Pennsylvania

In my current position, or should I say positions(I wear many hats) I get to see a lot of exciting activities.  In addition to being the Director of Technology Integration for Propel Schools, I am the science coordinator.  I am the SOS or Specialist on Site.  I believe that this was due to my knowledge and experiences that I had through my years of teaching elementary and middle school science in 2 previous jobs.

Our district implements ASSET Science which is an Inquiry-based, hands-on science curriculum.  Many of you may be familiar with the FOSS curriculum which is very similar to Asset. If you do, you know that it is hands-on and comes in a kit.  If you do teach either FOSS or Asset, here is a great resource for you to use. http://www.fossweb.com/ Another component of Asset is the use of Carolina resources in addition to the Foss kits.

While at Propel East, I stopped into a classroom teaching a Catastrophic Events unit. In this unit students investigate the causes and effects of thunderstorms, earthquakes, and volcanic activity. Global heating, the water cycle, plate motion, plate tectonics, magma, ash, and effects on the atmosphere are studied in depth.  On this day, there was no lab, no small groups, no experiments, but rather a very interesting, engaging, and intriguing guest speaker named Mara Falk.

At first glance, Mara seemed like just another guest speaker until she began to tell her stories of being a Storm Chaser with Discovery. She talked about how she had interviewed for a job that just turned out to be an extreme weather show on the Discovery Channel called, “Stormchasers.”  Her stories were captivating, telling how she was the driver of the scout(storm chasing vehicle) and how every second was of such importance.  Watching the student’s engagement while she talked what was interesting to me, as 100% of the children were engaged and posed such great questions for Mara. One story she mentioned was of an elderly man who wanted to wait out a particular storm.  On this particular day, it was not a great idea as the storm was very intense and had started to rip through his house.  Lucky for him, the force of the winds through his house took him to his bathroom where he was thrown into the bathtub with the door forcefully falling on top of the tub.  This miracle in disquise saved this elderly man’s life as his entire house crumbled on top of this bathtub. 

With this said, I cannot believe that our school was fortunate enough to have this guest speaker come to speak to our children. 

Now….here is the cool part.  Since you are reading this, you are probably a teacher who has access to Discovery Streaming.  If you do a keyword seach for Storm Chasers, you will see various videos from the Storm Chasers series as well as other teaching materials you will find useful.

Not that long ago, I found Repower America in my Google Reader and subscribed via emails. This message is the most recent one I received, and as educators, we can see the unlimited opportunities to take this idea of impacting our energy issues to the classroom. If you are concerned with our country developing clean energy, you might be interested in adding your voice and your students’ voices to the Repower America Wall, after, of course, you have investigated some of the wonderful resources from Discovery. Consider using the abundant resources from Discovery Education partnerships: Fuel Our Future Now and Waste Management’s Think Green Classroom.  Don’t forget about a wealth of award-winning resources from Science Elementary or Science Middle School.  And remember to check out the multimedia opportunities you will find in Discovery Streaming/Plus. Even if you are just Getting Started with Discovery Education, Tracey McGrath and Patti Duncan will walk you through the basics from their webinar (see Getting Started link).  And if you could not attend one of the 25 live events for the DEN Virtual Conference, or attend virtually, you can peruse at your leisure the archived webinars for a treasure trove of more ideas.  After you have done all that, you will “discover” you can make a truly informed post to the Repower America Wall.

Here’s an excerpt from the email from Al Gore:

The Wall is a place where literally thousands and thousands of people committed to a revolutionary new energy future for our nation and the world are coming together — to express our hopes, share our resolve, and step up to a leadership role in building a grassroots movement for change like nothing America has ever seen. It’s an opportunity for you to be part of the climate movement in a new way, in a way that takes us beyond ourselves.

By asking people from all over the country to share their thoughts and images on the Wall, we are fueling a campaign that brings together the power of national media with the strength and connection of on-the-ground organizing in a way that no one has ever done before. Your voice, and the voices of your friends, neighbors and colleagues, will become the language of our campaign on TV, in print, on billboards, online, and in brand new ways that you will help us invent as we create the Wall.

