Texas DEN

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!

Check this out! The Discovery Educator Network is featured in this week’s Education Week. Several STAR Discovery Educators are featured and quoted, and the information in the article is sure to excite others to join this great networking group we all call the DEN! Read the article by clicking HERE.

Great job, DEN!

It’s been a couple of days since  I blogged. That’s because we’ve been so busy with activities and working on our projects. Yesterday, we got to go to a nice restaurant, Sequoia, near Georgetown, then we took an evening tour of Washington, DC. It was incredible seeing the monuments lit up with the moon to the side. The picture is of the entire group of us on the steps near Sequoia.

Today, we had a nearly free day of working on our projects. Early in the morning, I went with a group of people to Discovery studios where we got to work in front of a real green screen. It’ll be great to see all the great films and pictures that come from all of the studio time today.  The rest of the day was devoted to working on our projects until we were taken to the Discovery HD Theater for a special screening on a new BBC show. I will not give the specifics, but it looks like a great show!

Tomorrow, we will present our projects and be finished with this great week of collaboration, connection, and learning. Next week there will be another group of twice as many educators descending on Silver Spring. What will  they have to share? Stay tuned!

I’m sitting in a very active room full of educators on Day 3 of the DEN LC National Institute in Silver Spring, Maryland. Steve Dembo is the keynote speaker this morning. I’m embedding the live blog again today. It seemed to work great - if you can’t join the live session you can still read the archive from this post! CoverItLive is a great tool, although I’m thinking that, as a presenter, it’s going to take some getting used to because my audience will be looking like they aren’t paying attention as they quickly blog on the spot!

If you’d like to see the live blogs from other sessions yesterday, hop over to the Pennsylvania DEN blog (or visit other state blogs as well), and you’ll find the blogs from several sessions.

One of the things I have always said about the DEN is that when I’m given just 10 minutes in a room with DEN members, I come away with more valuable information and useful tools than I ever do in an entire day of professional development. Day 2 at the DEN LC National Institute proved to be an entire day of professional development that gave me the number of tools and ideas from those 10 minutes times 20. I am on overload! My list of tech tools to get is growing, my store of knowledge to apply to my lessons has increased, and I’m so excited to be here for a few more days!

I will dole out the ideas one or two at a time over the next few weeks so you won’t have to be overwhelmed as well. The tool I’m going to highlight today was one I learned about in Mike Bryant’s breakout session on Google Earth. It doesn’t really have a lot to do with Google Earth, but it is a fantastic tool that I’m going to keep my eye out for. It is called Eye-Fi. If you have a digital camera that uses an SD card, then this little gadget will work for you. Eye-Fi is an SD card that replaces your current card. When installed in your camera, it can automatically send any pictures you take to a Flickr, Picasa, or any other web-based picture storage account (you set it all up and tell it what to do). If you purchase one that has the geo-tagging feature, it can also automatically store the location in which the picture was taken and it is viewable in Google Earth.

The cost of these little 2 gig cards varies from $80 to $130 depending on whether you get one that geo-tags. As Mike Bryant said, “Imagine what the price will be next year”, speaking of the tendency of technology gadgets to drop in price over time. Put this on your “watch” list. I used Mike’s laptop yesterday afternoon during a presentation and got to see all the pictures he was taking throughout the institute downloading on to his computer as he took them. This is a really cool technology and one that has so many potential uses in both our personal and professional lives!

For those of you who are sitting at home, wishing you were here, Jennifer Dorman (cliotech) is live blogging Hall Davidson’s keynote this morning. You can watch the live feed here (and I think you’ll be able to see it later, as well). This is my first time embedding a live blog, so hopefully it will work!