Sarah Thompson’s Blog

The DEN has done it again! I’m 3 weeks away from school starting, and I’m already thinking about all the new and wonderful tools that I have learned about and can use in school this year during the past 2 days attending the Summer School webinars…and there are still 2 more days!!!

On Monday, Lindsay Hopkins started things off with a presentation about Digital Storytelling. We learned about the amazing tools that are at a teacher’s disposal: MovieMaker, PhotoStory 3, LittleBirdTales, Storybird, Stykz, Voicethread, and so many more! I also learned from a teacher in the chat window that, “kids like to use the free program Pivot to create animations”. I’ll definitely be checking that out!

Our second presenter was Dean Mantz on LiveBinders. I’d heard about LiveBinders in other webinars, but never have I been given such an amazing walkthrough of the program! As Dean was talking I signed up for an account, created a binder, and was fooling around with adding pictures, websites, videos, and more. I LOVE it! I’m looking forward to creating and learning more about this tool.

Our last presenter on Monday was Patti Duncan and she talked about Science! What a plethora of resources she had! Scribd, LabOutLoud, Pete’s PowerPoint Station, BrainPOP, PhET, the list went on and on and on! I think that Yippy will have to be the one tool that I learned from Patti and will be using and teaching my students to use the most this year. What a great search engine!

The first presenter today was Porter Palmer. She too talked about Digital Storytelling, but again, there were additional resources that I’ve never heard of and weren’t touched upon yesterday! 50+ ways to tell a story, Voki, Posterous, StoryJumper, and then additional sites added by the teachers in chat: Professor Garfield (my addition), StoryRobe, and Tripline (to name a few).

Kyle Schutt presented second about Assessment tools – “Checking for Understanding in a Virtual World”. A lot of us in chat shared that we weren’t too keen on assessment, but Kyle provided us with many amazing tools that would assist us. Quizlet, Google Docs and Form creations, Widgit embedding into DE’s assignment builder, Wall Wisher, Edmodo, and more were discussed as to how they can be used to help teachers specifically with Formative assessments.
He shared a quote with us that gives a great analogy:
“Formative assessments are to summative assessments as physical exams are to autopsies.” – Doug Reeves

Our third presenter was Lance Rougeux – “Science, Literacy, and the Kitchen Sink”. I think the tool that I will have the most fun using this year is going to be Crappy Graphs. I have so many great ideas that I’d like to try and use this for. We also took a look at the new Student Center, Stem Connect, and all of the amazing resources available to teachers on DE without even logging in!

I’m really looking forward to the next 2 days to see what else I can learn from all of the amazing presenters!

As a member of the DEN, teachers in SK have been invited to meet with the Discovery Education Canada team who will be in Saskatoon for the IT Summit May 9-10th. Tom Metuzals (Regional Director), along with Hall Davidson, the Director of Professional Development and one of the foremost speakers on innovation in the classroom will be there!

I met Hall at DENSI in Boston, so I talked it up with the other DEN members from my school. 6 of us will be going to dinner!
I’m really looking forward to meeting everyone. I’ll update after Monday night!

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Monday night was so much fun! Myself and 3 other teachers from my school were able to make it to the dinner with DEN Canada team, Hall Davidson, and teachers from other parts of Saskatchewan who were attending the IT Summit. The food was great, the conversation even better, and we were all able to walk away with something valuable. After speaking with one of the teachers, I was able to snag up a few URL’s to programs that she uses in her classroom, and examples of finished projects. I can’t wait to check them out and use them myself. Thanks Tom for such a great evening! We definitely need to have more of these get-togethers!

This is awesome! A new website that I learned how to use and I am now Symbaloo Certified!
I LOVE this site! I’ve only just started to use it, so my created webmixes aren’t all that and a bag of chips.
But, the students love being able to go to ONE site to get all of the URL’s that they need to complete their computer
assignments instead of having to bring a notebook with them to class.
2 thumbs up!!

Wowzers! Thanks to the DEN, teachers felt especially appreciated this week.
Monday, DEN STARS were gifted with a prize package from Avery.
Tuesday, we were given the opportunity to check out the DE Science Techbook.
Wednesday, PhotoPeach Premium for 12 months!
Thursday, access to Scoop.It’s beta site, and a draw for 3 prizes from: Label Daddy, Animation-ish, and Splashtop Remote.
To finish off the week on Friday, DEN Mystery Packs for prize winners!

