What an absolutely perfect day we had for Geocaching on Saturday!  Twelve cachers, some newbies and some more experienced, met at the aptly named Discovery Garden in Mount Vernon, WA.  We learned the basics of Geocaching and even had a chance to practice while searching for an established cache right there in the Garden.  Emma, our youngest cacher, was in on the very first find and excited to see that there were indeed treasures hidden all over town. After learning the basics, we set off in groups on our Geocaching adventure. The Skagit County Airport has a great series of walking trails with interesting caches hidden throughout.  That was our first stop. There we were able to discover lots of larger caches filled with fun little treasures.  Lisa Monson, our newest STAR, had the priviledge of placing our DEN Travel Bug in one of the caches to send it off on its adventure. One very clever cache involved tuning into to a radio frequency at a certain set of coordinates and then listening for clues to the actual location of the cache.  We ended our day in downtown Mount Vernon with the added treat of getting to go to the first day of our Farmer’s Market. Two teams tied for the most caches found, so we went with the closest birthday for the grand prize and everyone else got to choose from some great Discovery Education Schwag.

A new Discovery Channel Themed Cache was also hidden in the area.  Check out Dirty Jobs: Here’s to the Farmers Cache.

Geocaching is such a great hobby.  A great way to get outside, get some excercise, problem solve, learn new things and spend time with family and friends.  Hopefully, this event hooked a few new cachers.  I know that one of our teachers already has plans for a Geocaching event for her students and for her fellow teachers at her school.

If you would like to know more about Geocaching.  Check out Geocaching.com.

Bridget Belardi also has a great resource for teachers on Geocaching on her Wiki.

Thanks DEN for sponsoring this great event.

(Note, this event has been changed to the Discovery Garden, in Mount Vernon, WA.)

Join members of the DEN in the quaint little town of LaConner, Washington for a day of Geocaching. We will be joining DEN members from around the country in the DEN’s first ever Geocaching Day.

We will meet in downtown LaConner in front of the Museum of Northwest Art.  I will have some GPS receivers to share and a list of caches in the area.  We will seek out the caches as we explore the treasures of LaConner.  As a culminating event, we will create our own Discovery themed cache and launch a travel bug.

If you have never had the opportunity to try Geocaching, this is a perfect opportunity.  Geocaching is a great activity in classrooms and with families.  Great problem solving skills, the thrill of the adventure and a chance to seek out and experience interesting and beautiful sites.

For muggles (non-geocachers) and pros alike, STAR Discovery Educators Bridget Belardi and Conni Mulligan will host a “Geocaching 101″ webinar to get us ready.  The webinar will answer the basic questions of “What is geoaching?” and “How do I get started?”  as well as emphasize the curricular connections of geocaching.

The webinar will be offere:

• Wednesday, May 27, 2009 (7 PM EDT)

Register for the session today.

You can join us in LaConner, or you can try Geocaching in your own area this day.

Please email me, Martha Thornburgh at t56linc@gmail.com if you are interested in joining us in LaConner on May 30 for a morning of fun and adventure.

Hall Davidson reminded me of a really fun, yet disgusting video about the importance of washing your hands and how germs are spread.  If you are logged into Discovery Education Streaming, check out “The Sneeze, How Germs are Spread.”  The video is rather old and not very high tech, but it really gets the message across.

There is a nice free video from BrainPop that explains the spread of the SwineFlu in kid friendly terms.  This would be helpful to watch after you have been disgusted by the first video.

And for a little more indepth look at the flu, here are some resources gathered by Larry Ferlazzo.

Creative Commons photo from Flickr :  http://www.flickr.com/photos/cafemama/122191171/

Today, Monday, there is a great opportunity to enter a drawing for a Mimio!

