Spotlight

Image by kimberlyfaye via Flickr

Image by krossbow via Flickr

I have been at Discovery Headquarters for 3 days and my brain is full! There are new things coming from Discovery and will be public soon. All of my notes from the Discovery workshops are located here on my Discovery Blog: CenterStage at the DEN. Following this day, I will be at the Sidwell Friends School on Sunday for the Constructionist Consortium Day of fun. Having not been there before, I don't quite know what is going to happen, but the folks that went last year had a blast!
Sunday evening NECC begins and my brain will burst open by Monday. Poster sessions, keynotes, BYOL and classroom2.0 sessions everywhere! I have been learning about all of this and even more about iPhone apps everyone is using.
I will post here or give you links to all the exciting and new programs and activities from Washington DC!
PS - I won this stand up last night at the DiscoveryEducation get together here at Discovery1.

Did you know:
“From 1948 to 2008 NBC, ABC, CBS broadcast more than one million hours of programming. In the past 6 months, individuals posted more than a million hours of original video on YouTube alone-more than the networks broadcast in the previous 60 years combined”

The above quote from ISTE magazine Learning & Leading with Technology provides some useful tips for teachers to consider when adding a video project to their curriculum. Everyday, people carry devices that can be used to document the world around them with cameras, or movie recorders. In addition, they can watch assigned videos on these small devices anywhere, anytime! Today's student had the tech savvy and hardware to create a short video anywhere, anytime and we need to provide some educational foundation to their process.

A great example of using video, from the article mentions Abbott and Costello's debate over how to share 29 donuts with 7 people fairly. This B&W video clip might be just the right hook for starting a math lesson on fractions. Finding the right clip to enhance you lesson is time consuming, but there are hundreds of sites that provide this information.

Additionally, not everyone is a creator of video, so providing the right snippit of learning material can help students with visualization of concepts of science, cultures of the world, geography, or the motion of sport. You should know by now what wonderful resources DiscoveryEduation streaming provides for classrooms.

Try using a 1 minute video to introduce a concept or connection to your lesson.




Article and photo from Learning & Leading with Technology ISTE June/July 2009 magazine p.30

Today I begin to blog on my DiscoveryEduction teacher blog. Most of the information will be cross posted to both locations. It is too hard to come up with different information for both places. I do come across a lot of great resources, so they will be listed on each site. I do this because I have been invited to help RJ Stangherlin with the PA DEN blog. Last year it was run by Jen Dorman who pushed it right to the top with the first DENny Award for a state blog. There is a log of pressure (self inflicted of course) to continue this as a source of good information for everyone. So stop by and see what is new on the PA DEN blog. If you have a suggestion, pass it along.