We know that the political will to transition America to a clean energy economy already exists. You are part of it. But now we must make sure our leaders know it too. The Wall will become our collective voice and thus transform the debate into action.

It’s an ambitious strategy — and it has to be.

Nothing short of every one of us joined together is needed to overcome the resistance of the powerful special interests blocking our path to a clean energy future, settling for the dangerous status quo.

But the time for politics is over. We have the power to force change in America.

I came to Justin Karkow’s presentation late from blogging our live event with Patti Duncan, so I missed the intro.  But his message soon became apparent: we often ask students to check how they learn best when they enter our classrooms.  He showed us the old job wheel, contrasted by the 21st century job wheel.  His first new job that he would add is a scribe.  Blogs, glogs, gloggles, wikis, podcasts, are among the tools that Justin suggests we employ in our classroom.  We also can create non-linear PowerPoints/Keynotes like Mike Bryant showed us earlier today in his presentation, Thinking Outside the Slide.

Second on Justin’s new job list is the fact checker.  We used to say,”Ask 3, then me.” Now we say, “Google it.” Another resource is Wikipedia, a global social comunity site, not as strict as Discovery Education, but we have begun to embrace the collaborative nature of the site.  Students now need to submit original resources to the site, or verify/debunk articles in the fact checker job list.  Best of all, however, is Discovery Education’s Student Center.  This job is about verification, of using resources wisely to authenticate texts.

Another job Justin would implement “In Buddy’s Terms.”  Restatement of something in simple terms, reteach Buddy by simplifying what you just said.  This job creates a buddy system, study with a buddy, and in a sense, teaches collaboration, especially to those students who travel, by preference or not, as loners.  This job category creates team players.  The power of the voiceover with editable clips is another way to do “in Buddy’s terms” using DEs clips.  Another great resource is the flip camera or a digital camera.  Have students redo pictures they took by drawing what they captured digitally.  Another resource from Kentucky is GreatSummary.  Put information into this site and get bullet points that encapsules the content into a more digestible form.

Next job: Timeliner.  Justin notes that these jobs are the jobs in a future classroom, but in reality, we can all implement these 6 new jobs now.  Great tools to use: xtimeline has a csv file that can be downloaded to populate a spreadsheet to populate resources.  Timetoast offers image uploads but no csv file.  Discoverystreaming offers a Calendar that lists daily historical celebrations.

Next job: Rear View Mirror: look at where we have been.  Map on the wall, Google Earth.  To show us where we have been, academically.  Try DE Streaming with Google Earth or Google Maps, or make a Glogster to share out where we’ve been.  Try Discovery Atlas, a great tool that has been around for a while but not often used.  Have you ever said if only I had a map…if only I were a history teacher I’d have a map… well, now you can give your students a geographical context.

Next job: Bring It Home: make a connection back to somewhere.  What was the impact of WWII on North Canton, Ohio time frame and how the Hoover factory played a large role.  Voicethread is a great collaborative tool.  One teacher did a triangle Voicethread–what a clever use outside the box that is global and interdisciplinary.  Phone.io gives you a digital drop box for audio files. You get a minute to create an mp3 file about a subject that can be added to a community project.

Despite the number of computers in a classroom, Justin claims that we can pull all this together and put it into our classroom today, our new classroom job wheel.  And he is absolutely right.  What he’s just created by putting tools back into students’ hands is student engagement.

Justin suggests that we start small, begin with one tool and see successful completion.  They need to see what each of these jobs look like by the end of the year.  Work collaboratively; make lists; be consistent with your expectations.  Use the same rubric and have the students help create the rubric.  Let them determine what they need to be successful.  And have a lot of fun.  Gotcha, Justin.

Tech or Treat continues, live in the Learners Lab, but for this time slot, we turn our blogging to Mike Bryant’s multimedia presentation.

