Tennessee DEN

This year we purchased DE Assessment for our school.  I have been sold on this product since I first saw it 3 years ago (as Think Link).  I’ve done a little training, and we just finished our first round of benchmark tests (yes, we started late).

Today, I realized it was really going to have an impact on somebody besides me.A teacher walked into my room with her eyes wide and said, “OH…..MY…..GOSH! This is the coolest thing ever!”  When I finally got her to calm down, I was able to ask her what she was talking about.

It turns out she had just created her first Practice Probe in language arts.  The question bank directly addressed the skills she was working on, and several questions applied directly to the stories they read (Tell Tale Heart and Legend of Sleepy Hollow).  She was able to choose easy and moderate questions for most of the test, then added one or two hard questions to help separate advanced students from the others.”It only took clicking a few buttons! And I was done in minutes!” she exclaimed.  ”I used to have to cut and paste questions I found to make my tests look like TCAP tests.  Now it is automatic.”  With that, she was out the door to go talk to her department head about how much she loves DE Assessment.

This type of response is what it will take to get the program again next year.   My fingers are crossed.

A short while ago, I got a Skype message from Danielle Abernathy asking me to take a look at an upcoming post for her new blog, NetTrekker d.i.  I was quite honored to do so.  The idea of a blog for NetTrekker was quite appealing to me, and I immediately thought about posting a short blog here at Discovery to let others know it was out there.  Then, I found out it was “live” yet.  Shhhhh.But now, the blog is very much live and is one I highly recommend you add to your RSS feeds.Our school has had access to NetTrekker as long as we’ve had access to DE Streaming (long enough that everyone still calls it unitedStreaming except me).  Yet, I feel it is a greatly undervalued tool at our school.  The quick and easy way to search, I’ve heard, is Google.  Google rules the world.  Yet, I can personally attest to the fact that I have spent countless hours over the years searching Google in vain for “just the right resource.”NetTrekker can solve that problem.  NetTrekker allows you to really zero in on what you want, and the results have been vetted to make them relevant to educational uses.  If you haven’t used NetTrekker, or if your school or district doesn’t subscribe to NetTrekker, you are really missing out on a great tool your teachers will come to love.Danielle’s new blog will help you learn a lot about how to use it effectively.  So what are you waiting on?  Head over there now! 

The Tennessee Educational Technology Conference (TETC) will be held in Nashville, TN, from December 10 to 12 at the Nashville Convention Center.  This year we have the wonderful opportunity to have THE Hall Davidson as a keynote speaker.  Yes, the DEN’s original Rock Star will be our very special guest.In addition, I just received word that my presentation on Using Skype in the Classroom was accepted!  Final details will be posted later.  The DEN LC has more proposals awaiting approval as well, so look for those details at a later date.You can register for TETC here. 

I just got this message from Scott Holcomb of the wonderful Memphis City Schools Technology Offices:

Calling all TN and surrounding area DEN educators!

Memphis City Schools is having their 14th Annual Educational Technology Conference November 6th – 7th, 2008 and we are looking for some exciting presenters and attendees! Click here to register!

We hope to see you there!Questions? Email Scott Holcomb.   And check out our Nerdy Educator Blog Site

This has been an awesome conference for Memphis City Schools and the surrounding areas.  Our DEN STARs in Memphis are doing an awesome job providing quality materials for their teachers.  If you don’t follow their blogs, head over to their blog site and RSS it right now!

Plan on going to the Virtual Conference in Nashville on October 25th ?  You can now register to attend.  Space is limited, so sign up and confirm your spot early!Fill out the form at this site.  Be sure to list Nashville as your event location.Let’s fill it up! 

