Greetings! I am writing LIVE from the MOARKS Regional Gathering for Discovery Education’s Fall Virtual Conference 2010 in beautiful Branson, Missouri. A group of about 20 of us met at the lovely campus of Branson’s West Elementary, where we had a large set up of the virtual conference as well as live sessions. We started with a lovely breakfast of fresh fruit, muffins, and cinnamon rolls that give Cinnabon a run for their money. We jumped into the online conference after it had begun (we didn’t want to start at 8 a.m. on a Saturday!) since we are an hour behind our East Coastie friends. We’ll catch that first session when it’s archived!
Since I’m writing as I’m listening, and am pulling resources from the Chat window, I offer my profuse apologies in advance for any missed credits to anyone for resources shared! What follows are my own notes from the day—there was lots to learn, so I recommend reading this in sections (maybe one presenter a week?!) and checking out the archive when it’s posted in the next couple of days at http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/fall-virtcon-2010/
Our MOARKS group set up a wiki where we’ve posted some resources as well:
http://techortreatmoark.wikispaces.com/
DEN Edmodo group (Use #Area51 hashtag) be sure to join the group; our Edmodo page for sharing is http://www.edmodo.com/publisher/discovery
Kim Adair’s Mini presentation about green screening
http://storiescomealive.wikispaces.com
Kim shared some strategies for setting up green screen editing on both Macs and PC’s. I was thrilled to see just how easy it is to do by just clicking that little Show Advanced Tools button in iMovie’s preferences! I am SO going to try this at home (and at school, and probably here tonight in my hotel room!!!).
Free tool online
http://jaycut.com/
Inexpensive download of MovieMaker can be found at:
http://www.rehanfx.org/shader.htm
This one offers blue and green screen options!
storiescomealive.wikispaces.com
Resources for today:
http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/DENVC2010
http://www.edmodo.com/publisher/discovery #Area 51
Photos from the costume contest can be found at:
hat70anti@photos.flickr.com
Vote this week for your favorite costume! I am personally campaigning to be chosen as “best Halloween use of our new DEN LC shirts” since my vest included the lovely khaki color and looked great with the shirt (thanks, Lance! You rock!)
Virtual Con certificate of Attendance
http://links.discoveryeducation.com/FallVirtConCertificate
Porter Palmer—Why Publish Student Work
Here’s the link to her presentation on Livebinder (lovely little tabs!)
http://livebinders.com/play/present?id=37038
www.publishingstudents.com/researchbenefits.html
from LaQuita Denson to All Participants:
Grades discourage kids’ risktaking to a certain extent, but publishing helps get them to do their best work.
Live Binder is a good way to share info
http://livebinders.com/play/present?id=37038
http://posterous.com Under Settings, you can password protect info! What a great way to share those videos we just created this past week when Digital Hank came to work with our kids!
from Peggy George
http://myschool.posterous.com/
PBL resources
http://www.bie.org/
http://bsmsprojectbasedlearning.wikispaces.com/
http://www.publishingstudents.com/Web-basedpublishing.html
http://livebinders.com/play/present?id=37038
from Jennifer Dorman:
I have lots of PBL resources on my wiki at http://jdorman.wikispaces.com/pbl
Slideshare for sharing PowerPoint!
Glogster may be blocked in your district, but there now is edu.glogster.com
Traci Blazosky has a great Glogster tutorial at https://docs.google.com/View?docid=dgqwv5cr_127g7nqc8fm
Also more can be found at www.glogstergirl.com
iPadio is a good way to share podcasts and phonecasts
www.ipadio.com
You can copy and paste embed code into posterous or wikispaces or other sharing site.
Storybird.com
Great resource for primary kids
http://www.kerpoof.com/
3D stories http://zooburst.com/
toondoospaces.com
Comic and Animation Technologies in the Classroom http://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/comic-and-animation-technologies-in-the-classroom/
http://www.xtranormal.com takes text and you can add animations! (some racy stuff, so be careful and check it out)
http://myths.e2bn.org/story_creator/
wonderopolis.org
A request from the Shambles guy—http://youtube.com/shamblesguru … PLEASE feel free to add comments under the video .
Here’s the Virtual Con Twitter site
http://tweetchat.com/room/virtcon
Rita Mortenson from Wisconsin shared a list of web 2.0 sites on pdf
Cool idea I’m gonna steal—sharing a new web 2.0 site every two weeks, and challenge teachers to use them! Way cool! She gives prizes to teachers for trying new tools if they show evidence of what they’ve done.
Link to her pdf’s: http://tinyurl.com/23d6z8k
Someone suggested meeting live to share—I’m loving this!
