Discovery Streaming on the iPad

Here is a link to the Discovery Education Streaming portal available on the iPad through the Safari browser. I really believe that having this available will inspire any students lucky enough to have access to an iPad to extend their learning outside the classroom.

http://discoveryeducation.com/ipad/

Of course, Discovery Education Streaming is also avaliable on their home computers and laptops, as well. Things are in place, and soon all of our students will have the ability to log into their own personal learning center at Discovery Education.

http://www.discoveryeducation.com/

Playing with the iPad

Edited on October 16, 2010. Duh! iPad has a built-in microphone - I should have known that. I played with an app on the iPad where I talked to an animal, and he repeated what I said. Cute - but useful??? Then, our media specialist showed me a free app - dragon dictation - you click on the red record button and speak, and when you hit done, what you said is translated into text which you can edit - and then email, tweet, blog, etc. Now, that is very exciting and very useful! I could almost live without the camera.



I am so excited.I got to borrow an iPad for the weekend. Previous to this opportunity, I wasn't too keen on the iPad. It didn't support Adobe Flash.I was disappointed that I couldn't view my live webinars from Classroom 2.0, which are delivered through the wonderful Elluminate platform. That kind of soured me. However, after playing with all the other wonderful features, I'm becoming a convert. First of all, I found that some of the archived sessions of Classroom 2.0 webinars have been recorded and are available in Vimeo. The clarity of the chat and slides was great. I just read that Discovery Streaming is adapting so delivery of content on iPad will be possible. I was able to stream NPR live as well as listen to archived sessions. I looked at some of my videos I uploaded to YouTube, and the clarity full-screen was awesome. The iPad is very easy to hold. I love the keypad-so much easier than my iPhone. Google apps editing is coming. The fact that I can sit in my backyard and update my blog is awesome!Finally,I can't believe how great the battery life is. Is this going to revolutionize education? It is certainly going to help.It's a natural for kids. Actually, they do great on the small screens of iPods and iPhones. If the new generation of iPad gives me a microphone  and a camera so I can participate in conversations online and take and store pictures,I'll definitely find a way to get one. With G3 I'd give up my iPhone and use the pad.

Labor Day 2010

Well, Labor Day is nearly over, and it's been a very nice weekend. We have been back to school for an entire week, if you count the professional day on Monday. It seems as if we never left. Everything went quite smoothly, and we are fired up for another leaning adventure.
Anyway, I was looking at some of my  favorite blogs this evening and happened to click on Bob Sprankle's blog. He is a computer technology integration specialist at the elementary school in Wells, Maine. He was one of the main motivators I had for getting involved in developing a Personal Learning Network through webcasts, Twitter, and blogs.
His most recent post was about his "Summer at Yale." He hadn't actually been in New Haven, but he had found a whole course offered free from iTunesU on the Civil War taught by Yale Professor David Blight. Bob had downloaded the lectures and was able to listen to them at his convenience. Bob blogs: " All summer long, I mowed the grass with Prof. Blight. Took long walks with Prof. Blight. Went jogging with Prof. Blight. Drove to the beach with Prof. Blight. Most of the time, when one hour’s program ended, I went right into the next lecture, not having to wait for days as his students had to do when it unfolded in “real time.”

Bob offered a workshop on podcasting at a conference this summer, and he said most of the attendees of his session said their best "take-away" was the information on iTunesU.
Hence, I decided to share it in my blog. I hope someone discovers or revisits this resource as a result of this post. Happy Learning!!!!!
http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/

It's All in the Mindset

Blogging is not easy for me. I read other educator's blogs, and I'm impressed by their deep and philosophical posts. Compared to them, my posts are rather shallow. I tend to report on things I've learned from those other teachers instead of waxing eloquent with my own thoughts. Oh, well - that's not my style. I do hope that the links I mention in my blog are helpful to others. Not many people leave comments, and it gets kind of discouraging thinking I'm writing for an audience of one - me. However, I do have a traffic reporter, and I know that at least 20 or 30 people are looking in a week's or maybe a month's time. I guess I'll have to be content with that. I am of the growth mindset, so I'm willing to take a chance and keep this blog going, if for no other reason than to stretch my own learning. That leads into the title of this post.
This evening I tuned into the Classroom 2.0-Future of Education webinar series. At least once a week Steve Hargadon interviews a person of note who has written a book on the changing face (or not) of our educational system. Tonight he spoke with Carol Dweck - Stanford University professor and social psychologist. Her book, Mindset-The New Psychology of Success - speaks to the "fixed theory of intelligence" and contrasts it with the "growth or incremental" theory of intelligence.
http://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Success-Carol-Dweck/dp/0345472322/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