When you begin thinking about slides, think outside the slide, from a flat still image to what goes beyond the image. So, using Shakespeare’s birthplace and highlighting the window, you can push out to an image of the Bard himself, dissecting him to see what made him tick.  Not sure what Mike’s using to make the cuts, but you open the brain to a Romeo and Juliet viewers guide with plot points and viewing questions, along with a character analysis.  Moving into the eyes, the windows to the soul, we dissect Shakespeare’s vision. What we find is a series of videos that move beyond the screen.  I was certain Mike was going to Blabberize Will, but this goes way beyond the capacities of that tool.

Moving to the speech of the period, we dissect Shakespeare’s language and hear iambic pentameter in the vernacular.  Still wondering, however, how you actually create this type of beyond-the-box-presentation.  Going back to Shakespeare’s home, we integrate sound, image, and video in a non-linear fashion.  Imagine the possibilities with MyPlick, a tool Dembo previewed two weeks ago on Web 2.0 Tuesday’s webinar.  MyPlick allows you to sync slides to audio.  Easy to use, fast, fun, and free, this tools allows students (and teachers) to integrate sound and video seamlessly. Mike’s mantra: if you do not know how to do something, you have a DEN family, live, virtual, and professional development that is awesome.

Dissecting the process, you create most of what you use by hyperlinking. Dafont is one website to use.  Then Mike goes to his Discoverystreaming, and he uses the resources by searching the drill-down Content feature.  He grabs two images of Shakespeare’s home in 3 format sizes from which to choose and then downloads.  In a Mac or Firefox, it will download to desktop, but a PC will allow you options for end point (Firefox allows you to select download destination).  Using Discoverystreaming, you can pull audio, speech, songs, charts, maps, graphs, virtually (pardon the pun) anything you want to build your out-of-the-box slide show, including your choice of MLA, Chicago Style, or APA citations for your selected media.  A best practice for sure, the citations are dynamic within Keynote properties as well.

Just discovered that the tools Mike used early in the presentation to “dissect” Shakespeare are in the toolkit within PowerPoint or Keynote’s toolbox.  You actually cutout the areas using the shapes in the formatting toolkit.  Once you select the area you will highlight, you allow for the media to open by hyperlinking to those selected areas.

Clearly, Mike’s presentation is a lot to digest, even with slow dissection, and I see in our future offerings, a back-to-basics-version of Mike’s presentation offfered, maybe spring?

Tracey McGrath and Patti Duncan, PA Leadership Council members, began the day with “Getting Started With Discovery Education,” a presentation pitched to beginners who want to immerse themselves slowly in Discovery basics.  Tracey began with introductions, with participants stating their name, school, and giving a brief description of their experience with education and technology.  Then participants shared their experience using Discoverystreaming.  Levels of use varied, and while Tracey worked with attendees, Patti worked one-on-one with teachers who did not have access to Discoverystreaming by creating accounts for them with a login code. Here’s Tracey’s presentation, which she uploaded to Slideshare:

Because users came with totally different levels of beginnners, both instructors worked interactively with their audience to get them literally “on the same page.”  While they were individualizing instruction and providing differentiated learning experiences with technology integration, I was on my own learning curve. I always work on my professional blog, and then copy/paste to PA.  However, Blogger was blocked, so I had to learn how to import images in this blog.  Along with this session’s attendees, I became a learner too, understanding their anxiety as mine notched up with each new thing I tried.

Since Discoverystreaming is new and improved, Tracey began with the major changes to the template with the pull-down menus that allow for easier access to disciplines and supplementary material you need and want.  Content Links and QuickLinks are the newest feature, and one we love, because it puts everything that you want at your fingertips on the login page.  One of the best new features is the “hover over” with the videos; as you hover over, the videos play, as well as show content descriptions and grade levels.

When you find your video, at the bottom left of the video, you need to pay attention to your stream type.  If you are on a Mac, you need to change your stream time to QuickTime; if on a PC, you will select Windows Media.  The program defaults to Windows Media, so you need to select QuickTime if you are a Mac user, but it is a one-time only selection.

