Educators from all over the country, and yes, the world, are converging on the great state of Texas this weekend to get started on a fabulous week of networking, professional development, and good deals! It is time for NECC 2008 in San Antonio! I will be heading to San Antonio on Sunday, but many people are already there and getting the party started!
If you will be at NECC and would like to be a guest blogger, you can either email me at eplybon@gmail.com or look me up at NECC. I’ll add you as a guest blogger and you can help keep everyone who had to stay at home updated!
I especially need a blogger from the DEN precon! Dust off those press hats and start typing!
Discovery Education has made quite a few changes recently to Discovery streaming, as some of you may already be aware. I’m sure you have a lot of questions. You are in luck! Discovery Education is going to be hosting three webinars tomorrow (Thursday, June 26) for anyone who is interested in learning more.
You can click HERE for more information. As always, if you will not be able to attend one, I’m sure the webinars will be archived and available for later review.
Panopto has announced that it is making its new classroom capture platform, CourseCast v2, available to K-12 educators free of charge through their Socrates Project. They do ask that educators who take advantage of this opportunity agree to participate in its beta testing, as the official software will not be released to the general public until July.
If you have not experienced or participated in streaming lectures, you should check this out. Streaming is the current buzzword in the edtech community. It is a way to expand your audience, by streaming your presentations/lectures, or to expand your own professional growth, as you watch a streaming session from your location.
Educators interested in CourseCast v2 may complete the enrollment form. Once you’ve tried it, post a comment here to let us know what you think of it.
Well, we didn’t win, but we sure did get score a lot of runs! We had a respectable lead during the DEN Spring Training recruiting season, always on the list of top states with new recruits. The official totals are not in yet, but here is a list of the new STARs we have as a result of the effort. Welcome to all the new STARs! (If I missed anybody, please add yourself to the list by commenting to this post).
Martha Green
Kimberly Haresn
Rhonda Laffoon
Patty Love
Judy May
Janice Merritt
Michelle Nash
Kathryn Parker
JohnT Powell (it’s about time, JohnT!)
Shelley Statler
Jana Taylor
Jessica Tejada
Elaine Wright
Joni Andersen
Robert Chavez
Penny Ghinaudo
Debra Girgus
Kay Kelbly
Janice Schlottmann
Patti Swan
Marie Alanis
Dusti Baldwin
Angie Briscoe
Trish Draeger
Seth Fewell
Mary Gambrel
Carlos Gomez
Lisa Grissinger
Rhoda Mohr
Michael Peterson
Cynthia Ramirez
Shelia Richardson
Leslie Rogge
Stephanie Schwarze
Susan Wilcox
Norma Williammee
Jenny Wright
Mindy Harding
Suzette Knox
Becky Montemayor
Kristine Rebstock
Marshall Roberson
Sara Simmons
Patricia Oefelein
Linda Berryhill
Louis Doak
Mark Dunk
Terry Hill
Diane Sidoroff
Now, for all of you new STARs (and the rest of you, too), it’s time to register for the summer regional institute being held at the beautiful Southern Methodist University campus in Dallas, Texas. It will be held August 1 and 2 and there is no fee to register! All you need to do is get to Texas and secure lodging (the DEN will not cover your travel costs, but they will feed you!), and get ready to learn more in two days than you ever thought possible! Click HERE for more details. Space is limited and the institute is filling fast, so what are you waiting for?
I’m sure you’ve heard the term “social butterfly” before. Meaning someone who flits around from place to place, being friendly and making friends, it is a term that takes on new meaning in the cyberworld. Yesterday, I was making a social feed widget at one of my favorite sites Widgetbox (try it out and be sure to check out the Blidgets!), and I realized how crazy it is that there are so many social networking sites out there. I felt compelled to join the ones I didn’t already belong to (and found out that some of the ones I didn’t think I belonged to, I did). I joined them all just so I could make the complete widget. I began to wonder . . . is there such a thing as too much networking?
This morning on my drive to work, I heard a news report that said that people who social network are the biggest timewasters at work. Hmmmm.
I came home from work and saw my kids networking in their various ways and sat down at my own computer to check my LinkedIN to see if there were any new connections there, which reminded me to look and see who had posted new stuff on Facebook, which brought me to . . . you get it, right?
So I began to wonder. Am I a social butterfly? Butterflies have wingspans that measure in inches. The largest one, Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing, has a wingspan of 11 inches. Hook your thumbs together and flap your hands to look like a butterfly and you’ll get a pretty good estimate of how big it is. Because I’m involved with nearly every social networking site out there (as far as I know), somehow I think I might have a larger wingspan than that. Enter the Pteranodon. These were prehistoric flying animals with wingspans of 30 feet. Their wings would have cast a really large shadow wherever they went, encompassing everything it encountered. I think maybe I’m a social pteranodon. Unfortunately, pteranodons also became extinct. Hmmmm. Do I need to learn something here?
Here are my questions to you — are you a Social Butterfly or a Social Pteranodon? Do you think there can be too much of a good thing? How do you maintain balance in your social networking life? Post your comments here . . . in this social networking venue . . . as I go Twitter about this post.
Earthwatch Institute is offering Live From the Field Fellowships to K-12 educators. The program has become so popular that they have received additional funding to add another 40 educator fellows each year for the next three years!
Here’s the overview (from the Earthwatch Institute website):
“Live from the Field Overview
Live From the Field fellows join research teams during a small portion (7 to 10 days) of the school year, and share their experiences with classrooms from their research sites, live. Educators selected for this fellowship program will share their learning experiences through web journals, photos, lessons, suggested activities, and teleconferencing. ”
Applications are due June 20 for consideration for the 2008-2009 school year.
Via RSS
