Texas DEN

The Region One Education Service Center and Discovery Education will be hosting a Day of Discovery on November 15, 2008 from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. The day will include topics such as Streaming Overview, 50 Ways and Beyond to Integrate Discovery Education, Powerful Multimedia Presentations and Digital Storytelling.

As with every Discovery Education event, there will be lots of collaboration, food, door prizes, and fun! Seating is limited, so be sure to reserve your space by clicking HERE. Be sure to stay tuned to the blog for an update after the event.

The DENliest catch season is still upon us! I hope all of our STARs are out there recruiting new STARs so that Texas can continue to be the biggest and the best!

Please take some time to welcome these new STARs:

Keishla Ceaser-Jones
Christi Hicks
Jacqueline Mamou
Joanna Ortega
Carol Richmond
Marlene Robbins
Charlotte Solorio

Recruit new STARs and be the next King/Queen Crab while earning cool stuff from the DEN!

Last Saturday, October 25, was the second Discovery Education virtual conference. The Texas Leadership Council hosted a live, in-person event throughout the day at the Notre Dame School in Dallas. Several area educators attended, watched some of the virtual presentations, enjoyed breakout sessions, and had a great breakfast and lunch from Cafe Express, courtesy of the Discovery Educator Network.

Dallas area educators now have a similar opportunity, this time hosted by Irving ISD in conjunction with the K12 Online Conference. On November 8 and November 15, The Academy of Irving ISD will be host to area educators as they participate in virtual sessions and face-to-face discussions throughout the morning. For more information, click here.

If you have never experienced the unique opportunity to participate both virtually and in person at a conference like this, you really should try it! The next DEN Virtual Conference will be held on April 25, 2009.

As many of you already know, the fabulous Discovery Educator Network is hosting its second annual Virtual Conference on October 25. What you may not know is that the Texas Leadership Council is hosting an in-person event in Dallas, to provide a venue to participate in both the virtual conference and in-person break-out sessions!

Break-out sessions will include information on MovieMaker, PhotoStory, Gimp, Second Life(tm), Voicethread, Animoto, Thinkfinity, Web 2.0, and more in addition to all the great virtual topics lined up by the DEN!  If you are near the Dallas/Fort Worth area, you will not want to miss the in-person event.

Registration will begin at 8:00 a.m. with breakfast and networking until 9:00 a.m. when the breakout sessions and virtual conference begins. Breakfast and lunch are both provided to participants free of charge - so there is another reason to attend!  Did I mention the great door prizes too???

Visit the official registration site to register for either the virtual event or the Texas in-person event. Please be sure to only check the Texas event if you are planning on attending in-person. Otherwise, just check “attending virtually”.

Well, there seems to be lots of stuff going on right now and all of it is stuff that YOU should be taking advantage of! Aside from the fact that our very own account manager, Justin Karkow, is featured not once, not twice, but THREE times on the main DE page, there are several things you should be aware of. Read on . . .

First, the annual DEN Stream-a-thon is coming up very soon. For those of you who participated last year, you know that the Stream-a-thon is well worth the effort of attending, even if you only watch one session. For those of you who have not participated previously, take my word for it and plan on attending at least for a part of the day. You will be glad you did! For a list of the Stream-a-thon sessions and registration information, click HERE.

Next, Discovery Education hosted its first ever National Training Academy this summer and it was a huge success. They will be hosting another on October 26-28, so you will get another chance to attend and enhance your knowledge about technology integration. For more information and registration, click HERE.

Last, but certainly not least, is the upcoming EdTechConnect webinar on September 17 with Tim Magner, who is the Director of the US Department of Educational Technology. Yes, you read it right — the DIRECTOR. Don’t miss this opportunity to ask Tim questions about the future of technology in schools. Read more about it and find registration information HERE.

Also, be watching for details about the upcoming Fort Worth Museum tour later in September. It’ll be a change to network and have fun with area educators!

You may have noticed already that there is a new page on the Texas DEN blog. If you click on the tab that says Texas DEN Events, you will find a listing of upcoming events sponsored by the Texas Leadership Council.

Right now, there are two dates to mark on your calendar, so check it out and watch for more details about the events as they become available!

