn’t be at that day. And if you learned something from a session, be sure to share it with your colleagues! The more people that learn from these presentations, the better.

Don’t forget! If you enjoyed the streamathon, you’ll love the other webinars we have to offer. Visit our webinar registration page and see what suits your needs. Hundreds of webinars are listed there, all of which are FREE and open to all educators!

I’m really excited about being able to access the archives. There were presentations during the streamathon that I missed and really wanted to see. So, check out the archive to see what you missed.

Where do they come up with these challenge names?  Well, I love this one - The DENliest Catch!

 Here are the details copied from the national blog.  Come on, PA, let’s help out “Captian” Monjan set sail with the Mid-Atlantic DEN!

The DEN fleet has left the harbor and is looking for a bountiful fall harvest of STARs from all around the country. It’s a short season and the six DEN captains need your help catching new STARs.

If you recruit a new STAR by December 1, 2008 and report your catch, you can pick from the following:

• Deadliest Catch Season 4 DVD set
• Planet Earth: The Filmmaker’s Story
• Mythbusters Season 4 DVD set

In addition the crew that recruits the most STARs will walk away with bragging rights and a very special DENliest Catch chicklet to post on their blogs, websites and email signatures.

Meet your captains:

Kim Randall guides the Wild and Wacky Western
AK, CA, CO, HI, ID, MT, NV, OR and WA

Justin Karkow commands the Center of Attention
AZ, KS, MO, ND, NE, NM, OK, SD, TX, UT and WY

Mike Bryant skippers the Dawn Treader
IA, IL, IN, MI, MN and WI

Dennis Swain leads the Northeastern
CT, MA, ME, NH, NY, RI and VT

Matt Monjan navigates the high seas with MPEG: Queen of the Mid-Atlantic
DE, MD, NJ, OH, PA and VA

Brad Fountain captains the Southern STARs
AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN and WV

I just love the folks at the Common Craft show . . .

They have come out with another terrific video, Web Search Strategies in Plain English.

If you can’t play YouTube videos at school, check out these options for converting online media into a local file to play from your computer. All you need is the URL of the YouTube video. Here is the URL for Web Search Strategies in Plain English - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWHPf00Jkqg.

Common Craft Show
Education
tutorial
Internet
Searching
video
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EdTechConnect
Discovery Educator Network
School 2.0
Education
Technology
Tim Magner
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Cross-posted on Cliotech

I saw this service mentioned on my Plurk feed and had to test it out.

Jog the Web is a free application that lets registered users create a Track to share. What’s a Track? It’s basically a guided tour of a sequence of websites that allows the creator to include comments about each site. The image of the websites in the Tracks are live (i.e. users can click on web links and interact with the content on the site.) It is a little like Diigo’s WebSlides feature, but a bit more targeted; the user does not need to first create a list of bookmarks.

You simply list all the URLs and associate to each URL the comment you want to make for the page.Once you have entered all the URLs and comments, you save the track which has its own URL. The visitors who follow your Track (simply clicking on the track’s URL, like for any web page) will then go from page to page according to the order you chose and read under each page the comment you posted. Your visitors can also launch the slideshow and sit back and view automatically each page one after the other.

This is what the Track creation interface looks like. You see an image of your URL in the main window and, at the bottom, you can add comments about the site. In the lower right you can reorder your sites as necessary.

It took me about 5 minutes to create this Track. It is a tour of our new Staff Development website. http://snipurl.com/sdsitetour

I can envision Jog the Web being used by teachers to take their students on a virutal tour of the Internet. Or, by librarians showcasing the subscription databases available in their libraries or taking students through the process of using the online card catalogue. It can be a simple and fast way to create tutorials for online applications.

If only you could embed your Tracks as widgets . . . maybe that feature will be coming soon.

So, why not take a jog and share it?

Jog the Web
tour
tutorial
website
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Cross-posted on cliotech

A friend of mine recently asked if I knew of any applications that would allow her elementary students, many of whom cannot read, to listen to her class blog. I shared that I had used Talkr in the past, but didn’t know of any other applications. So, I threw it out to my Plurk/Twitter network.