Basically, she is putting forth advice to parents and teachers to praise kids not because they are so "smart" but because they have worked so hard on whatever project they've completed which is receiving praise. According to Carol Dweck, those folks who have the fixed theory don't do well with failure and are hesitant to take chances. On the other hand, folks who've developed the growth theory deal better with failure and "are likely to continue working hard despite setbacks." There is no harm in praising our children/students as long as we phrase it correctly.
I am embedding a slide share that outlines Ms. Dweck's research findings.

Effort Does Lead To Success (2)

View more presentations from George Hobson.

Here is a link (dropped into the chat during the webinar) to an article in New York Magazine entitled "The Power(and Peril) of Praise. The article is interesting in and of itself, but it is also important to read through the dozens of comments from folks responding to the text. This is truly a collaborative world we live in, and I often learn much more from the commentary as I do from the article.
http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/
 
If you haven't participated in any of the Classroom 2.0 webinars, I highly recommend them. They are a great source of professional development.
Hope everyone enjoys the last remaining days of summer vacation when we have time and energy to engage in these professional development offerings.
Here is the link to the Classroom 2.0 archived webinars:
http://www.learncentral.org/browse/recordings

Experimenting with Glogster EDU

One of the sessions I attended at the Discovery Education Spring Conference in May of 2010 was on using Glogster -an online poster creation tool. It offers both free and subscription plans for educators. Many teachers have had their students create posters in Glogster as alternative web-based projects for topics they are studying in school. Glogster provides a number of tools. Students can add graphics from the site or upload pictures from their local computers. They can add videos from YouTube or upload videos they have created. There are all kinds of fancy boxes where students can type information. There is even a application which allows you to capture your picture and voice (or just audio) from your webcam. You can also attach any type of file which will open in a separate window. There is a paperclip in the bottom-right hand corner of the glog that is the access to uploaded files. I took the embed code from Glogster and will paste it into this post. My glog is just an experiment to showcase some of the options available in creating a poster.



I did have a few problems. When I recorded audio using my webcam, the recorded segment cut off some of my comments. Also, somehow I had marked the glog as private, and I can't seem to find a way to change it to public.

Well, that didn't work so well. The Glog is too wide for the blog. If anyone knows how to fix this, I'd appreciate a comment. I'll paste the web address below, so you can view the blog on the web.


http://carolynstanley.edu.glogster.com/mrs-stanleys-experimental-glog/

Thanks to Paul Bogush- a fellow educator and blogger supreme

I met Paul Bogush through twitter. He is an amazing educator who waxes eloquent on his blog. My posts are much more mundane, but I certainly enjoy reading his blog, and his posts certainly make me think. I saw the word matching gadget from Free Dictionary on one of his classroom blogs and decided to add it to mine.
Here is the link to his  main blog:
http://blogush.edublogs.org/

Enjoy

We educators are so lucky to have the opportunity to reach out and share with other educators. So often, teachers are isolated in their classrooms, locked into 42 to 50 minute periods, with hardly a free moment in the day to connect with other educators in their own schools. Now we have the ability to not only connect with our colleagues in our own school but with dedicated teachers from all over the world. What a great way to learn, be inspired, and reflect on how we can become better teachers ourselves.

Mrs. Miller's Bethany Book Blog

Summer vacation is nearly half over, and I haven't done as much reading as I would like.
I am anxiously awaiting the publication of the third book in the Hunger Games Series, Mockingjay.
I was just looking at Mrs. Miller's book blog, and she had added a couple of new posts. If you are looking for some good titles, read her current posts, and don't forget to click on older posts. She has an intriguing selection of books reviewed there. I hope to read a couple of them, myself.
Hope everyone is enjoying vacation!

http://amitybooktalk.blogspot.com/

Discovery Educator Network Blog-Den Summer School 2010

The wonders of our Discovery Education Streaming subscription just keep getting better and better.

