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Connecting to a Global Community of Educators
Matt’s Media Tips 10-29
A Hauntingly Good Edition
With Halloween just around the corner, and Hurricane Sandy threatening to knock on our door in MD, I thought I would highlight some of the not-so-scary things that I learned at the recent Discovery Educator Network Fall Virtual Conference. So, without further ado, here are my top five favorite treats! Treat #1 If you didn’t get a chance to attend any or all of these sessions check out this link to the archives. By following this link you’ll will find a whole host of goodies to put in your bag including: presentation slides, videos, and more. http:// www.discoveryeducation.com/DEN/virtcon2012/index.cfm If you clicked on the link above then you might be feeling a little spooked. Much like our Halloween bowl last year you might be thinking man that’s a lot of sweet stuff...how am I going to get through all of it? Well, unlike my family’s Halloween candy, it is archived and is ready and waiting for you. I also combed some of these sessions to highlight a few of the tasty morsels. You’ll find them listed in the treats 2-5. Treat #2 Thank you Dave Tchozewski for your wonderful web 2.0 presentation, Great, But Lesser Known, Web 2.0 Tools. During Dave’s presentation he highlights many great tools with nice and easy instructions and implementation ideas. Here are three of my personal favorites: 1. www.corkboard.me. After a simple set up you can use this free interactive sticky note site as a tool for brainstorming, spelling exercises, exit tickets or whatever your imagination dictates. 2. http://drawonthe.net/. This is a collaborative drawing website. I like that you can collaboratively annotate other websites. With this in mind you could use this tool to identify different vocabulary words, key ideas/concepts, and more. You could also try comparing prices on Amazon or Supermarkets (see Dave’s example) or use this tool to find similarities and differences in the candidates’ debate transcripts! 3. http://e.ggtimer.com/ Ever need a count down timer for your activities? This free site lets you create a custom egg timer.
Treat #3 Thank you Karen Ogen for your magnificent mobile presentation, iStoryTelling K-8 presentation. During Karen’s presentation she highlights how you can use the iPad/iPhone to help students write and create stories. Here are my three personal favorites: 1. Storywheel (Free) As Karen notes, this is a great tool for pre-writing exercises. Players record a story by spinning the wheel to get a picture, and then narrate a portion of the story. When done, they can listen to your story with animated pictures. 2. Morfo (Free) and Facetalk ($.99) Make your pictures come to life. Just like Blabberize you can animate the picture with movement and your voice. 3. iMotion HD (Free). This app helps you create HD (720p) stop-motion movies. You can export to iTunes, social media, and more. As Karen states, it is easy to import your work into iMovie to add music and special effects. Thanks for the ideas and tips Karen! Treat #4 Thank you Kathy Cassidy for your awesome Primary Digital Portfolios presentation. During Kathy’s presentation she highlights how primary students, too, can have digital portfolios that allow them to reflect and record their learning. I loved how Kathy’s students present their three favorite pieces of work to parents during Student-Led Conferences. I also enjoyed how Kathy built upon the idea of leaving a good digital footprint by building a sense of a connected community among her students. To see examples of Kathy and her students’ work follow this link: http://primaryportfolios.wikispaces.com. Great work Kathy! Treat #5 This is really more of a reminder to check out the fantastic keynotes that were delivered during the day. Richard Byrne’s 10 Common Challenges We All Face, Dan Rothstein’s The Simplest and Most Powerful Learning Technology: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions, and Dennis Grice’s Finding Your Spark, presentations are guaranteed to stuff your idea bag full of good knowledge and leave you inspired to learn even more. Thank you all of sharing your information with us! And speaking of being inspired...Discovery Education is about to celebrate something huge with you all very soon! Discovery Education will soon be delivering our 500 millionth digital learning resource to a classroom near you. In schools across the globe, students and teachers are experiencing moments of transformation as they use Discovery Education's robust offering of digital videos, interactive techbooks, and virtual labs to make learning come alive. Help us count up to 500 million and celebrate this milestone by sharing what Discovery Education's digital resources have meant to you and your students. Tell us about how digital learning is transforming your classroom today! Don't forget to keep integrating Discovery Education’s vast digital media resources into your classroom. The educator or student who downloads the 500 millionth object will win a 1-day Discovery Education video shoot for their school and 1 free year of Discovery Education Streaming Plus. Click here for contest rules.
Discovery Education Webinar Schedule
I learned about this app from David Fisher during his Discovery Educator Network Fall Virt Con presentation, Hi I’m David and I’m an APPoholic!
