Tennessee DEN

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. 

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! 

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

We have finalized the plans for a June “Day of Discovery” at Woodland Middle School (thanks to Principal Fizer and her staff) in Brentwood, TN on Friday, June 20th. Our Day of Discovery is being held in conjunction with the Tennessee Association of Middle Schools (TAMS) state conference at the Cool Springs Marriott. TAMS has over 400 educators pre-registered for their event on Saturday and Sunday. We have room for 60 or more at our free event on Friday!

You don’t have to be a member of TAMS to attend the Day of Discovery. This workshop is open to elementary, middle, and high school teachers from both public and private institutions. And what an exciting day it will be!

We have Brad Fountain from the Discovery Educator Network delivering our keynote address. Brad works with the TN Leadership Council to help arrange events just like this one.

So, what will we cover? We will talk about 4 technology areas of interest to teachers in Tennessee: Digital Storytelling (for both PC and Mac), 50 Ways to use Discovery Streaming, Web 2.0 in the classroom and beyond, and Discovery Streaming basics. In addition to Brad, we will have Teryl Magee, Sally Walters, and myself providing these workshops.

The Day of Discovery will begin prompty at 10 AM and conclude at 3 PM. Lunch is provided for all attendees. And the best part? It is all free!

Watch this blog space for more detailed information, a URL to sign up, and directions to Woodland Middle School. For now, you can sign up here if you plan to attend the event. Seating is limited, so don’t delay! We’re bringing 2 van loads from Cleveland. How many can you bring with you? Oooh, that sounds like a challenge. Check back soon!

Yep, it is me again. I decided to slip away from the Discovery booth long enough to sit in on a session about Web 2.0. The presenters are Micki Daniel and Betsy Jones, both from the Knox County System.

For me, I’m learning how to use Safari on a Mac, so just picture the geeky guy from the commercials who only knows PCs and that’s me.

The website we jumped to first was here. Click on the Research link at the top of the page to find a LOT of alternative ways to search apart from Google. One of the most informative for me was Vivisimo. Vivisimo’s search results are “clustered” around sub-topics which makes it very helpful to drill down into results.

Next, the conversation jumped to wikis, blogs, and podcasts. We discussed wikipedia as a classroom research tool as well as personal and professional blogs and podcasts. They discussed free podcasts from university instructors and the need to meet students where they are. Classroom instruction is now available to download from iTunes. (While there was a lengthy discussion about the podcasts available for teachers from other sources, the need for teachers to podcast for themselves was not addressed). One specific recommendation was the Princeton Review Vocabulary Minute podcast.

Next, we turned our attention to resources that help us harness the power of Web 2.0. First up: Google Tools. Lots of questions about “why have a gmail account” and “Okay, I’m in Google Docs, now what.” This is a fantastic session for those just learning Web 2.0. The Knox County Tech department even has some in-service hours available on the web.

After Google Docs, we headed over to Go2Web20. This is one of my favorite sites ever! Our presenters demonstrated how to browse through Go2Web20 both by searches and the tag cloud.

All in all, this was a very informative session for those brand new to Web 2.0. From my history in other professional development settings, this is actually the largest group of teachers still out there.

I am truly glad I sat in on this session. I learned that Knox County has some terrific resources easily available for teachers, and the county has great teachers in the tech department ready and willing to help. They truly love what they do!Next year, Knox County will launch School Fusion allowing teachers to create their own webpages through the school tech services. Awesome! Session over. Back to the booth!

The National Endowment for the Humanities is sponsoring a program called Picturing America.  Schools accepted into the program will receive reproductions of 40 famous paintings by American artists that cover a broad spectrum of history and culture for our country.  In addition, lesson plans are provided to use the artwork as a launching point for student reflection.  I strongly urge all TN DEN members to apply!  Just click the link above.

But what about those of us that don’t get accepted?  Is there a way for us to participate in a similar program?  Of course there is!  In fact, I can think of 2 immediately.

First, there are images of famous works of art in the Discovery streaming image catalog.  Using the Writing Prompt Builder, teachers can use these images to create a student dialog of reflection.

Second, teachers can upload images of artwork to VoiceThread and have students make written or verbal comments there as well.  A  nice touch to VoiceThread is the ability to “draw” on the image you comment on.  If there is a specific part of the picture students are drawn to, they can demonstrate that by circling it as they comment.

What about you? What ideas do you have for using famous art in the classroom?

OK, so 10,000 or so people paid good money to spend a few days in the heat and glamor that is Orlando for the FETC sessions.  OK, so they get to talk to others and attend fabulous parties.  OK, so I’m really jealous and must make plans to attend next year.  But none of that is stopping me from doing a little armchair attending this year.

I just finished watching Steve Dembo’s session at FETC via ustream.  Thanks to Dean Shareski and his ever present camera, Steve’s session went out live to the world. So there were only 7 of us actually watching.  How did this happen?

