Discovery Education-A Techy Teachers Dream for Content and PD!

Hello friends! I hadn't realized that it has been so very long since I posted an update on my adventures! Please forgive me. I've been so very busy learning about new ways of integrating technology, building my PLN on twitter (awesome), and managing my Facebook page, that I knew I was leaving something out.

I had the pleasure of attending the Discovery Education Day of Learning at my local ISD a few weeks back. Following this I attended DEN Spring VirtCon 2013. There was a tremendous amount of very useful information presented by amazing presenters! Learning about how others use technology in their classrooms was the best part. Second best was participating in a conference (in my PJ's) that had over 2400 people attending! Today I'd like to briefly share some of the information I learned during these Discovery Education Network learning days. There is so much to cover that my following blog posts will discuss this information in more detail.

Discovery Education Day of Learning

Teachers at my school (including myself) have, for the most part, used our Discovery Streaming accounts to find engaging science and social studies videos for our students to watch within a specific lesson or at inside recess time. Our tech PLC, our Kindergarten teachers, and our Library Media Specialist learned that Discovery Education services provide SO MUCH MORE than just videos! We learned how to dig deep within the Discovery Education website to find images files, sound bytes, lesson plans, professional development and more! It was amazing! We even used images from DE to create a PhotoPeach slideshow (great web 2.0 tool). One of our teachers brought this idea back to her 2nd grade students. They used images to create a PhotoPeach about matter. They had a great time, were engaged in their learning, and went deeper within the content than they might have otherwise. Please check back in the coming days/weeks for some instructional photos and examples of the resources to be found within this gem of a site!

DEN Spring VirtCon 2013

As I said above, over 2400 people gathered in F2F and virtual meetings to attend this Virtual Conference (VirtCon). There were many different sessions that one could attend and three keynote speakers. It was so difficult to choose what sessions to attend! Thankfully ALL of the sessions are video archived here. I attended the following sessions:

• Opening Keynote: Connecting Classroom & Community with Project Based Learning (PBL) by Susie Boss
• Digital Storybooks for Digital Kids by Mary Carole Strother (tech difficulties, but I have a website to direct you to)
• Globalizing Gen Z through Social Media and Web Tools by Kathy Beck
• Midday Keynote: Imagining Future Friendly Schools: Technology, Global Citizenship, and Student Voice by Michael Furdyk
• Connected from the Start: Global Learning in the Elementary by Kathy Cassidy
• iPads for Projects with Discovery Media by Karen Ogen
• Closing Keynote: Selling the 7 "C's" of Connections by Jennifer Wagner

Believe me, each of these sessions deserve a blog post of their own. I won't even come close to doing any of these presenters justice by briefly going over what I learned. It was so worth it to attend. I hear there is a Fall VirtCon too...you can bet I'll be there! Will you?

Again, please check back in the coming days/weeks to see what I have to share. If you have a chance check out the archived video sessions from the VirtCon. You won't be disappointed!

Upcoming...

In the days ahead, besides keeping my promise to elaborate on the DE learning I've been part of, I will be attending A Day of Learning: iPads on SimpleK12's website on Saturday, May 4, 2013. I'll also be traveling to Boyne City Elementary to tour their school and see how the teachers their implement 1:1 iPads. I'm so excited!