Streaming A to Z

Exciting news! We have just improved and updated the Assignment, Quiz and Writing Prompt Builders.

Here is how each builder has been made better.

Assignment Builder Improvements

Now, when you build your content, you can Bold Text, change the color of your text, add numbering and bullets, sub and super scripts, special characters, tables and more!

You can also click on the View Grade Report link to see which of your students has completed your assignment or choose to have an assignment notification e-mailed to you.

Finally, when adding material to your Assignment, you can now search your saved content instead of the entire unitedstreaming library.

Quiz Builder Enhancements

Just like the Assignment Builder, the Quiz Builder, gives you the ability to add Bold Text, change the color of your text, add numbering and bullets, sub and super scripts, special characters, tables and more!

Writing Prompt Improvements

I think the following enhancement is too cool for school.  When your students log into the Student Center to access your writing prompts, they can now type in their work.  Students also have the ability to bold text and do all of that fun stuff in their response. 

PLUS, once your students click on on the submit button, you can access their written work either by e-mail or by logging into unitedstreaming.com and clicking on the view grade report links.

Finally, as with the other two builders,  the Writing Prompt Builder now gives you the ability to add Bold Text, change the color of your text, add numbering and bullets, sub and super scripts, special characters, tables and more!

These changes were brought about because of you, and your comments.  Thank you for helping us continue to make unitedstreaming better!

Talk to you soon,
Matt Monjan
Discovery Education, unitedstreaming

Over the past few weeks we have received lots of "How Do I…?" e-mails and phone calls.  The response has always been to provide the answer and direct them to the appropriate blog posting for future reference.

Now it used to be that if you were searching for a particular solution, say getting closed-captioning to work, you had to know to look in the "Tips and Tricks" category and then scroll down until you found an answer to your question.

Well no more my friend! Yesterday, in an effort to speed things up a little bit, I did a little spring/summer cleaning and created a bunch of new categories.

Check out the left-hand side of your screen and you will see categories like: 

• Burning CDs and DVDs
• Close Captioning - Everything You Need To Know
• Get More Booklet Order Form
• Getting the Point Across with PowerPoint
• Grants - How to Find Them!
• Professional Development

And a whole bunch more!

So the next time you or your colleagues get the inevitable "How Do I…?" question, check out the categories on the left to find your solution.

Talk to you soon,
Matt Monjan
Discovery Education, unitedstreaming

Soon after Planet Earth aired on the Discovery Channel, requests from educators around the country started to pour in.  We received questions like, "How soon will DVDs be available?" "Can I use the DVDs in schools?" And, of course the inevitable, "How much?"

Well, my friends, here is the good news. Discovery Education has procured a number of Planet Earth DVD Box sets.  Every school that subscribes by June 15th to Discovery Education unitedstreaming™ or unitedstreaming Plus will receive a Planet Earth DVD Box Set - a $650 value!

Now here is the deal.  In order to receive the Planet Earth DVD Box Set with your subscription, your school must either be renewing their license by upgrading to unitedstreaming Plus or be a brand new unitedstreaming school and purchase Discovery Education unitedstreaming at its list price. 

Basically it breaks down like this-

Current unitedstreaming users:
Upgrade to unitedstreaming Plus for an additional $995 per building and receive one Planet Earth DVD set per school*
K-8 building Current unitedstreaming license + $995
9-12 building Current unitedstreaming license + $995

New unitedstreaming users:
Subscribe to unitedstreaming and receive one Planet Earth DVD set per school*

unitedtreaming price:
K-8 building - $1,495
9-12 building - $1,995

unitedstreaming Plus price:
K-8 building - $2,495
9-12 building - $2,995

*It goes without saying that this offer is available as long as supplies last.

To learn more about this offer simply click on this link unitedstreamingsales@discovery.com and send your request.

Talk to you soon,
Matt Monjan
Discovery Education, unitedstreaming

First let off let me begin this posting by stating it is good to be back and blogging again. After a short hiatus the Implementation Blog is alive and kicking!

Now onto some even more fun stuff.

Last week the DEN hosted a Planet Earth Webinar and over 1000 students from 68 schools across the country attended.

During the session, Planet Earth Producer Dr. Penny Allen, issued a caption challenge.
She asked participants to come up with a caption for the following image:

And boy did you guys respond!  At the end of the session, all of the captions were sent to Penny.  Penny and her team then voted on the winning captions.

