Pennsylvania

Her name is synonymous with excellence in everything she touches; she is the consummate professional with a national (and judging from her blog) global audience. She is the voice of the PA DEN blog, and as anyone who knows her in virtual or real life, she is a wonderful educator and friend. By now the news is out; Pennsylvania’s loss is Discovery’s gain. Jennifer Dorman is now a part of Team Discovery.
From her email to me, in her own words:

I am a DEN Account Manager on Justin Karkow’s team. I support educators in the south east and central US, primarily focusing on AR, KA, LA, NM, OK, TN, and WV. I’m really excited to work with the LCs in those states as well as all educators who are using DE media with their students. I started on March 16th and was thrilled that on my first road trip I had the opportunity to work with the awesome educators in Palm Beach County Schools, FL, at the Palm Beach Educational Technology Conference and the FL LC-sponsored Day of Discovery at Lion Country Safari.

Dorman leaves a space impossible to fill, so I feel an overwhelming challenge to try to pick up where she left off, hoping you will all be patient with me as I try to step up to her standards. Without a doubt, it will be a learning curve, but I will give it my best. I will try to keep PA the leader Jen made it, and that, as all of you who are her readers know, is the ultimate challenge.

You can continue to read Jen’s blog posts at Dorman’s Trouvailles and Cliotech.

All of us wish Jennifer the very best. An already great team at Discovery just got even better with its brightest new star.
Jennifer Dorman
Discovery Educator Network
DEN
DEN Account Manager
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Copied from the DEN National Blog

A virtual drum roll please… We are thrilled to officially open the application process for the Discovery Student Adventures Pilot Program.

Join us as we discover more of our incredible planet earth together with adventure trips to Australia, South Africa, and China. In order to participate in this pilot trip, you must be a STAR Discovery Educator. Not only are you able to take part in this once in a lifetime opportunity, each STAR selected will be able to choose four of their students to join them on the adventure!  This is at no cost to you or your students!

So with no further ado… here’s the official wording and post importantly the link to apply.

In 2010, Discovery Education will launch Discovery Student Adventures, education-based international trips to eight destinations including: Arctic, Australia, China, Cost Rica, Ecuador/Galapagos Islands, Italy/Greece, New Zealand/Fiji Islands, and South Africa.

To effectively integrate educator feedback into these inaugural trips, a select group of educators will have the opportunity to travel with Discovery in the summer of 2009 as part of a one-time special opportunity to pilot a Discovery Student Adventure trip.

Educators will serve as chaperones to a group of students, and once selected for a trip, will also be an integral part of selecting the students for these pilot trips. Travel program will be at no cost to the selected educators and students. We are looking for educators that teach 5th through 12th grade.

We invite you to fill out an application for the opportunity to travel with us, giving us your thoughts and opinions along the way to help make Discovery Student Adventures a unique, premiere student travel program that brings the world to life for students and the teachers who lead the trips.

Australia
Tuesday, May 26, 2009 – Thursday, June 11, 2009
Description: Melbourne, Ayers Rock, Townsville, Great Barrier Reef

South Africa
Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Description: Johannesburg, Cape Town, Kruger National Park

China
Tuesday August 4, 2008 – Tuesday, August 18, 2008
Description: Beijing, Chengde, Luoyang

Travel Dates are estimates only and subject to change.

To apply please visit https://discoverystudentadventures.wufoo.com/forms/pilot-program-application/

The application will be closed on Thursday, March 19, 2009 at 5 pm PST. All applicants will be informed of their status by April 1, 2009.

Cover of The Invention of Hugo Cabret

PA Leadership Council member and 4th grade teacher, Erik Wittmer, is seeking elementary classes for a flat classrooms-style collaborative book blog project. Here are the details. Contact Erik if you are interested in having your class participate.

I have been putting together a project that I am hoping becomes a national project and need your help in spreading the word to anyone who might be interested. The beginning of the year, I read The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. My 4th graders were so interested in my reading more, we finished the book in three weeks. A week later, four of my students were reading the book themselves and the trend continues as the weeks go on.

This is why I would like to start collaborating with other classrooms throughout the world to read this amazing book. I have set up a blog at http://hugocabretbookblog.blogspot.com/. If you are interested, you can email me at erikwittmer@gmail.com or post a comment on the blog. We will be starting the project on February 23rd.

Brian Selznick
The Invention of Hugo Cabret
Blog
Classroom
Learning
Education
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Cross-posted from Cliotech

Now that the festivities of the inauguration are behind us, we can start to process the images and words of that historical day.

• Speech with key points highlighted
• Speech with summary

If you have never used Auto Summary, click here for Word 2007 instructions or click here for Word 2000/2003 instructions.

There are some free online and open source text summarizers that are also great resources.

• GreatSummary
• Automatic Text Summarizer
• Open Text Summarizer

If you want to access images of the day check out the Presidential Inaugural Committee’s Photostream on Flickr, the Official Inaugural Book on Photobucket, or any of the many Flickr groups created for community members to share their images. If you are seeking general images from the campaign, check out the photo gallary on MyBarackObama or the official campaign Flickr photostream.

You can also view a video of the whistle stop tour.