Want some free professional development? This is copied from the DEN site:
"Who ever said summer school isn’t fun? Get ready for your school year with an amazing series of free professional development sessions from the Discovery Educator Network (DEN)!
DEN Summer School begins August 2. Click on any of the session titles below for more information and to register. All sessions start at 11AM ET."
Here is the link: (You may have to log in; I am not sure.)
http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/

Backyard Wonders

It's summer, and I am so grateful to have time to enjoy my backyard. The raspberry bushes started producing berries about 3 weeks earlier than usual, and I picked several quarts of them this season. Now, with the heat, they are pretty dried up. The birds are enjoying raiding the remaining berries, and we've enjoyed such a bounty of fruit that I don't even mind.
Speaking of birds, we have a family of blue-jays in our yard again this year. One of the fledglings either was pushed or fell out of its nest the other day. While she was learning to use her wings, I had the opportunity to get a number of pictures of her. And now, it seems she has a brother. Here is a picture my husband captured of the siblings getting a drink from the waterfall by my pond:

Their parents were not far away, and they were keeping a close eye on their offspring. Isn't this just a wonderful picture? What a treat!

On another note, I have to praise my iPhone and stress how this mobile device enabled me to share an ode to my backyard with my local newspaper. Jim Shelton, a reporter for the New Haven Register, has called on folks to report on "a handful of summer." I had ripped the invite with his email out of the paper, and it was sitting on the table in my garage. I was viewing the backyard through the screens on the back of the garage, and I got inspired and jotted down a quick description of how my backyard represents my own personal "handful of summer." If I had had to go into the house, boot up my laptop, and write my message, it might never have happened. However, since I had my iPhone right there, I logged into my gmail account, went to compose mail, added the address from the register, typed my blurb, and hit "send." I heard the familiar whoosh, and it was on its way.
On Monday, I taught a professional development session on the wonders of using our Discovery Education subscription, and while I was at school, my husband told me a man had come pounding on our door asking for Carolyn Stanley. It seems that Jim showed up with a small camera and asked to go into our yard. He filmed a video which made the electronic edition of the paper along with the piece I had written. How exciting to share and be  recognized. That's the power of 21st century leaning offered to our kids. That's what will keep education engaging for them.
Here is a link to the article at the New Haven Register online. You'll have to scroll down to see the link to the video and even further down in the article to see the piece that I wrote. Enjoy.
I hope you'll leave me a comment if you like it.


http://www.newhavenregister.com/articles/2010/07/04/life/doc4c2fe9aea5528092727157.txt

Happy Summer - I'm up late and had better get to bed.
This has been an exciting evening of learning and sharing.

So Many Blog Posts Floating in My Brain

Oh, my.
I feel terrible. I have so many posts floating about in my brain that I never got posted into the blog. I especially want to add a belated post about my experience at the Discovery Education Network Spring Conference that I attended in Massachusetts in May. Watch for it.
So - just to get back into the swing of things, I am reporting on a webinar I attended tonight hosted by Steve Hargadon of FutureofEducation.com. He interviewed Heidi Hayes Jacobs about her new book Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World
Lately, I have not participated in as many webinars as previously, and I've really missed the collaboration in the chat with other educators around the nation and world. I had heard Heidi speak at a professional development session, but I did not get nearly as much out of that as I did listening to her in a video window in Elluminate and being able to comment on what she was saying in the chat. That made the experience much more immediate and engaging. This is really an aspect of education that we need to offer to kids. NASA does some webinars for students during the school day. It will be exciting if we can get our school signed up to participate in one. Ideally, we'll have each student at a computer, logged into the webinar, and able to participate in the chat.
The Classroom2.0 webinars as well as the Future of Education webinars are archived for later viewing, so they are a great professional development resource.
Here is a link to the archive page:
http://www.futureofeducation.com/notes/Past_Interviews

I hope everyone is having a great summer. What a wonderful time to refresh, renew, and have time to connect with other educators in preparation for another school year that will be here sooner than we can imagine.

By the way, I am keeping a daily diary of my summer 2010, just so it won't slip through my fingers.