Here are some of the other suggestions shared by my network:

• vozME - vozMe allows users to copy/paste text for translation into an MP3 audio file. It also has plugins, widgets, and gadgets that can be incorporated into most blogging engines and Internet start pages (like, iGoogle.)
• odiogo - odiogo offers a free text-to-speech service for all major blogging engines. odiogo stores the audio files on their servers. Listeners/readers can download them and listen to them anywhere.
• SpokenText - SpokenText allows registered users to convert web pages, RSS feeds, PowerPoint, PDF, Word, and many other file types into audio files. SpokenText has some nice help tutorials so that you can maximize your use.
• Read The Words - Read The Words allows users to translate web pages, documents, and RSS feeds into audio files. The service is very simple to use and has instructions for adding a widget to your blog to convert your enteries to audio format. The instructions are very easy to follow and their FAQs page details how to embed a player directly into your blog.
• Blogboard - Blogboard lets users turn any blog into an audio file. Blogboard will create a new feed for the blog to which users can subscribe with their RSS aggregator. This service also generates a feed and embed code for your own blog. Here is Cliotech as an audio file.

Thanks to my network, I have lots of great resources to share with my friend. Aren’t tools like Twitter and Plurk just awesome for this sort of thing?

Plurk
Twitter
Text to Speech
Audio
Blogs
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Cross posted on cliotech

I came across this on my Google Reader from Jim Gates (who discovered it on his Twitter feed - the POWER of networking!)

It is a BrainPOP video about September 11th (9/11).

I previewed the video and feel that it explains the events of 9/11 in a very respectful way that is suitable to elementary or middle school students. It might be a little too “elementary” for high school students though it could serve to provide background for a more advanced activity.

There are terrific background and extension resources that link to topics such as: the economic impact of 9/11, ongoing health concerns, Islam, airport security, and terrorism.

So, if you are looking for an activity to commemorate 9/11 be sure to check out this BrainPOP resource.

9/11
September 11th
education
learning
classroom
activity
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Cross posted on Cliotech

I thought that the message would resonate particularly powerfully among Discovery Educators.

That is the take-away message from a new report released by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.

eSchoolNews reported today

“The report, called “21st Century Skills, Education, and Competitiveness,” argues that for the United States to be globally competitive–and for states to attract growth industries and create jobs–the nation requires a fresh approach to education that recognizes the critical role 21st-century skills play in the workplace.”

“It has become apparent that there isn’t a lack of employees who are technically proficient, but a lack of employees who can adequately communicate and collaborate, innovate, and think critically,” said Ken Kay, P21 president.

As the world continues to shift from an industrial economy to a service economy driven by information, knowledge, and innovation, cultivating 21st-century skills is vital to economic success, the report states.

You can download the entire report here or check out all the reports, studies, and white papers published by P21.

My question is this: are any of our political candidates addressing this when talking about their strategies for securing the U.S. economy?

It makes me think of the questions posed towards the end of the Did You Know / Shift Happens video.

education
economy
politics
21st Century
students
globalization
Turbo Tagger

Cross-posted on Cliotech.

Just in case you hadn’t heard the news . . .

Wikispaces just announced that it will be extending its free educator wikis offer to another 250,000 wikis!

Here are some highlights from the press release:

Two and a half years ago we decided that all K-12 teachers should have advertising-free, private, unlimited use wikis for free. No fine print, no usage limits, no catches. So far, it’s been a great success. We’ve given away over 100,000 free K-12 wikis used by over 535,000 educators and students!

We have worked with hundreds of you every day and heard your stories of engaged students and excited teachers. We have loved supporting such a vibrant community and learning how to build a better service for you. It’s what gets us excited about coming to work every morning. Thank you for making this such a rewarding experience.

250,000 More K-12 Wikis - Like the first 100,000, all of our K-12 wikis feature all the benefits of our Plus service:

• full privacy, only the people you allow in can see your wiki
• no advertising, your online classroom will remain ad-free
• unlimited use, as many users, pages, edits, and files, as you like, no limits
• a customizable look and feel, so you can make it feel like home

The offer is worldwide and is available for any wiki that is used exclusively for K-12 (primary and secondary) education.

Click here to create your own K-12 educational wiki. Or, click here to access training resources for using Wikispaces in education. Already using Wikispaces? Share your experiences; click here to learn more.

education
wikis
Wikispaces
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