Barack Obama
Inauguration
Speech
Wordle
Summarize
Inaugural Address
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I just came across this video on YouTube. It was created by XPLANE, the design team who collaborated with Karl Fisch on the famous Did You Know 2.0 video. It is a terrific video that highlights some organizational and historical details of the 2009 and past presidential inaugurations.

Did You Know?: The 2009 Inauguration Edition

xplane
inauguration
president
Did You Know
YouTube
Barack Obama
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Image via Wikipedia

cross-posted on cliotech

Listening to NPR Radio “All Things Considered” today, I learned about a really interesting website designed to coordinate support for those to need. The website was featured as part of the “All Tech Considered” segment.

The site, Lotsa Helping Hands, is a philanthropic venture of a for-profit company looking to give back by empowering communities to support individuals, families, and other special groups.

How does the service work?

In literally minutes, a Coordinator can create, free-of-charge, a private and secure Lotsa Helping Hands web community, define volunteer activities using the supplied templates, and begin inviting members to the community. Through an intuitive interface that requires no training, volunteers can then easily view and sign up for any number of available tasks, review their current commitments, and be confident they won’t forget any assignments as the system automatically sends out email reminders of upcoming obligations.

Community members also have access to the community’s private message boards, photo galleries, resource sections for sharing relevant web links and documents, and even a Well Wishes wall. Any number of custom community sections can be created by the Coordinators to enrich the flow and sharing of information within the community, keeping all members, near and far ‘in the loop’.

The NPR segment also featured a few other online charitable services:

• Donors Choose - a company that connects students and teachers to people who would like to donate *
• Charity Choice - a “new spin on a very traditional gift.” The card allows people to go online and choose the charity they would like to receive the funds.

* Did you know that Discovery Education partnered with Donors Choose to create a challenge page to help raise funds for special educational projects submitted by Discovery Educators?

I thought that these were terrific websites to feature around the holidays.

NPR
All Things Considered
All Tech Considered
Lotsa Helping Hands
Donors Choose
Charity
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That’s right . . . The PA DEN is proud to share that our own Maryann Molishus has received the prestigious Milken Family Foundation National Educator Award.  Maryann is a 2nd grade teacher at Goodnoe Elementary School in the Council Rock School District (Newtown, PA).

Here is a little more information about Maryann (copied from her award notification page)

From social studies to math, second-grade teacher Maryann Molishus makes the curriculum vivid through technology at Goodnoe Elementary School in Newtown, Pennsylvania. Students learn to produce webinars, digital photography and podcasts with authors of books they are reading—projects that helped all of her students meet district benchmarks in reading. Molishus combines geography and poetry to help students track the Iditarod. Students get to know the mushers the way some children know baseball players, with fifth graders serving as team sponsors. She involves her students in the Habitat Project, a yearlong collaborative effort during which small student groups investigate a specific habitat, culminating in eight-foot murals painted to include all animals and plants researched. Another hallmark Molishus project is a science unit on balance, culminating a five-day Science Circus Camp with a “Cirque de Balance” show for parents. Known for her creativity and persistence with academically or behaviorally challenged children, Molishus motivated one struggling student by involving her in a yearlong study of the city of Philadelphia, with support from classmates. As a Keystones Technology Integrator for the Pennsylvania Department of Education, Molishus provides professional development at school and district levels. She serves on the Superintendent’s Professional Advisory Committee, as a teacher representative on the board of the Council Rock Education Foundation, and as a grant reviewer for the Classroom of the Future program—a good fit for an educator who prepares her students to succeed in the 21st century.

Maryann learned that she had received this honor at a surprise school assembly, which is part of the Milken Educator Award National Notifications.  Local media covered the surprise notification:

“I’m still shaking,” Molishus said after the assembly at Goodnoe Elementary School in Newtown. “I’m just really honored because there are so many good teachers in our district. And the kids are still buzzing. It’s nice to share it with them.”

Per Milken rules, the awards must be kept secret until names are announced, so no one knew, officials said. So, when the entire school, including Molishus’ second-grade class, packed the school’s gym, the students and staff thought they were there for an assembly with the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

Instead officials called Molishus’ name.

The Milken National Educator Award (most commonly known as the Milken Educator Award) provides public recognition and an unrestricted financial award of $25,000 to elementary and secondary school teachers, principals and other education professionals who are furthering excellence in education.

In addition to the honor of receiving the award, Maryann will be attending the Milken Family Foundation National Education Conference.

I hope that all of you will join me in congratulating Maryann for this awesome honor! We are so lucky to have Maryann in our professional learning community.

At the DEN Leadership Council Institute this past summer Lance shared some really excited news with us – that the DEN was going to be teaming up with DonorsChoose to help promote the proposals submitted by Discovery Educators. 

This announcement is fresh off the presses (or, at least, fresh off the DEN Weekly Update.)

We are pleased to announce that the DEN Giving Page is up and running on DonorsChoose.org. Any STAR Discovery Educator who submits a proposal to  DonorsChoose.org can also have his/her project cross-promoted on the DEN Giving Page. If you submit a proposal to DonorsChoose.org just send Lance (lance_rougeux@discovery.com) the proposal ID. It’s that easy!

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

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
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