An absolutely amazing week! I look forward to next year!

Wow, wow, wow! What an amazing conference!!

***This event will be archived. Look for the archived webinars at http://denblogs.com and http://www.youtube.com/user/DiscoveryEducation***

I LOVE these online events in which educators from across the globe can come together, learn, collaborate, and connect! The presenters were phenomenal (Dr. Lodge and Katie, Tim Childers, Lance, Rushton Hurley, Jannita Demian, and Porter Palmer)!! Each hour flew by so quickly! I now need to take the afternoon to process the amazing information that has been shared today.

I’m also looking forward to Teacher Appreciation Week on the DEN!! The DEN treats their STARS so well

I learned about Edmodo from DENSI 2010.  Since that time, it has grown so big!  There are communities established for almost every subject and extra-curricular activity!  But…there haven’t been any new additions to the DEN Canada Edmodo group.  Every STAR out there should be logged in to it!  I love being able to harness ideas and suggestions from teachers – but am lacking with my Canadian colleagues.  Join Edmodo, and join the DEN Canada group!!

Wow!  Another amazing virtual conference!!  My colleagues and I were thrilled to have been able to gather together and take part in this amazing day.  I was absolutely blown away by the free resources available for teachers, even without a subscription!  That is great!  I also am very glad that Dr. Moss did her presentation on implementing Discovery Ed Science.  With this presentation, I can show my administrators how valuable this additional resource is, and have it added to our Discovery Ed subscription.

Taken from the DEN Blog Network, these are links to the presentations:

• The Five E’s of Inquiry-Based Instruction: DEN SCIcon Keynote Patti Duncan(changingconnections.blogspot.com)
• Closing the DEN SCICon with Stormchaser Reed Timmer: Into the Storm ~ Following the Love of Science (changingconnections.blogspot.com)
• Top Ten Free Science Resources from Discovery Education: DEN SCIcon with Lance Rougeux(changingconnections.blogspot.com)
• The Student Experience: Engaging and Assessing Young Scientists: DEN SCIcon with Mike Bryant(changingconnections.blogspot.com)
• Real Students, Real Teachers, Real Results: Implementing Discovery Education Science: DEN SCIcon with Dr. Cindy Moss

I use Discovery Ed in my classroom many times a week!

For math classes, I’ve used the “multiplication rap” found in the songs.  My students love listening to it, even during lunch time!  They also have enjoyed a number of the math games.  During indoor recesses, they’ll ask to play them on the SmartBoard.

For computer classes, students log into their Student Center and complete assignments that I’ve set up for them.  They usually have at least 1 writing prompt assignment and 1 video/question assignment each week.  Students also have gathered images into their content folder and have used the photos in their Glogster assignments.

For language arts, we’ve used images/video from DEd. for PWIM, persuasive writing,  descriptive writing, narrative writing, personal writing, and expository writing.  In Guided reading, we’ve used ebooks and various audio clips.  We’ve also used the “day in history” information as a shared reading activity.

For social studies and science, we’ve watched many videos and have explored many of the virtual labs.

For art, students have viewed images of art work, and have listened to orchestral pieces, and instrument sound clips.

For Phys Ed, students have watched instructional videos on various skills that they are learning. (i.e. basketball drills)

I know that my students are gaining so much more additional information when we use DEd. in the classroom.  In every subject, DEd. allows me to supplement lessons and to use it to develop reviews.  They love it, I love it, and there’s still so much more we haven’t used!

Wow! The fall virtual conference was absolutely amazing!!  It all started at 6am at a Tim Horton’s in North Battleford where colleagues and myself met with Karen Goldman, DEN Account Manager for Canada.  We were so very happy to have Karen visit our school and staff after winning the Canadian Membership Drive contest.  We got to the school for 7:30am and immediately logged into the Webinex to catch Gail Lovely’s presentation.  All of the presentations can be seen here.  The staff were absolutely blown away by each presentation. They were jotting down url’s, chatting it up with people in the chat box, and asking a lot of questions about the information presented. The staff also had a great time with the costume contest!  We went with face masks of DE staff and Discovery Channel television personalities.  You can see our picture here.  One staff member even dressed the rest of the part as Mike Rowe from Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs.  You can see her picture here.  Thanks for an amazing day and for hosting a stellar Conference.  I look forward to the next one!!