Registration begins today for locally hosted Discovery Education conferences around the country to be held on October 25th.  These conferences combine live workshops conducted by local trainers with online webinars led by the Discovery Educator Network Dream Team.Even if you can’t attend the local event, you can still attend the Virtual Conference online from the comfort of your own living room.  Below is a list of the online sessions.  All times are Eastern Standard: 

DEN Blog Network » Fall Virtual Conference via kwout

 The TN Leadership Council will host an event in Nashville at the Discovery Education Assessment Headquarters.  Watch this post for more information and a link to register for that location.

Last year’s online sessions were awesome.  This year promises to be even better! 

OK, I am not an early adopter when it comes to most things tech.  I need to see it used a little while to make sure it is worth my time.  Such was my introduction to Twitter.  I first saw it on Steve Dembos Teach42 blog.  He and David Warlick and David Jakes were kicking around some small tweets about what they were doing right then.  It was cute.  It was fuzzy.  It was a small soap opera.  But it wasn’t for me.

Later, when I began to see that people were actually having conversations in Twitter I decided to take the plunge.  At first, I posted funny little things and some small snippets of what I was doing right then.  Nearly 2,000 posts later my use of Twitter (and now Plurk) have changed somewhat.

For the record, Twitter is my first love when it comes to microblogging, so I may be just a tad prejudiced in my comparison of the two.  Kind of like the name of my first girlfriend in 3rd grade.  I’ve forgotten the names of most of the 5 or 6 girls I’ve dated in my life, but Ellen T. sticks with me to this day. (Could it be possible she is now a DEN STAR member and reading this blog? Naaa).

I like Twitter.  I follow just over 250 people.  About the same number follow me.  In Plurk I have less than 50 friends and fans.  I find I pay attention to about as much information from each source.  There are less than two dozen people I really “read” on a daily basis.

Twitter has become my source for tech resources and help.  I’ve watched others, like myself, ask techie questions to our friends on Twitter and within minutes several answers will come through.  You can say, “Hi!” from a presentation and many will respond almost immediately to say hello back to your attendees.

The downside to Twitter is that it does not auto update to show you new feeds.  For that I use an app like Twhirl (which is not blocked by my school filters either…big plus!).  It is also harder to follow attempts at conversations.  They are usually limited to the two people actually engaged.  The rest of us begin to sort of tune them out.

I also took a while to start using Plurk (Karma at 45+ and rising now, thank you very much).  At NECC, many of the people I was following on Twitter jumped ship and began using Plurk due to Twitter’s nasty habit of breaking any time more than a million people were online at one time or something.  After a while, many (like me) decided using both may be advantageous.

While Twitter is my source for techie type conversations (and following a few local people I’ve never met, but now really love), Plurk offers more of a platform for dialogue.  Its timeline layout takes a little getting used to, but once you settle in, you find many people in conversations about one topic.

Not a lot of political conversations start in Twitter, but there are a LOT going on in Plurk.  Some I like and some I don’t, but I find myself engaged in some way that I didn’t find on Twitter.

Plurk doesn’t notify you by email that someone is following you, so to the 15 people I’ve been waiting on to accept my friendship I say, “Hey! Check the alert box in the top left corner of your screen and do some accepting.  I’m trying to raise Karma here for gosh sakes.”  While it does auto update to tell me I’ve got Plurks I haven’t read  yet, there doesn’t seem to be an outside app that works with Plurk, so it is blocked at school.  Maybe that’s why Twitter has become more tech oriented and Plurk more personal. Hmm.

So, to those trying to decide which way is better for your PLN (Personal Learning Network), I say give both a try.   Find a few people you know and follow them for a while.  You may like one more than the other, or you may choose to use both interchangeably.

For me, Twitter tends to answer more of my questions related to Web 2.0, troubleshooting, cool new videos on YouTube, great new websites that will help my classes and more.  Plurk tends to allow me to engage more with the same people on a more personal level.

Which one do you like best and why?

My username for both Twitter and Plurk is simply tchilders.  Look me up!