Word clouds for K-2 http://www.abcya.com/word_clouds.htm
Next up is Whitney who’s at 1 DP presenting Digital Storytelling in a Web 2.0 World
http://hubforteachers.com
Discovery site for teachers to use to teach digital storytelling—wonderful collection of resources!
http://www.writingfix.com/ writing ideas
http://tweetchat.com/room/virtcon has some storytelling resources as well
kitzu.com has digital kits available for free
Whitney just shared Blabberize’s new video download feature and is on to PhotoPeach, a new one for me. I love Animoto, and just got my educator account (it did take me a couple of tries to get it put through, but it’s worth the work!).
Sample video of librarians in the media from Shamblesguru Smith http://animoto.com/play/lJBa0TOaMFUQeDCBRGACJA
http://www.carnegielibrary.org/kids/storymaker/
Lindsay Hopkins’ glog on Poe using DE resources was GREAT! http://lindsayhopkins.edu.glogster.com/Edgar-Allan-Poe/ ( I can’t get the link to work…will try to write to Whitney and get a better link)
Cool note—our own Lance Rougeaux is going to be a part of the Polar Bear Expedition! Woo HOO for our DEN leader!
http://links.discoveryeducation.com/VirtCon link to archive of today
List of upcoming webinars by DE
http://community.discoveryeducation.com/webinar
Erin Misegadis from Kansas shared a video on using DE content in Wiki spaces
http://tinyurl.com/26b6cr6
She is attempting to go completely paperless in her classroom
Link directly to the wiki – http://mypaperless.wikispaces.com/
http://www.edmodo.com/publisher/Discovery
http://edmodo.com/den
from Porter Palmer to All Participants:
use this link http://www.edmodo.com/publisher/Discovery
from Steve Dembo to All Participants:
http://edmodo.com/publisher/discovery
Mike B. is not feeling the love—he’s presenting Builders, up against Hall Davidson who’s virtually for the next hour. ; ) Sorry Mike, this is Hall, after all, and we are all groupies!
THE Hall Davidson
http://webinarmashup.wikispaces.com Hall’s presentation link
Also handouts on Discovery Speakers Bureau site, click on Hall, then go to Handouts link on the right http://www.discoveryedspeakersbureau.com/node/119
rNrjojiip69L@m.youtube.com send videos here…
for downloading a segment of a youtube video .. you can specify start and end time http://dirpy.com/
I just tried to send a short video of our conference to Hall. I hope it worked!
http://www.youtube.com/user/HHDavidson
Time travel via You Tube http://yttm.tv/
Great idea—put video of assignment instructions so kids can replay!!!!
Jing is good screen capture tool, Screentoaster and screenjelly are also resources that were mentioned, screenflow for mac Note: Jing gives you an auto embed code in your clipboard!
IShowU Hd. It costs about $40.
http://screenr.com/xYD PLUS lots of advice and free offerings to do screencasting http://www.shambles.net/pages/staff/screencast/
Video format converter at http://zamzar.com
I sent Hall a video of our MOARKS gathering, which you can find at:
http://www.youtube.com/user/HHDavidson#p/u/0/fqUaxVuppvA
Amy made one, too; hers will be in our MOARKS wiki.
http://qik.com f
Upcoming Hall LIVE presentation at:
www1.pgcps.org/PUWT
Blog to check out
http://www.shambles.net/blogforest/index.htm
Over 1,800 screencasts for educators basically done by one person http://www.khanacademy.org/
Try http://scribblemaps.com/ awesome interface with Google maps
Hall’s Amazing 3×5 Notecard X-Ray Machine (Free!)
Voicethread on Shambles at http://www.shambles.net/pages/learning/ict/vthread/
LOVE Hall’s advice on how to make a broken camcorder into a WebCam!
http://linkyy.com/brokencamcorder.com
Tally from Cali just jumped in to share how to use PhotoStory and DE Streaming
http://tinyurl.com/2ey7wo9
Kyle Schutt’s Wikispaces page
http://mrschutt.wikispaces.com/S-3+HOME
Cindy Lane’s Google Earth presentation via Skype
(I missed the iPad demo in the last virtual con session—will go back and get that later in the archive) I always learn the coolest stuff from Cindy! She showed us how to dive below the ocean’s surface, where to look for cool Google Earth lessons and tools, and how to embed video and overlay pictures into a GE tour.
Our day ended with Doug Mann’s overview of the new Theme section on DE, MediaShare resources, and a chance to play a bit with some of the tools we learned about today. Mike also mentioned that Flash video is available for many of the videos (just have to call Discovery and have them add it to your account), which is great for Smart Notebooks or other whiteboards.
It’s all about the sharing. And the food. The sharing and the food. And the friendships. I always learn so much from and with my techie friends. This is why I love the DEN!!!!