By guest blogger: Kristine Rebstock

I am new to DEN conferences, new to blogging, and a newbie STAR DEN member.  These three are the reasons are why this blog is LATE!  However, better late than never…someone very famous and interesting once said. Day 1 - Being new to DEN conferences, I have to admit that I am AMAZED and excited at the amount of talent, resources, and work that is involved in putting together a 2 day conference that gets you so busy that the days fly leaving one exhausted and energized at the same time.  (I have to admit that those last words came from Justin Karkow, but he wasn’t tellin’ a fib!)  We spent Friday, 8:00 am-8:00 pm, WORKING!  I feel privileged to have participated in such a productive day of learning, sharing, and producing.  Not only were we provided with some amazing skills such as using DE material (video, audio, images, quizzes, etc…) embedded in to Google Earth, interactive Power Points, Photostory, Movie Maker, and Web 2.0 sites, (all before lunch), but we were challenged to use these tools to create projects that our students can use when we start up another exciting year of teaching.  Work began…and did not stop.  Even after a yummy barbeque dinner, there was work to do.  We spent the evening working on a video scavenger hunt around the beautiful SMU campus quad.  There are many a blog with evidence of this zany task…Ann Jablonski has hers already posted in her DENblog.  I’m sure there are others.  The prize for participating in this hunt, which by the way happened during the heat of the afternoon…above 100 degrees in the shade…was and ice cream social with really good conversation recapping the day and planning the next.

Day 2 – Most of us would think that the last day of a conference would be kind of slow and just winding up loose ends…well, nope.  Not with Justin and Mike at the helm of this super useful beast of a conference.  We met for breakfast at 8:00 am and then promptly moved on to create a video message for the New Jersey Conference on the steps of Dallas Hall.  Boom De Yada mixed with a little song we all know and love, “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” was a blast.  I’ve never been on You Tube before…hope they enjoyed the welcome message for their conference.  Heading back to the meeting room, we all had a sense that things were going to get even more interesting than the day before.  It was a day to wrap up our projects, share, and post, but it was also a day of more resources.  Many of the DEN Leadership Council members participated in the DENliest Catch; a competition to see who could offer the most useful web 2.0 tools that could work with DE materials.  Based on applause…it was a 5 way tie.  Visit the TexasDEN wikispace to find out more about these resources!  WOW!  Lots of work was accomplished by all, and friends were made along the way.  I will DEFINITELY apply for more conferences.  I walked away with work I can use immediately…supported by an incredible resource in Discovery Education as well as many other compatible tools that cost (as Elaine Plybon likes to refer) “ZERO DOLLARS”.

I’ve made friends that will last a lifetime, connections to others who are dedicated to enriching students’ lives through integration, technology, and fun, as well as memories of a first conference that can only be the beginning of a wonderful new direction in my teaching and learning career.I hope to see you at a DEN event soon!

From Guest Blogger: Betsy Ruffin 

I write this post from the Southern Methodist University campus where a great group of folks have had a great time — and some information overload– from the Central Regional Conference sponsored by Discovery Education.

Besides learning about what’s new on Discovery Streaming, all about the new Discovery Education Science for elementary, and what’s on the Discovery Educator Network, we’ve had sessions on web 2.0 tools, great educational websites, and lots of networking time.

This afternoon we share team projects, items developed from DES and other resources to use in classroom or as professional development projects.

Then there was the just for fun parts: developing choruses to the Boom de ada song now being used as a commercial on the Discovery  Channel, a video scavenger hunt that had us traveling the campus looking for items (and harrassing students for a few of the items), plus plenty of eating.

It will take me some time to fully process all the wonderful, helpful, practical information we’ve received.  If you’ve never been to a DEN event, plan to attend one.  They are well worth the time.

We are on day 2 of the DEN Central Regional Conference being held at the beautiful Southern Methodist Campus in Dallas, Texas. Another regional conference begins today in New Jersey, so we all decided we wanted to give them a big Texas-sized launch! You can watch the video here:

I’ve received a request for a venue to make travel/lodging arrangements for the Regional Conference being held August 1-2 at Southern Methodist University. As a result, I’ve created a wiki for the Texas DEN to use. We’ll be able to use this wiki for many purposes, but for now, it is set up to be a place where you can list your contact information for other institute goers as well as indicate if you are looking for a roommate and/or a driving buddy.

Visit the wiki by clicking HERE. I’ve already added my information to get the list going. Let me know if you have any other requests for the wiki!