I am sitting in the meeting room of the Marriott, and it is nearly time for our second day to begin.  Before we get there, however, we need to cover some important news from last night.Several of us stayed until around 10:00 EST working on projects and picking up tech tricks from one another.  Afterward, a few of us wound up around a pool table.  I teamed up with Kristi Richburg for the first game.  My plan was to play a game or two and go to bed.  Fate, on the other hand, had other plans.  We played Justin and Teryl.  After winning handily, we turned our attention to Brad and Hall.  We could not lose.  Finally, our competition had enough and decided to play fooz ball.  If not for that, Kristi and I would probably still be playing and winning this morning.  Kristi was awesome!This morning we are going to hear from Sandra Ford with Discovery Assessment.  After that, Hall Davidson is doing our keynote.  Before we go home, our participants will demonstrate their projects for the group.  Another full day of fun with the DEN! 

This afternoon we took time to look at things other than DE Streaming.  Brad took us through some nifty tricks in PowerPoint.  My favorite was creating a scrolling bar across the bottom of a slide much like the news feeds you see on the cable news shows.  Very simple trick, but it will have your kids (and other teachers) guessing how you did it!  Another cool trick I noticed (but it was not commented on) was the use of a short DE Streaming video embedded as eye candy in a slide.  The audio was muted or removed and a very small version of the clip was inserted next to the next.  It simply played like an animated .GIF file.  Pretty nifty!  You can see his entire presentation on his Discovery Blog site.

Next up was Justin Karkow.  He took us through Photo Story, the moved to Movie Maker, and finally Adobe Premiere Elements to demonstrate how to use editable DE Streaming clips.  The presentation was topped off with a tag team preso with THE Hall Davidson on the use of green screen techniques.  Very quick, down and dirty, bare bones view of some really great tools.

Last, Hall showed a few quick Web 2.0 tools.  He demonstrated how to use VoiceThread, Google Languages, and Closed Captioning with DE Streaming.  With Google Languages, you can type a letter to the parents of an ESL student and then change it into their home language.  In addition, you can change an entire website into a foreign language.  Think about it.  Using Google Languages you can take your school’s website and create an identical version in Spanish, Portugese, Ukranian, Klingon (yes, that’s right!), and more.  Then, just add a link on your homepage to the link provided b Google.  I’ll have to do an entire post on the tricks we learned with Closed Captioning.

During dinner, we had a sharing time called Dinner and Dazzle.  Various participants showed off some of their favorite apps and sites.  One person won an iPod in her district for the creation of a Boom-De-Yada video with her elementary kids.  We looked at Wordle.  Did you ever think about creating your own wordle and using it to imprint t-shirts with slogans about your football or basketball team?  What about posters for class on the use of idioms?  I showed of Free Rice, Voki, and Pixlr. Teryl demonstrated KerPoof!  Brad talked about Go Animate (very easy animation site).  There were several others, but I wasn’t taking notes! Ack!

Tonight we’ve been working on projects. We’ll post more tomorrow.

Tim

OK, the first part of the first day is behind us.  Teryl Magee and I did about an hour and a half overview of DE Streaming and the 3 builders (well, 2 builders and an honorable mention).  Lots of folks here at the conference are fairly familiar with the streaming part of DE Streaming, but few had used the Builders up to this point.   Lots of great questions and some really good suggestions on ways to improve the experience.

At the end of our presentation, we left about twenty minutes for Brad Fountain to do a quick look at Discovery Science.  I have to say I absolutely LOVE Discovery Science.  The ability to do virtual experiments, have instructions read to struggling readers, and track student progress in the Classroom Manager is totally awesome!

After a full morning of instruction, we spent the afternoon at the Huntsville Space Museum.  I had never been here before.  We walked across the grounds, toured the museum, played in the gift shop, and then went to the teacher center and got tons and tons of free stuff!

We are now back at the Marriott.  Brad is going through a lot of cool stuff we can do with streaming media clips in PowerPoint.  I’ll post more later.

Tim