This last week the DEN Team was on a traveling roadshow through Washington State. Kim Randall, Dennis Swain and Scott Pionek visited 4 locations and shared about all of Discovery Education’s great features, the power of the DEN and some great tricks and tips for using media in the classroom.  The team traveled to Lake Washington, Puyallup, Wenatchee and Anacortes.  Along with learning how to pronounce all the weird city names, they also had the fortune to see Washington in all it’s glory with the apple blossoms in Wenatchee and the tulips in bloom in the Skagit Valley.  I attended the last night of the Road Show in Anacortes. 30 teachers, almost all new to the wonders of Discovery came and were amazed and what they learned they could do with these great tools.  About an hour and a half in to the tech rich learning activities, the power went out.  We learned that it was more than just a little blip and that power was out in 4 counties and would not be back on soon.  But that didn’t stop our fearless Discovery Education team.  Dennis scrounged up an “old school” whiteboard and commenced to sharing the builders by drawing the website and explaining as he went.  Some of the newbie teachers there said that they actually preferred the low tech approach and had an easier time following.  Scott then jumped in and shared all the other great products such as Discovery Health and Science and Media Share.  Again, the teachers were excited about what they learned and ready for the power to come back on to explore more. After a great dinner and still no power, the ever innovative Discovery team and the very flexible and creative teachers in attendance jumped right back in for more learning.  With one very long extension cord connected to a generator and the pooling of some of our laptops and personal cameras, we broke into teams and created PhotoStories of our evening adventure. Kudos to Kim, Dennis and Scott for pulling off a great evening of learning despite the lack of power.  Flexibility is an essential trait for any great educator.

When you ask someone if they watch  “Deadliest Catch” how many people respond, “I love that show!”  As a DEN STAR (yes, you can become one!!!), we received invitations to the CATCH Con event where we would be able to meet the captains from the “big 4” boats.  I was so excited to get to see some of our other STARs as well!  As I navigated traffic, I was wondering if Phil would wear his traditional shirtless tank top, would the Hillstrom brothers be in rare form, is Sig really like that, and does everyone get along?  The event was hosted at the Wild Ginger restaurant in Seattle, and did not disappoint!!!  It was a very intimate event with about 50-75 people.  We had the opportunity to talk, laugh and enjoy meeting the captains of the boats.  Not only were the captains the “main event”, there were also the executive producers as well as the cameramen and crewmen.  The captains came in rare form, and were extremely willing to share their stories and take photos with us fans.  I hear that this year’s practical joke between a couple of the captains will be one to watch.  I was fascinated with the information that the producers had to share, because they are involved with this show, but some others as well.  Sometimes people feel that shows are “staged” (many reality shows) to attract viewers, but “Deadliest Catch” is authentic!  I could not imagine being a cameraman on the boats, but hats-off to them for being able to navigate a camera AND stay out of the way of the crab pots, workers, and captains.

What a fun time!  Here’s a couple of pictures of the STARS and leaders at this event.  I love being a part of Discovery Education and the Discovery Educators Network.

The Discovery Educator Network is seeking feedback from educators who have participated in the DEN and/or attended DEN-sponsored events. This survey should take you about 5 minutes to complete. We really appreciate your feedback.

Cordially Invite You to:

Spring into Action!

Let us help your new ideas blossom by joining us for an exciting and engaging afternoon of professional development. Learn creative techniques to inspire your students by using digital media in your classroom. Sessions will include: 50 Ways to Integrate Discovery Education streaming, Building a Bigger Builder, Maximizing PowerPoint, and Digital Storytelling with Discovery Education streaming. Learn about the Discovery Educator Network (DEN) and how you can become a STAR Discovery Educator. Dinner and prizes included!

Please RSVP for one location, as space is limited.