It started with Twitter.  A person I just started following a few days ago sent out a twit that two sessions were going to be hosted on ustream.  Unfortunately, there were going to be at the same time.  Since I know Steve (who doesn’t know Steve?), and had just finished looking at about 5 million pictures he has at Flickr thanks to PicLens (that’s another blog), I chose to attend that one.

I headed over to ustream.tv and signed up so I could enter the chat room.  While watching Steve, Dean Shareski posted a poll on the video clip asking if we thought Steve would do a live demonstration of Twitter.  It was a unannomous “yes.” We were all wrong. Steve had long ago left the topic of Twitter and had moved on to ustream!

In the chat room, I learned more about how to use Twitter and we talked briefly about what it must be like to be in the conference room and be someone who has never used these tools.  We agreed together that it must be hard to imagine, to picture in one’s head, how all these things add depth to one’s instruction or professional development.  After all, aren’t they just so we can gossip around the globe together?

Uh, no. Twitter, ustream, and chat all worked together to give me about 45 minutes of truly great professional development today.  I follow Dean Shareski on Twitter and read his blog, but I may never have an opportunity to sit down and discuss educational issues with him.  Today, in a chat room, I sat “next to him” and talked about what was going on  in the session.

So from the comfort of my armchair, I have now attended FETC.  I hope to see and hear more before it is over!

I first saw this over on the Second Life blog. I had to go check it out for myself. And yep, it’s true. You can make a photo appear to talk using PQ Talking Photo Software. For a limited time (to January 15), they are offering the software free to anyone who posts a blog about it. The only stipulation seems to be that the blog must have at least 10 previous posts.

I not only recommend you check out their website, but if you have an active blog one post is a very small price to pay for free software!

PostScript: After first posting this earlier today, I received my registration code for the software. It is extremely easy to use (just upload a picture, drag six dots to various points on a face, and add an mp3 file). In less than 5 minutes, I had played with several different pictures and a couple of sound clips I already had recorded. At the end, I settled on the one below to post to the blog.

This session from TETC is titled, “Social Networking: It’s More Than MySpace.” Online social networking differs from non-online in that the boundaries of time and space are removed. Common features of social network sites include:

• A profile feature
• A list of friends that are identified as part of your online social network
• Some type of “wall” for friends to post comments on your site
• Ability to post photos, movies, videos, and other media
• Some type of communication tools (blogs or IMs)
• Sub-group availability within the network itself

Who is using social networking, and how are they using it? USA Today was one example given. You have the ability to login and create a social network around the types of news in which you are interested.

In addition, political candidates are using social sites to connect to people and to coordinate activities related to campaigns. The Obama site is probably ahead of the curve because one of the Facebook founders took a leave of absence to design the site. If you join the network, you will be connected to others in your local area who are also supporters. Ron Paul used his site effectively to raise $5 million in one day online. On the other hand, Fred Thompson had a misstep when he planned his big day the day before Thanksgiving. The entire nation travels that day! Interesting.

Journalism and media are using social networking, and it is transforming the way they do business. Through social networking, journalism has left “telling a story” to being a dialog. People can share in the news story. They can even correct errors and refute facts. Looking again at USA Today, like nearly any other major news source online, those who are logged in have the ability to comment on news stories. Again, the dialog extends beyond the news story.

IBM has 400,000 employees on an internal MySpace-like social networking system.  They have 20,000 internal blogs and 20,000 wikis; including an internal social bookmarking site.  How many are at your school?

Remember, these are not MTV-type sites that attract the young, hip, up-to-date youngsters of today. These are standard, flagship sites that are changing the way all of us interact with the web.

There was more from the session, but here are the pertinent questions:

• Kids today are interacting with their world online. How are they interacting with their world of learning? How are you driving that interaction?
• Kids today are social in ways we never thought possible (I was born in the 50’s). Are you allowing them to be technologically social at school? Is your network designed to let them do that?
• Kids today are exposed to all types of information. Do they know how to critically analyze what they read or hear online? Are you taking steps to train them in being better online consumers of information?

Post any and all answers to this blog. Let’s keep the dialog going…

I ran across a blog from the President and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, a publisher of Christian books and Bibles. In it, he talked about the need for people to learn how better to use PowerPoint. As I clicked on links he provided, I ran across a great example of PowerPoint in a TED Talk by Larry Lessing.

While watching the video, I realized Lessing was addressing a question raised by David Warlick in another blog post I read some weeks back. That question has to do with copyright and the way kids today are taking control of their culture through the creation of various types of mashups online.

I am including a link to the video here for two audiences. First, if you want to see the absolute best use of PowerPoint I’ve ever witnessed, you need to watch at least part of this video. If, on the other hand, you want to learn more about how our kids are changing culture and the need for laws and business to keep up with that change, then watch the whole thing (about 18 minutes).

I would love to know your thoughts about either when you are finished.