Without further ado, here is how it all breaks down (the following is from Penny’s e-mail):

Just a quick note to let you know that the Planet Earth team votes have all now been cast!  The results for the caption competition are as follows:

THE WINNER
Elaine Plybon - DEN Texas: "I don’t know, Vern, it was here when I woke up this morning" 

EQUAL SECOND PLACE
Debbie Bohanan - DEN Florida:  "Who laid that egg?"
Tracy Selock - DEN Illinois: "Hurry up, my mom made me wear this tux.  Take the picture!!" 
Carrie Strasburger - DEN Virgina: "I heard him say we were going to be on Sunday night."

EQUAL THIRD PLACE
Elaine Plybon - DEN Texas "No, YOU pick it up!"
Paula Rovnak - DEN Florida::  "courage my penguin friends, courage"
Sara Simmons - DEN Texas: "That’s what happens when you drop the egg!" 
Cindy Hills - DEN California:  "The Paparazzi are on to us!"

For her winning entry, Elaine will receive a Planet Earth ‘Making Of’ book signed by Penny and her team!

Elaine please e-mail me your address so that I can have the book sent to your class.

Planet Earth Photos
During the webinar many of you asked for the photos that were shown during the Webinar.
I have attached the presentation to this posting.  Click on the this link Download planet_earth_ppt2.ppt to download the PowerPoint.

A Thousand Thank You(s) for Penny.
Since Penny shared her behind-the-scenes pictures with us, I’d like to share a picture of your class, and/or thank you message from your students to Penny.

I have attached a Photo Release to this posting - Download den_photo_release.doc. Please have it signed by your student’s parents and returned back to your classroom.  After you have the forms shoot me over your picture(s).  I’ll take all of the pictures and put them into a thank you collage!

So let’s do this:

1. Either send me a picture of your class, Planet Earth drawing (digital of course), and/or thank you message for me to put into a collage and send to Penny
2. Leave a thank you message for Penny to hear
   To leave a message:
   Call 1-888-65-GCAST (888-654-2278)
   Type in 800-323-9084 pin code 1234
   Record message and hit #
   Press the number 2 to save it.
   Hang up

Once I receive your messages I will send the message to Penny and post it on the Implementation Blog - I’d like to complete this project by Wednesday, May 2, 2007.

UPDATE:

I have received a few requests for a few more days.  So that we give everyone a chance to submit their thank yous we’ll move the deadline to Friday, May 4, 2007.

Thanks to everyone who has submitted your material so far.  And thanks to all that will be soon

Talk to you soon,
Matt Monjan
Discovery Education, unitedstreaming

Last night I tuned into the Discovery Channel to watch the first three of eleven episodes of Discovery Channel/BBC’s Planet Earth documentary.

The series took four years to shoot and another year to edit.  All of that time and effort produced a masterpiece of sight and sound - especially for those with high definition sets. The entire series was filmed in high definition!

It took me a long time to fall asleep (many apologies to my wife) because I was so excited by what I saw last night. 

And although last night’s experience was the cat’s pajamas, this morning’s experience eclipsed it.

What could have possibly eclipsed last night’s viewing experience you ask? Great Question!

This morning, Debbie Bohanan, Paula Rovnak, (FL DEN Star Educators), their fourth grade class, and I got to go behind the scenes with one of the Planet Earth’s producers, Dr. Penny Allen!

That’s Dr. Allen as she hangs 100 feet above the ground on her way up to the top of a 300 foot tall Redwood Tree in California.

Dr. Allen joined us from Bristol, England to answer the Florida student’s questions and provide us an insider’s view into the filming of Planet Earth.

One of the questions asked was "What was the longest period of filming?  Penny told us that cameramen spent an entire year on the Antarctic ice filming the Emperor penguins! The penguins became so accustomed to the film crew that they came right up to them as they were taping.  While filming the episode, Pole to Pole the crew spent four months in total darkness, observed the Southern Lights (Aurora Australis),and shared the same land as the Polar Bears.

The students wanted to know how close the camera crews got to the animals?

In some cases it was very close.  Crews got only feet away from Walrus, White-Tip Sharks, and African Elephants as they frolicked in flood waters (Episodes: Ice Worlds, Deep Ocean, and Pole to Pole respectively). 

Were they nervous?  Sometimes, especially when they filmed a pride of 30 lions in the dead of night as they were hunting elephants!

In some cases, however, the crew filmed animals as far away as a mile!  Using special high-definition cameras the crew captured the first-ever footage of a Snow Leopard as it leaped from rock-to-rock in the Planet Earth episode, "Mountains."

The class was really interested in the production crew’s use of a helicopter.  Penny told them that the helicopter was used on every habitat and that it used a special gyroscopic camera mount.  This device helped stabilize the camera so that it would not be affected by the vibration and movement of the helicopter.