Dates
Time (EST)
11/5
7pm 8pm
Putting the E in STEM with the Discovery Education Science Techbook Part 2: Find out about the "Engineer Lab: Materials Tool" and "Engineer Lab: Data/Graph Tool" as well as instructional strategies for using these tools to help students develop key process skills.
11/5
7pm 8pm
Discovery Education STREAMING 101: The webinar begins with the basics (logins and passwords) and moves quickly through searches, the Teacher Center and Builders, incorporating digital content with web 2.0 tools, and classroom building through our online organizational tools.
11/6
7pm 8pm
7 Simple Ways You Can Change the World (and your classroom): From unplugging computers over the weekends to going paperless, we have tips to share. In this webinar, we’ll show you how to create a FREE Google site for your classroom. We’ll share the free resources on the Siemens We Can Change the World website.
11/7
1pm 2pm
Game On! A Webinar for Students! In this webinar, students will hear from 10th grade game designer Robert Nay, named one of the top kid entrepreneurs to watch. Join us as he shares his story and his insights into the game design process. Explore game design so you can ultimately build and share original games.
11/8
4pm 5pm
Techbook Admin Webinar: This training will cover: Navigation of the My Admin Site, Managing User Accounts (students and teachers), Managing Student Access, Running Usage Reports.
11/8
7pm 8pm
What’s in your Digital Tackle Box? Building a Multimedia Presentation: Using one of the new model lessons on the Explore the Blue website, we?ll show you how to build a media-infused, nonlinear presentation that hooks your students so you can reel them into the content. Tools to be covered include PowerPoint and Prezi.
If you have students creating movies or speeches and those students need to refer to a script than this free tool is for you!
i-Prompt Pro By OurApps4U Limited
From their iTunes page: i-Prompt Pro is a professional tele-prompting software for your iPad. Use your Apple iPad as a professional teleprompter for location reporting, corporate video productions, info-mercials, video blogs, podcasts and all types of public event speaking. FEATURES: Smooth Scrolling – in both landscape or portrait modes, with mirrored or standard text alignments. Fast Script Download to i-Prompt software via simple email or document cut and paste text copying. Instant Script Editing and Timing – use iPrompt’s in-built text editor for those last minute changes to content and timing.
Questions/Comments? I’d love to hear from you email me at matt_monjan@discovery.com or Tweet me at @monjan
Click here for the free IOS app download
What is a DEN Star Member? The Discovery Educator Network (DEN) is a global community of educators passionate about teaching with digital media, sharing resources, collaborating, and networking. With over 100,000 members providing professional development to over 600,000 educators worldwide, the DEN connects teachers both on-line and in-person. Discovery Educators have exclusive access to a wide range of resources, professional development activities, networking opportunities, exclusive Discovery Educator events and more. Find out how you can be part of this dynamic and supportive community. Become a DEN Star today!
Link
Miss a week? Catch back up here! 2012-2013 School Year Archives 10/22/2012 Get Your Game On! Explore how to use 9/10/2012 In-the-know about Infographics. This edition highlights the new the Discovery Education games to 2012 election material within DE. It engage students. Robert Nay a 10th also dives into different ways that grade game designer will share his story you and your students can and his insights into the game design evaluate and explain data by process. Finally, we'll check out examining three different sites that Aurasma, a free augmented reality app create infographics. Sock that works on both Droid and IOS Puppets, an iPad app that is devices. animated by your voice, is also 9/4/2012 explored. 10/15/2012 The Digital Decoder Part two of two explores how to use Discovery Opening up Closed Captions. Education and six other digital Check out all of the new and resources to help students predict, reenhanced ways to stream state, and make connections to the text captioned content. We’ll also that they are reading. We'll also explore continue to explore the back-toa free mobile app called Fotobabble school webinars and play with that lets add narration to your pictures. EasyBib, an Android and iPad app 10/8/2012 The Digital Decoder. Part one of a two that makes citing reference part series that explores how to use 8/27/2012 material a breeze. digital resources to assist struggling Back to School Review. Check out readers. We’ll also explore Audioboo, some of the major enhancements a free mobile app that turns your mobile made to Discovery Education over device into a roaming podcasting the summer. We'll give you a machine chance to weigh in, showcase a 10/1/2012 Getting Quizzy With It. Everything you new back to school webinar series ever wanted to know about creating a and highlight Nearpod, a very cool Discovery Education Quiz and more classroom mobile app. including an easy step-by-step guide for embedding Web 2.0 content into a Quiz! We’ll explore a unique mobile app called Stack the States as well. 9/24/2012 Five free tools from DE plus one that’s too cool for school. We’ll also explore links to even more free resources and then play with a free mobile app, Sketch Nation Studio, that provides a simple game design/creation platform. Downloading Closed Captions Explore 9/17/2012 how to download closed captioned files and manipulate their text on both a PC and Mac. We'll also examine the TechChef4U app that links to many education apps! Finally, in this edition, I provide links to the Best of Matt's Tips and Tricks webinar resources.
