The Discovery Education product development team is constantly looking for ways to make Discovery Education streaming better and better.
And you guys play an important role in the direction of our site! Along that vein our Product Development team is hosting a Focus Group Webinar tomorrow evening at 5pm EST. It will be open to teachers from around the country. During the webinar they’ll be seeking feedback on a redesign of the My DE page.
So if you would like to provide feedback to the team and leave your stamp on the new page, please sign up for the webinar and give us your two cents!
To keep it manageable we’re going to tap the roster at 20.
To sign up all you have to do is click here and follow the registration steps. As always - thank you so much for your support!
This is such a great tip I wanted to post it here for everyone to see.
but it can be a lot of fun to do! Here’s a quick tip that is super cool.
- Find any image from the site - my favorite image is called “Federal Troops at Rest”
- Once you find the image, and it is displayed in the blue media player box, open
up a program like Word or Powerpoint
- Minimize that program.
- Then go back to your DE streaming image, left-click on the image inside the blue box and simply drag (be careful to not let go of your mouse button) the image into your Word or Powerpoint program.
- Once the Word or Powerpoint program opens on your screen, move your mouse up into your Word doc or PowerPoint slide until the cursor turns into a plus symbol
- Then let go of your mouse.
- Give it a second and you will soon see your image embedded into your Word or Powerpoint slide.
Pretty cool right?!? I love this trick!
I learned about this handy tool from a fellow STAR DEN member Fred Delventhal aka Riptide Furse. iSpeech allows you to “read with your ears”. iSpeech will convert text to speech with a click of a mouse for free and it doesn’t use one of those bad computer voices. There’s no software to download and the results can be embedded on a blog or webpage. iSpeech supports the following file and webpage formats: Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe Acrobat, Rich Text File, Blogs, RSS news feeds, hypertext markup language (DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, XLS, XLSX, PDF, RTF, HTML). If you do put in a blog address it will convert everything including headings and items in the sidebars. I would suggest that you copy and past only the text you want converted. This isn’t just a tool for teachers, think how this could simplify research for struggling readers. I’m even going to put a link to iSpeech on my blog. Check out iSpeech and let us know how it works for you.
Welcome to Share the Skies, the nation’s first statewide initiative that enables students and teachers to study astronomy in real time during the daytime without leaving the classroom. This innovative project was developed by the Virginia Department of Education, New Mexico Skies, Software Bisque, and Virginia Tech’s Institute for Connecting Science Research to the Classroom. It enables Virginia students to access and control research-grade telescopes to explore Australia’s night skies via the Internet. Students use CCD (charge-coupled device) imaging techniques to capture digital images of deep space for further study.
At the most fundamental level, this project is intended to inspire children and those who teach them. Specifically, the program
- Enables students to study astronomy in real time during the daytime
- Helps students develop essential skills in science, mathematics, computer science, and communications
- Allows students to learn science by doing science
- Offers experiences that encourage students to consider careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics
- Leverages Virginia’s existing technical infrastructure to deliver high-quality learning experiences
- Provides teachers with effective tools to improve instruction
The Share the Skies Web site provides students and teachers with access to the Internet telescope, sky maps, an image gallery, and other resources. No additional hardware or software is required, meaning that classroom computers instantly can access the program and control the telescope.
Text Taken from the Share the Skies Site
Posted on November 3, 2008 in
Resources by Heather Hurley
This application sums up what I love about Web 2.0, simple, useful and oh so cute. How can you not want to use an application called Shrink O’Matic. This program has solved a major dilemma for me. If you’re like me you probably have uploaded lots of avatar pictures. It seems that every site wants a different dimension. Usually I open up some photo editing software and start playing (Manipulating graphics is not my area of expertise). Shrink O’Matic has solved this problem for me.
Shrink O’Matic is an Adobe AIR application to easily (batch) resize (shrink) images. It handles JPGs, GIFs and PNGs. Adobe Air is a plug in that allow internet applications to deploy and run on the desktop across operating systems.
Simply drag and drop images and they’ll be resized as you wish! Options allow you to choose the output sizes, names and formats. It really is as simple as the screen shot below indicates. Try and it out and let us know what you think.
From the DEN National Blog:
Join us in-person, online or both, on Saturday, October 25th for the DEN Virtual Conference.
Registration is now open!
The DEN Virtual Conference features an incredible lineup of online presentations including “Power Up Your Professional Learning Network” by STAR Discovery Educator Jennifer Dorman. Check out all of the sessions here.
