Pennsylvania

10 things you can do to become a GREENER Teacher

1. Blackle.com instead of Google.com, black background on the search page. Blackle also has games. Does Blackle really save energy?
2. Green resources from DiscoveryStreaming. There is a documentary about the tornado that hit Greensburg, Kansas narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio. This is how the town rebuilt with environmental impact being a requirement.  Also, PlanetGreen has a series by Bill Nye “Stuff Happens”.
3. Photo essays - created by animoto, photo story, PSA, comic, use DES clips to create something or Tips for a greener planet.(recycling)
4. Share materials through MediaShare - don’t use trees to print
5. Glogster - multimedia posters - BUT create it through glogster.com/edu
6. GoogleEarth - you can create a scavenger hunt for students to travel around the Earth.
7. Thinkgreen.com/classroom - A new partnership with DiscoveryEducation. This site has tremendous resources for teachers about recycling and sustainability including details about which type of glass is best recycled. This includes good lesson plans, worksheets, writing prompts and other links and resources. Be sure to get the ThinkGreen widget to show how much energy you saved. You can take the widget and put it on a website, or on a GoogleEarth placemark. How cool is that?!? Have some students count the recycled cans and/or bottles and post it on your school web page.
8. www.wecanchange.com - Siemens created a”We can change the world Challenge”. Great contest for kids/schools. There are fantastic resources for setting up the process in your school. There is a contest where the winners will be on the Discovery Show “Planet Green”.
9. donorsChoose.org - find funding sources from places you may not even know about.
10. teacherpaperless.blogspot.com - Follow this blog for ideas about how to teach without using paper. You can find all the presentations from the DENLC and DENPC on the National Blog on Monday.

Photo by Barbara Martin, June 20, 2009, Brandywine Zoo Wilmington DE

Learning at the DEN Symposium is non-stop. Today we had many choices of workshops and this one with Bran Fountain delivered many new ideas for use in the classroom.

You can use the funnies or comics for a timeline, historical figures, instructions, dialogue punctuation, character analysis, plot analysis, storytelling, pre-writing tool, post-reading tool, and teaching concepts. After a field trip to the zoo where kids take photos of turkeys, create point of view about Thanksgiving. Also teachers have used it for creating digital citizenship, point of view of planets talking to planets, world languages, and drawing.

Verbal linguistic learner - visual images from DES and point of view, placing characters in sets and backgrounds encourages spacial learning.

Mathematical/Logical - how would you create the layout

Kinesthetic/Bodily -  using Goanimate (some questionable content) you can create action figures, use with grammar, science concepts, replay stories or book reviews in student’s point of view,

Interpersonal: Who are your characters friends? Using software called Pixton. Can have photos of people talking, animals conversing,

Musical/Rhythmic: personal stories, poetry illustrated

Comic Life now available for the PC as well as the Mac. Pixton is web based. FTC has a book of how to use Comic Life by a DEN STAR. Stop by their booth at NECC. You can export them to the web. Use for life cycle of cateillar, photo sharing, step by step process(FCS cooking or science lab example).

GoAnimate - put DES in the background by using images, photos or movies. Can grab images from flickr.com and cut part of it to your screen. You can use audacity to add voice. BE aware that this is not an education only site.

Xtranormal -Text to speech animation video. You can put it on DES images or chose the backgrounds they have in their set. You can select the voices, but it is very computer-like. Can use it as a conflict-resolution scene, can use as a book report, weather report. BE CAREFUL there are some inappropriate actions or already created videos. You should create and download yourself to YouTube. There is a pay version for about $30 per year. Teryl Magee is in contact with them to work with an educational version and she will let us know what happens. The FREE version has 2 characters and basic backgrounds.

Pixton - They have a school version and it is FREE. You can move the individual body parts by clicking on them - be careful what your kids will do with it!

Brads presentation is available on MediaShare “Learning through the Funnies!!”