Miss a week? Catch back up here! 2011-2012 Archives 7/19/2012
Sneak peek at the back to school enhancements. Roadshow app.
6/11/2012
Fun things to do over the summer with technology and media. Mustacheme app is featured.
5/21/2012
The ins and outs of Digital Storytelling. Digital Storytelling Web 2.0 presentation and apps
5/14/2012
Who Knew We Had News? Find an additional set of free Discovery News videos, the Video Yearbook, video almanac, and great webinar information. Roadshow App for playing back videos on-demand is reviewed.
5/7/2012
4/30/2012
4/23/2012
My Five Favorite Summer Resources. We explore five free interactive sites that parents, students, and teachers can use over the summer. We’ll also explore a free translation app for mobile devices. Getting Your Game On. Finding great games, simulations and more within Discovery Education. Back-toSchool Sneak Peek Webinars announced. Futaba Classroom Games for Kids iPad app explored. Getting the Point with PowerPoint and Keynote. Learn how to trim audio & video in PPT and save both PPT & Keynote presentations as images to embed in Web 2.0 sites. 2 Screens and Joinme mobile presentation apps explored.
4/16/2012
It’s all about the Theme. We’ll explore several different ways to find unique thematic content. Three most voted upon stories revealed. Studyblue mobile flashcard app highlighted
4/9/2012
Scratch and Pop. Six-Word Story finalists revealed. Links between Discovery Education and
4/2/2012
3/26/2012
3/19/2012
3/12/2012
2/27/2012
Scratch.mit.edu, Popplet.com and EduTechr mobile app explored.
1/18/2012
Mi Content es Su Content. Bookmarking and sharing your Discovery Education content across your school and district, two great contests, and two text-to-sign mobile apps
In a Class of Their Own Setting up Discovery Education Classrooms, Discovery Education Live Webinars, Quizlet App.
1/9/2012
Building out the New Year Five of my favorite things you can do with the Discovery Education Builders, Rover App for DE Students
12/19/2011
Special Holiday Edition 13 Tips from Educators around the US and Canada, Videolicious App
12/12/2011
50 Ways to Use Discovery Education Tips and tricks galore iSwifter - Flash for iPads
11/28/2011
What I am Thankful for Building out your PLN Wordspree and Math Acorn Apps
11/14/2011
Things I Stole From the Community DEN Tips, Four really cool tips you can do with Google. TED and Animoto apps
11/7/2011
First Six Weeks Aggregated
11/4/2011
Creating an “iCenter" How to create an ePub using DE videos. Spirit of Innovation Challenge
10/24/2011
Spooky Edition Digital Storytelling, Web 2.0 Piqua City Community Night, Crazy Pumpkin and Halloween Card Creator Apps
10/17/2011
Stick it to IT Collaborative Note Taking Site Educator Spotlight - Jennifer Everett, ToonTastic and PuppetPals Apps
10/3/2011
Opening Up Closed-Captions Closed-Captions for Macs and PCs, 10 FAQs Customer Service Receives
9/26/2011
Common Core, Web 2.0 and DE Three cool sites that integrate nicely with Discovery Education. Administrator Spotlight - Molly Hay!
9/13/2011
Can you Hear what I’m Writing? Embedding an eReader into your Writing Prompts, Getting to know Discovery Education SCIENCE
Can You Picture it? Learn how to create a six-word story using iPiccy.com and Discovery Education. Digital Story Challenge! MeeGenius Audiobook app for mobile devices. Audio Book ‘em Dano. Eight simple steps for creating an audiobook using iTunes and any computer (Mac/PC). Molecules mobile apps. It’s All About The Sharing. Uploading, sharing and accessing your own content within Discovery Discovery Education. Cel.Ly app polling device via any device. Teacher Center Treasure Trove of Resources. Interactive Calendar Atlas, STEM Connect explored. Socrative App (student response).
2/13/2012
Special Valentines Issue - Things I love about Discovery Education. Five Minute Preps, Images,Coaches Eye App
2/6/2012
What did you say? Closed Captioning on an iPad? Getting Closed Captions to play on your iPad, GreenScreens on iPhone/iPad with GreenScreen FX app
1/30/2012
1/23/2012
Let’s Give Them Something To Sing About Differentiated Instruction Using Songs, First Student Media Contest of the Year, ShowMe and Educreations whiteboard apps Meet the Faces of Discovery Education Get up close and personal with the Discovery Education on-air talent, special student webinar series, Story Kit app