Participants learned how create content in their folders, how to scaffold information, and for many, this event was their first experience with Discoverystreaming.  We sequed to song searches, and a review of “My Content” additions.

The range of media available is awesome (promised I would not use this word, or Steve’s bling word but here it is) in the drill-down menu, which absolutely amazed the participants.  Me included, and I am a user.

Because our LC really made a concerted effort to reach out to new users and beginners who wanted to learn the basics before they flew, our LC team is providing 3 “Learners Lab” sessions, conveniently positions after each live event. All the session’s participants remained, and were joined by a few newcomers as well. What a great scheduling idea–thanks, Patti!

Tracey’s resources are uploaded to Media Share and can be accessed here.

Discovery Education’s Summer School Webinar Series, conducted during the month of August, was a tremendous success. If you could not attend all 16 webinars, not to fret. The Discovery Team is busy converting and uploading the archived sessions so you can view them on your time, on demand, 24/7. Nearly half of the presentations are ready for downloading and viewing; the rest are works in progress.

As they get converted, we’re posting them here, so check it out and let us know what you thought of the series here.
DE Summer School Webinars
DE Streaming
Leadership
DE Science
DE Math
Digital Storytelling
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So often you hear how hard it is to make math and science work with technology integration, and speaking from a humanities perspective, I understand that dilemma. Discovery Education Back-to-School webinars have the answer for you all week is science is your game. Register here.

It starts today and the lineup is awesome. Join us for an hour, beginning 11 AM ET.

August 17: Myth Busted - Easy Ways to Integrate Digital Media into Your Science Classroom

August 18: Getting Your Hands Dirty with Discovery Education Science

August 19: Differentiating Instruction with the Discovery Education Science Assessment Manager

August 20: More and Muir Tech Tips for Going Green

As you can see from this line up, Discovery Education Back-to-School Webinars continue to deliver the best in digital media and free professional development.  If you are reading this post and you are not a DEN STAR, click here to join our PLN.

If you are interested in what’s new in Discovery streaming, you might want to attend Discovery Education streaming Back to School Enhancements, offered offered at 1 PM and again at 7 PM ET on the following dates:

• August 18
• August 19
• September 1
• September 2
• September 22

For a complete list of Discovery Education webinars, click here or you PA DE Calendar.

Discovery Education Webinars
DE Science Week
Myth Busters
Science Differentiation
Muir Tips
Science in Action
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Discovery Education always brings the cutting edge to the DEN before the edge is cut. That’s why I love the new Discovery logo. Although I think its reference is the new Discovery Student Adventures program, the catch phrase works for everything that Discovery does: they help us discover the undiscovered–ahead of everyone else. As they reshape the classroom of tomorrow via webinars, virtual conferences, global educational ventures, national networking, keynote speakers, innovative PBL, etexts and streaming (cornered the market on these latter two), they reconfigure our educational tools, and let’s face it, no one does it better.

So, why improve on perfection? Why make Discoverystreaming better? Because they can! And sometimes an answer is just that simple. Here’s your chance, now that you have registered for the DEN’s Summer School, to get a sneak peek at some summer enhancements to Discovery Education streaming. Register today for a Back-to-School Preview webinar to learn all about the new features and content coming our way this summer. Why do we love Discovery Education Streaming. Check out the cutting edge enhancements:

New organizations joining the 150+ publishers contributing to
Discovery Education services:

• National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
• More announced soon…

Current partners adding more content:

PBS Colman Communications Peer Power MarshMedia Aquarius Health Care Media Language Tree

Useful videos about financial literacy, and resources on Internet safety and cyberbullying are highlights from the hundreds of new titles being added to Discovery Education services for back-to-school.

Redefine the Meaning of Classroom

• Simplify your day and manage your classes with administrative tools that allow educators to assign Quizzes, Writing Prompts and Assignments to individual students or groups
• Students may access assignments from anywhere, anytime using their own unique student login.

