Today is day one of the Leadership Council Institute at One Discovery Place in Silver Spring, MD. It is great to see so many familiar faces, both from last year’s institute and from photos of others on blogs and webpages.
We were given our first task today – to create a 60 second video about how awesome the DEN is. During this time we connected with other leadership council members from each
region, took a tour of One Place with our most excellent tour guide: Dennis, and made an hour fly by by creating some fun! I’m sure the videos will be posted soon so everyone can take a look at them.
The networking, new faces, old acquaintances, food and entertainment made for a fantastic first day.
What do you get when you add 20,000 DEstreaming images ,Gimp and Dennis Swain? 
You get a fantastic DEN webinar (hosted by none other than the northeast’s own Dennis Swain)full of practical, easy and fun tips for using images from DEstreaming.
Dennis showed the webinar participants how to search for, choose the correct size for your project and how to edit the photo chose with Gimp. Gimp is a photo editing software you can download for FREE. You can find it at http://www.gimp.org/.
Gimp can be used to easily crop this photo of the Roosevelt Bridge.
Dennis didn’t forget the Writing Prompt Builder in DEstreaming either. He showed us step by step how to incorporate one of those 20,000 images into a writing prompt: a simple way to incorporate technology media into your classroom.
Thanks for your expertise, Dennis!
And anyone else that would like to participate.
Thanks to Riptide at AKA Riptide Furse, I’m going to the moon and so can you! Join NASA’s trip to the moon by adding your name to a list that will fly with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
You can even print a document for you (and your students) with a name and post them in your classroom.
Visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/main/index.html for details.
How many STARs can we send along?
This post has brought a chuckle to many and I’m just noticing it today. Here’s a cross post from Brad O’Donnell in PA.
Top Ten Tips for the Beginning Technology Integrator
10. If there is a sale on extension cords at WalMart, pick one up. You’ll need one soon.
9. If you feel completely confused and overwhelmed, ask your students for help. If that doesn’t work,settle for the professional IT staff.
8. Keep a supply of chocolate on hand at all times for emergency situations.
7. Don’t ever say, “Wow! This is going pretty smoothly!” during a lesson integrating technology.
6. Your calculator with the really BIG numbers does not count as you integrating technology.
5. Do not physically raise your hand during a webinar. No one can see you and you’ll never be called on.
4. Remove any hammers from your classroom before integrating technology.
3. The term “User’s Guide” often offers no guidance on how to use something.
2. Using Google Earth to show your class where you live might not be the greatest anticipatory set for your lesson. Especially if there is furious note-taking.
1. Be prepared for a Keystone workshop. You may have severe laptop envy.
Am I glad Riptide’s April Fools day music post was a joke! I’ve been counting on Fred’s creations to help me create a library of music for my colleagues to use in projects and in upcoming Podcast workshops this summer.
Why don’t YOU join the fun? Riptide needs names for his music files. Anyone can play. If you are reading this blog, take a gander on over to his at http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/fred_delventhal1/category/366-days-of-
music/, select the music clips that don’t yet have names, give a listen and leave a name for the music clip by leaving a comment. Get your students involved too. This would be a great start to creative art and music classes!
Thanks to AKA Riptide Furse and Land’s End, here is a chance for your students to nominate their favorite teacher by writing an essay and submitting it to Land’s End. 
Visit Land’s End Teacher’s Light the Way Awards for more information.
Remember: Teacher Appreciation Day is May 6.
On Saturday, Feb. 2, Schenectady was host for an in person event as part of the first DEN Virtual Conference. The presentations were fantastic (as always) the food was great, the people were terrific (both in person and in cyberspace) and,of course, the sharing and learning couldn’t be beat. Below are some blog posts where you can read all about the days events.
A huge thank you to the Discovery family for an awesome Saturday. I would also like to thank my colleagues and their guests for attending the event in Schenectady. And a HUGE thank you to Sal DeAngelo for assisting with the event and taking photos of this spectacular opportunity.
Blogs about the DEN Virtual Conference:
Pennsylvania DEN
Susan Dornberg’s Blog
Maine DEN
What an opportunity! On Saturday, February 2, Discovery Education will be hosting its first ever Discovery Educator Network Virtual Conference!
During this unique professional development experience you will connect with educators 
across the country either in person or online. If you would like to attend in person, the conference will be located in many venues across the state, but in my neck of the woods it will be held at Schenectady High School . If you would like to attend online, you can do so anywhere there is an Internet connection.
Register Here for the event either online or in person, and to find out where there is an in person venue near you.
For more information about the in person event in Schenectady, NY click here virtual-conference-flier-schenectady.pdf
Sessions:
Keynote – “Lost in Translation” presented by Lance Rougeux Times: 9-10 am EST / 8-9 am CST/ 11-12 PST
How many of your students are bilingual? An easy way to find out is through a simple math formula. Take the number of students in your classroom and multiply it by one. There’s your answer. All students today are bilingual and d 4n tongue dey knO so weL L%kz fune & cn b kind of hard 2 rED, @ lEst 4 adults. So how do we meet the needs of our students when we’re the second language learners in the classroom? In this kickoff session, we’ll take a look at ways we can use media and other technologies to help get us up to speed and speaking their language.
Keynote – “Revenge of the Digital Immigrants: Teaching with Media Technology”presented by Hall Davidson Times: 12-1 EST/ 11-12 CST/ 9-10 PST
What veteran teachers suspected the research has finally proved: 21st Century students are different. With different attention spans, higher IQ test scores, and social networks, their sophistication comes earlier—with a different skill set. There is a silver lining: We can teach this “New Brain” more effectively, more efficiently, more engagingly. We have the technology! Media has evolved and education must evolve to match.
“50 Ways to Spin a Digital Story” presented bySteve Dembo Times: 1 -2 EST/ 12-1 CST/ 10-11 PST
An in-depth overview of the digital media available in Discovery Education Streaming and 50 different ways to tell digital stories using it. DE Streaming provides your classroom access to thousands of videos, images and audio clips. Learn how to integrate them into cutting edge Web 2.0 sites to make your students’ digital stories come alive!
It’s going to be GREAT!
Register Now!
Fred Delventhal, AKA Riptide Furse, is creating and posting a music clip each day of this year.
“I figured I would challenge myself and try to use music producing software (I’m not a musician or composer) to create music pieces and put them up here for others to freely use. These are licensed for anyone to use under Creative Commons with attribution. Please let me know if you like a song and/or use it in a project. I can try to take requests as well. If you would like to see a certain style or feel of a song I can make an attempt at creating a song but make no promises.”
Visit Fred’s DEN blog at http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/fred_delventhal1/category/366-days-of-music/ to begin creating a library of your own of music files.
You can also view Fred’s blog for an update of what’s going on in Second Life.
Thanks, Fred.
