Texas DEN

I’ve been surfing the internet a little more this week than usual and have found three sites that I thought I’d pass on. I decided to pass them on together because they are all the same type of site - free books! In no particular order . . .

ReadPrint has thousands of full text books available online. You can search for them by title or just browse through the list of authors.

FullBooks is a little more minimalist in design, but appears to have a lot of content. I couldn’t find a search function and their books appear to be listed alphabetically by title.

Planet eBook by far appears to have the most complex site. There are free books for download, but there is also a blog, a newsletter, and they invite you to suggest books you’d like to see added to their collection.

Next time you are going to be on the road, download a few good books to keep you company. Try these sites and comment here to let us know which is your favorite and why.

Time is almost running out to submit a proposal for TCEA 2009. The deadline is May 1. You have nothing to lose. In fact, TCEA has sweetened the pot - everyone who submits a proposal will be entered in a chance to win an iPOD. You can’t win if you don’t submit, so run on over to submit your TCEA proposal here.

Make the DEN proud and add to the growing list of DEN educators who present at this prestigious state technology event.

Here’s information from Frank Guttler of AFI. Some of you may have met him during an AFI Lights, Camera, Education! professional development. If you did, you know that he wouldn’t steer us wrong! Read on:

“The American Film Institute (AFI) is proud ot announce AFI ScreenNation(tm), the first online video posting-and-sharing community for middle and high-school students, aged 13-18.”

Take a look, view how-to videos, encourage your students to upload their own movies and embed them on their own pages and blogs.

“Every video uploaded to AFI ScreenNation(tm) will become eligible for year-end prize packages honoring exemplary student filmmaking. And, in the next few months, AFI ScreenNation(tm) will offer exclusive “Challenges” in which young filmmakers can compee for special prizes and recognition.”

Okay, Texas, this is our chance to hit one out of the ballpark! We’ve been taking it easy and giving everyone a chance to steal a couple of bases - but now’s the time to step up to the plate! (cough, cough) - sorry for the really bad puns!

Seriously, y’all, we need to get out there and do some recruiting! It’s easy - isn’t the DEN the greatest thing since baseball? I mean, we get all this great collaboration with educators all over the world, we get awesome webinars for those of us who proudly consider ourselves webinerds, we get cool giveaways and professional development that cannot be matched! To top it all off - what does it cost? Nothing! It’s free! We don’t have to sign our lives away, we don’t have to pay annual membership fees, and if we get to go to an institute, the cost is minimal and Discovery puts us up in nice digs, feeds us, entertains us, and teaches us more in the first ten minutes than we could have hoped to learn the entire week at home!

Come on, people, get out there and get those STARs signed up. Also, don’t forget to report your events. They not only help Texas standings, they also will enable you to keep your STAR status! If you haven’t read about the DEN Spring Training 2008 promotion, visit the national blog for details!