You can register to attend virtually or join us at one of 17 in-person events hosted by the DEN Leadership Councils.
Either way, you will learn powerful ways to integrate digital media and Web 2.0 tools into your instruction as well as discover an abundance of resources to expand your own personal learning network.
Share the news with your colleagues by sending them the DEN Virtual Conference Flyer.
For more information, visit: http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/fall-virtual-conference
Microsoft works collaboratively with educators across Higher Education and K-12 to provide software plus services aimed at enhancing the learning environment and streamlining the operations of institutions.
We’ve recently launched a new website that is your resource for live and recorded webcasts, podcasts, and other valuable information to gain insights into how Microsoft and Microsoft Partner solutions can help enable learning in the 21st century. There are topics for every audience from K-12 to Higher Education and from Teachers and Faculty to IT staff.
Available Series and Additional Resources
- Solutions for Teaching and Learning Webcast Series
- Solutions for Managing Education Institutions Webcast Series
- Solutions for Securing and Managing IT Infrastructure Webcast Series
- Microsoft Live@edu Webcast Series
- What’s New at Microsoft Community Clip Series
- Links to other Valuable Resources like Special Offers and Resource Pages
- Links to Education Blogs
Visit www.educationwebcasts.com to learn more!
Posted on October 9, 2008 in
Resources by Heather Hurley
Find More Web 2.0 Resources?
I thought for this week’s posting I would provide you with several places where you can find some great Web 2.0 resources. They change every day and it’s always helpful to have sites to refer to. If you find a particular tool helpful, would like to share a success story or know of other Web 2.0 sites please let us know in the comments section.
The Web 2.0 Guru Wiki - A wiki to assist teachers and other professionals with the tools and strategies to effectively and meaningfully implement them into current practices.
Go 2 Web 2.0 - A comprehensive index of logos of the latest web 2.0 sites, applications and services.
Kathy Schrock’s Web 2.0 Resource Page - A list of no-cost Web 2.0 sites that are available for teachers to evaluate.
Web 2.0 Diigo Group - A group that discusses everything Web 2.0.
Web 2.0 Tools That Work Wiki - This wiki is an information resource as well as an interactive space where readers can add their own insights and strategies.
Web 2.0 Tools for Effective Teaching Slide Space - A that explores the use of web 2.0 applications in teaching and learning in secondary education.
I was browsing resources that I found on TeachersFirst and came across this cool bookmaking tool. Tikatok “is where kids transform their imaginations into stories – and publish those stories into books.” Kid’s can write a story, illustrate it and order actually hard copies of the book. There’s no cost to join the site and if parents want a printed copy, it can be purchased in hardcover or paperback for about $20.00.
Parents can register for an account and then create accounts for their children, but Tikatok also has an educator section that explains the value of storytelling. To register as a teacher visit the login page and use the teacher registration form. When you register as a teacher you can create accounts for the class that will use Tikatok. If you are planning to use Tikatok in multiple classes, you can create separate sections for each class from your Teacher’s Dashboard. There does seem to be a slight glitch when you register. After submitting it goes to a blank page. If you reload the page it says that your username is taken. Don’t redo the form. Go to your email and find the confirmation email. I kept redoing the form and I had 10 confirmation emails in my inbox. Once your confirm your registration then you can give your students the temporary username and password you set up and have them create an account.
With Tikatok students can write their story and upload their illustrations. What I like is that students can draw pictures and then scan them in. When the book is complete, you can share it by email, linking to it or embedding it in your blog or website. Check out the book I created using images from the DEN LC Institute. One note about embedding. If you want the codes to be active longer than 30 days, then you must make the books viewable by anyone.
Have you ever wanted a giant poster of a great photo? If you answered yes to this question, then you are probably familiar with how expensive it is. For example at Snapfish a 16×20 poster will cost you $14.99, that’s a lot of money. As an educator I am always looking for ways to find free resources that can help me in my job.
I came across Block Posters while browsing thorough Stephanie Affield’s Diigo links. Stephanie is the MO DEN LC Chair.
Block Posters tag line is: create any size wall posters from any size images
Totally Free To Use!
You can create posters in three easy steps. 1. Choose a photo 2. Decide on the size 3. Download and print the PDF. Check out this Jing to see how easy it really is. Be sure to check out the gallery to see what people have done.
Enjoy!
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