My favorite story; however, had to do to with the Capercaillie bird.  While Penny was on location in Finland shooting the episode, "Forests," the crew wanted to film a male Capercaillie bird.  The male birds are extremely territorial and every time the camera crew approached the bird it did everything to protect its turf.  The bird strutted and showed its stuff in an all out effort to say, "This patch of forest belongs to me buddy." I just love the picture that Penny took and shared with us as she told us the story.

All in all, The BBC team traveled to 200 locations to film the most beautiful and amazing animals in their natural habitats.

The Discovery Channel, the BBC, and the Nature Conservancy hope that viewers will gain a better appreciation of our planet and seek out ways to protect and preserve all of its occupants - big and small.

A special thank you to Jennifer Henry, Shannon Malone, Maureen Lemire at the Discovery Channel, Dr. Penny Allen at the BBC Natural History Unit, and Debbie Bohanan, Paula Rovnak, and their fourth grade class, for making this behind-the-scenes adventure possible.

Talk to you soon,

Matt Monjan
Discovery Education, unitedstreaming

The unitedstreaming writing prompt library now hosts over 500 writing prompts.

The new writing prompts are based on the national English/Language Arts standards for writing by the NCTE—National Council of Teachers of English.

These prompts also feature:

• Difficulty levels that cover students from those beginning the writing process to those who are in AP courses
• Descriptive, Narrative, Expository, and Persuasive prompts for grades 3-12
• Analysis prompts for grades 9-12

Each prompt includes images that relate to content taught across the country—both literary and non-literary, i.e., social studies, science, philosophy, cultural, community, and more.

To access the Writing Prompt library, log into unitedstreaming and click on the Teacher Center.  Then click on the Writing Prompt Icon.

To search the entire Writing Prompt Library, look inside the Search Writing Prompt Library box and uncheck the top three boxes - leaving only the unitedstreaming Writing Prompts box checked.   And in no time you’ll see the 500+ writing prompts appear on your screen.

Tying it all together:
Speaking of time, did you know that on March 19, 1918, Congress enacted Daylight Savings Time into law? I found that out today when I clicked on the unitedstreaming Calendar feature.

And now you can tie the Daylight Savings Time video segments and encyclopedia article to a Writing Prompt and create a unit on Time. To get you started, I found two prompts Too Little Time (grades 6-8) and Inevitable Change (grades 9-12), that address time in two very different ways. 

And now, at this moment in time, you and I have arrived at the end of yet another posting.

Until the next time
Matt Monjan
Discovery Education, unitedstreaming

Have you ever wondered how to increase the size of the close captioning text when viewing it full screen? 

This tip comes to us via Jeff Smith at the Erie County Technical School in Pennsylvania.

Increasing the Close Caption Text Size
When using closed captioning, the text may not be as large as you would like it to be. To increase the size of the text follow these steps:

1. Download both the video/video segment and close caption (cc) file
2. Open the cc file in a text editing program like WordPad or Notepad. 
3. Locate the line of code that indicates “font size.”  This is usually about the sixth line of code. 
4. Increase the font size to at least 20 pts, or even larger. 
5. Save and close your file in your folder with the video file. 
6. The next time you view the video, the size of the text should be increased

Is that way too cool for school or what?  Thanks Jeff!

Here are the step by step instructions for downloading and projecting cc videos full screen:Download closed_caption_full_screen_viewing_steps.doc

This tip is brought to you by the letter Queue
Are you a Network Administrator or Technology Coordinator responsible for managing your school/district’s bandwidth?  Then this little tip may be right up your alley.
unitedstreaming has a tool called Network Manager.  When activated, teachers find video/video segments and queue them to download later.  That night (or at a time set by the Administrator) all of the queued videos are downloaded onto a local computer or server.  The next day teachers are able to stream and/or download these videos onto their own personal computers.  And here’s the bandwidth management piece; since the videos are now locally saved, teachers stream/download information from a local source and not the Internet.  To see how it works or to demonstrate to your teachers, check out this PowerPoint:Download undestanding_network_manager.ppt 

Details, Details, Details
Here’s a great little tip when you are talking about Primary Sources.  Find an image, any image, and open its large version (click on the Preview link underneath "Large").

Then, on a PC, follow these steps:

• Hover over lower right-hand corner until you see an icon with arrows pointing out from each of its four corners
  
• Click on the expand icon
  
• Click and drag the gray left-right and up-down buttons to zero in on the image detail

On a Mac:

• Open image in iPhoto
• Frame the part of the image that you want to enlarge
• Use your zoom function to enlarge that piece of the image.

To find some really great imagery, click on the Advanced Search and scroll down until you see the Publishers drop down box.  Choose any of the Library of Congress, NASA, or U.S.D.A. Forest Service images and watch as your students imagination take over.