April 20th, 2009
4pm-8pm

Aylen Junior High School
101 15th Street SW
Puyallup, WA 98371
https://discoveryed.wufoo.com/forms/discovery-training-puyallup-school-district/

April 21st, 2009
4pm-8pm

Redmond High School
7272 North East 104th St.
Redmond, WA 90852
https://discoveryed.wufoo.com/forms/discovery-training-lake-washington/

April 22nd, 2009
2pm-6pm

Confluence Technology Center
285 Technology Center Way, Ste 102
Wenatchee, WA 98801
https://discoveryed.wufoo.com/forms/discovery-training-north-central-esd-171/

April 23rd, 2009
4pm-8pm

Northwest ESD #189
1601 R Avenue
Anacortes, WA 98221
https://discoveryed.wufoo.com/forms/discovery-training-northwest-esd-189/

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

If you have photos to add to the collection. Just tag them with NCCEDEN09 in Flickr.

Thanks DEN for hosting such a fun event.

The first session I attended was on taking photos to tell amazing stories. One big idea I learned is when taking photos to tell a story, be sure to take Wide/Where shots, Mid/Verb shots and close up/ tight shots that explain and give detail. There is a grammar to photography. These same ideas work with telling a story with video. Torres stressed the importance of leading kids to be metacognative thinking through product and process. We then got in the technical stuff about taking good photos, talking about light, composition, aperture, shutter speed, etc. I just had my little point and shoot with me and it was interesting to spend time exploring the different settings and pushing that little camera to its limits.

Torres rushed from that 3 hour session to a keynote. Again, his keynote did not fail to inspire. His main message was that you are not alone. Working as a team, you can accomplish great things. You can have an idea that you don’t know how to execute, but someone does know how to do it. Build your network, find your experts and then create amazing things. You don’t have to know everything, just find some one who does. Marco and Rosa demonstrated this by sharing their desktop with Rosa’s sister Eli in Los Angeles. Together, the two used their different talents to create and edit a video. Marco says that distance is now measured in bandwidth, not in actual distance. Fear equals being alone. What a great example of the skills we need to be teaching our students to help them prepare for this world of collaboration, collage and creativity. Marco shared that his classroom is called the Community Inspiration Studio. Students are creating and collaborating, before, during and after school and during holidays. Some kids are enrolled in a class with Torres, and others just come to learn and create. They work as a community to create. They also work as a community of students to tell the story of their own neighborhood. Marco relates that Movie Making equals great teachers. Students are involved in both the product and the process.

Torres had so many great ideas and quotes to get us thinking. Again, the theme continues.

“It is not what it is, it is what we do with it.”
“The Thing versus the purpose of the Thing. Nouns vs. Verbs.”
“If we see the student as recipient, it won’t change, if we see the student as producer, it will change.”
“It is not just what type of learner are you, but what type of producer are you.”

Torres shares what an ideal learning environment includes.

Studio: An environment where you can choose which instrument you want.
Stage: A place to showcase our learning
Community: A way to share.

Wow! What a great way to think about learning environments. Are we providing these types of learning environments for our students. What I love about all of this, is that it is not about film and media, it is not about technology, it is about teaching and learning. Again, not about the nouns, but the verbs.

Learning should be active, not passive. Move from logical to creative, individual to community, functional to meaningful, facts to the story.

And even more Marco! The last session of the day was really laid back as we looked at making learning relevant and applicable. Marco and Rosa showed the process of story boarding, outlining using Inspiration and creating great stories. Again, Torres emphasises the product, not the process. Students have to be aware of the product and the process. What is it that you want to showcase and communicate and then how are you going to showcase and communicate. Good film production is actually good business planning. Good storytelling creates more questions than answers. It’s the story not the technology.

Marco shared several fun videos to emphasise points about process. He said that documentaries and public service announcements are a great genre, because you don’t have to worry about acting. He also shared that when creating a video, you should think of how others would do it, and then do something else.

What a great and inspiring day of learning and a great way to start my week of focusing on the verbs instead of the nouns.

Here are a few of the video examples Marco shared.

Time to Log Off!
Carpet Layer
Lamp Commercial
EPuron Commercial
Fun Two Guitar

Here are some great resources shared by Marco Torres.

sfett.com
flickschool.com
alasmedia.wikispaces.com

My rough notes from the day.