Find What You Need, When You Need It

• Universal search through all services
  • Quickly find videos, virtual labs, reading passages, educator-created
    content, and other interactive resources based on the Discovery Education
    services to which you have access

Filter search results more effectively Refine your search results by popularity, a span of copyright dates, editable rights, and more Discover related resources to the videos you choose Quickly identify other similar titles when viewing instructional resources Scan for Teacher’s Guides, Blackline Masters, and other classroom resources Fresh, new search results interface allowing at-a-glance previewing of four times as many titles

• Flash video: Ease the management of classroom technology by supporting one file
  type for both Mac and Windows platforms
  • Provide improved video quality over streamed 256K WMV and MOV files with minimal impact to bandwidth

Take Learning to the Next Level with interactives available exclusively in Discovery Education streaming PLUS

Skill Builders - Harness the power of visualization and help students experience mathematics through Skill Builders that allow students to investigate the effects of changing variables. Over 100 Skill Builders spanning core subject areas get students engaged through hands-on experience. Games - Practice basic Language Arts and Mathematics skills through some of the over 100 games like Supernova Sentence Puzzles and Leon’s Math Dojo. Math Overviews and Explanations - Access thousands of self-paced tutorials that explain difficult-to-understand mathematics concepts. So there you have it–excellence in educational technology–leading the way in 21st century teaching and learning.

Guest Blogger: William Kennington, junior, SHS

Last week, on May 27, 2009, four groups at Salisbury High School in Allentown, PA presented their Integrated Project. IP is year-long endeavor for students who enroll in the courses of AP US History and Honors English 11. IP is a research-based project that incorporates a final multi-media presentation as well as a stage production that lasts for 45 minutes. We streamed our presentations using two backchannels, one focused on the stage and one on the projector screen. We had no problems streaming it, but the recorded videos were corrupt. You can still watch the two separate streams as they were the day we went live, but the downloaded video was buggy. Therefore, a compiled version of the presentation can not be made at this time, but we are working with ustream to resolve this issue. I have tried converting the presentation thus far with vixy.net, zamzar.com, ffmpeg, adobe media encoder, vlc, and other free media encoders. Ustream has been working on a way to convert their video directly through their website, but this feature is still unfinished and unavailable. Hopefully once this feature is implemented (or when we find a way to convert the video), we should be ready to release the compiled video for each of the four IP presentations. We used Discoverystreaming videos in creating our factual and counterfactual histories, so when we get this problem fixed, we can show you how factual Discoverystreaming videos can be used to make counterfactual scenariors look real.

Interesting and timely, Mogulus, which has often been a go-to choice, has changed its name and website. Mogulus, now Livestream, always supported multi-camera streaming but didn’t have have high quality resolution, but with the difficulties we have encountered, we might switch to Livestream. From their newsletter, here’s what’s new with Livestream:

Recently we changed our name from Mogulus to Livestream, and you can find us at our new home at www.livestream.com. As much as we loved our old name, it was time for a change that reflects our growth and more clearly communicates what we do. We hope you like “Livestream” as much as we do.

Along with the new brand and domain come a re-designed website, and most importantly for you, another simple way to broadcast from the Livestream website.

This new tool offers instant streaming from any page on our website. Just click the red ‘Broadcast Now’ button or go to your ‘My Account’ section.

Go live with one click from almost any webcam or camcorder, and chat or Twitter to promote your channel, all right within the application.

Of course you can still use Procaster (our downloadable desktop application) for the highest possible quality, but for instant no-fuss streaming, the new broadcaster is great.

Now that we’ve changed, what do you need to do?

In short, nothing!

Your channel pages and embedded players will continue to function just as they did before. You may want to update any links to your channel page (i.e. change from “www.mogulus.com/yourchannel” to “www.livestream.com/yourchannel”), but the old links will still work even if you don’t get around to it.

If you’re using the old logo, we’d appreciate it if you update it to the new Livestream logo. You can download it here.
» More Details

For more info on the change, below are a few links to the press release and related stories. Or, follow us on Twitter @livestreamcom.
Discoverystreaming
Ustream.tv
Livestream
IP (Integrated Project)
Education
Technology
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