For more great tips and tricks - click on the Tips and Tricks! link located underneath the word Categories.  See it?  Right there…scroll back up and look in the gray bar on the left-hand side of your screen… 

I hope that these tips are helpful. If you have any neat tips, tricks, comments, etc. please feel free to share!

Talk to you soon,
Matt Monjan
Discovery Education, Implementation.

On March 25, 2007 The Discovery Channel will launch PLANET EARTH, a first-of-its-kind look at the world’s most magnificent and compelling locations. The 11-part series includes never-before-seen animal behaviors, remote regions captured by for the first time, and unprecedented high definition production techniques.

In conjunction with the premiere of PLANET EARTH, The Nature Conservancy will launch new in-depth web content on www.nature.org, aimed at educating visitors about the urgent threats facing the places featured in the program and what they can do to help out.  There will be mutual links with www.planet-earth.com to provide active consumers with multiple areas to participate in environmental activities through fun, interactive and educational features.

During the U.S. premiere on Sunday, March 25, viewers can take an online tour that will be synchronized to the show, test themselves on trivia about the animals and environments seen on air, chat with other viewers during the show and ask questions of M. Sanjayan, lead scientist for The Nature Conservancy.

Tying it all together

As unitedstreaming subscribers you have the unique ability to incorporate the Planet Earth interactive links into unitedstreaming assignments, quizzes, and writing prompts.

You can also use the image library, sound files, articles, videos in combination with the Planet Earth educational resources to teach science and conservation concepts.

For example;

• You can download images of endangered species and put them into a photostory, iPhoto, or PowerPoint presentation, or even Google Earth!
• Take Google Earth tour of Planet Earth http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/planet-earth/google-tour/google-tour.html
• Create an interactive Rain Forest Quiz
• Challenge your students to become naturalists by creating their own Digital Scrapbook.  Download the attached ppt template and customize it for your lesson/class! Download Rainforest.zip  (This is a Zipped file - be sure to follow prompts when downloading it onto your computer.  You will need to unzip all of the attachments (videos, images, ppt, and sound file and place them in a folder on your computer).
  Finally, you and your class can can participate in a live chat with series producers on Monday, March 26, the day after PLANET EARTH premieres, to learn more about the producer’s filming experiences - check out www.planet-earth.com for more information!

Talk to you soon,
Matt Monjan
Discovery Education, unitedstreaming

Both the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain have become everlasting symbols of the Cold War. Removing these impediments has marked huge milestones towards achieving peace.

To help you illustrate these and other historic events, unitedstreaming has just released 48 historic speeches! These speeches include everything from John F. Kennedy’s address at the Berlin Wall where he famously proclaims "Ich bin ein Berliner" to Winston Churchill’s "Iron Curtain" metaphor describing the increasing political grip of communism.

Other famous speeches include: Amelia Earhart’s belief in the age of flight, Thomas Edison speaking on the future of electricity, and the inaugural speech of Franklin Delano Roosevelt

You can stream and/or download these speeches just like you would with any of the other material that you find on the site.

Finally,transcripts and classroom use guides are available within the Related Materials tab attached to each famous speech.

We hope that you enjoy these resources, and just think, the next world famous orator may just be sitting in your classroom. 

Talk to you soon,
Matt Monjan
Discovery Education

In January, we released over 250 BRAND NEW writing prompts based on the national English/Language Arts standards for writing by NCTEA - The National Council of Teachers of English.

These new Writing Prompts feature:

• Difficulty levels that cover all levels of students from those who are just beginning the writing process to those who are in AP courses!
• Descriptive, Narrative, Expository, and Persuasive prompts for grades 3-12 and Analysis prompts for grades 9-12.
• The images that correspond with these prompts relate to content taught across the country both literary and non-literary, i.e., social studies, science, philosophy, cultural, community, etc.

Discovery Education worked in conjunction with The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) to create a series of technology infused lesson plans.  The ISTE Seal of Alignment assures that the use of unitedstreaming digital media, as documented in these lessons, has been rigorously reviewed and determined to meet specific National Educational Technology Standards.  Educators can use these lessons as guidelines on how to effectively infuse unitedstreaming digital media into their lesson design.  To find the ISTE lesson plans, log into unitedstreaming, click on the Teacher Center, and then Lesson Plan Library.

What does all of this mean for you?!?  It works.  Plain and simple.  You already knew that unitedstreaming is a great resource.  Here is one more thing that proves it!  So rest easy knowing that what you are already using or what you plan on using in the near future is effective AND trustworthy!  And isn’t always nice to have another seal of approval?

Until Next Time-

Christy Rogers
Discovery Education, unitedstreaming