CRSTE Day of Discovery

I spent my Saturday this past weekend in Arlington, VA at the CRSTE Day of Discovery. The Captial Region Society for Technology Educators (CRSTE) is a newly formed educational technology group and they partnered with Discovery Education to create this day. I apologize in advance as this is a long post describing my day.

It started at 8:30 with a keynote address from Matt Monjan, from Discovery. One of my colleagues who I attended grad school with commented, that she felt like she was back in class again hearing about the concepts of digital natives and constructivism. I think that describes a real attribute of this organization, is that they are current and know what students and teachers need to grow in their use of technology. Matt did a great job and I was ready to start off my day with Jen Dorman's session on "Roundtrip Tickets to Anywhere! Google Earth and DE Streaming". Jen's presentation is available on her DEN blog at http://denblogs.com/jendorman here.

I've done a little dabbling in Google Earth (GE), but really need to use this tool next school year. Jen had some great ideas and advice: First, the Google Earth pro version is free to educators by sending an email to GEEC@google.com. You'll receive an email with a download after a couple of weeks. Next, she told us about the "my maps" feature in Google Maps, which can be a good substitute while you're waiting for that GE Pro version to arrive, or if GE is not allowed your computers, which luckily is not the case in our district. The "my maps" feature allows you to add hyperlinks and more to your maps and is great for collaborating or for group work. The teacher can create the map and then "invite" students to join and each students can add to the map. Looking at this on my own, I also found some groups that had created their own and shared. There is one for teachers who use technology and you can placemark where you are in the world. There are other topics including real estate, islands, and points of interest. I would have to look at this some more though to create my own map.

For GE, Jen explained an example she did with a history class, where each group was given one major battle from World War II and they had to add events and placemarks as the battle occurred. Her greatest piece of advice, was making sure the first step each group was to create a folder for their project and to make sure all placemarks, videos, etc. were placed in this folder. This sounds like a great way to learn about events in history!

Another idea Jen had was to use the ruler tool for studying math. I had no idea there was a ruler tool in GE. She said Washington, DC is great place in GE to use this for. For example, students can find the circumference between certain parks or buildings, measure the distance from the Capital building to the Lincoln Memorial, etc. She added that Africa is another great place to use this tool.

After the GE session, I attended "Getting Interactive with Glogs and DE Builders" with Mike Hakkarinen from Frederick County Schools in Maryland. Mark did a great job and has some fantastic products from his classes. Mark just created a new blog for the builders at http://discoverybuilders.blogspot.com. Everything from his presentation is this site, as well. If you don't know much about the DE builders, they are the assignment, quiz, and writing prompt builders in DE streaming's teacher center. Each builder helps teachers with creating online assignment, quizzes, and writing prompts. Some inventive teachers have begun using web 2.0 tools with the builders, which is what Mark talked about in his session and the results are pretty amazing!

The first tip Mark gave was to put a link to the student center on the desktop computers students use, for our district, our CTT could add an icon to our Novell windows and it would take the students directly to the page, where they could sign in to use the online tools the teacher has created. The first builder Mark used was the writing prompt builder. He's a science teacher and recently his students were learning about the relationships between grass, crickets, and anoles. So he took a picture of a cricket from DE streaming and embedded it into the prompt builder and added a writing prompt for the students to type up. When they're finished, students submit their writings and it's automatically sent via email to Mark.

For the Quiz builder, Mark embedded a video from DE streaming. After students watched the video, they could then take a quiz on what they watched. The best part is that students can read the questions first, then watch the video; they can watch and then take the quiz; or they can watch, take the quiz, and refer back to the video when needed. Another great feature is that when you are setting up the quiz you can decide on how the students view it, such as multiple questions at a time or one question at a time.

In the assignment builder, Mark talked about using a web 2.0 tool called Blabberize, which is similar to a voki. If you've never heard of either, they are two tools that allow you to record messages and then post onto a website, blog, wiki, or just about anywhere! With voki, you actually create a character that talks and with Blabberize, you can make images talk, such as a lion. If your students are studying about Africa in Geography class or biomes in Science class, a talking lion could come in handy! Mark uses this as a way to describe to his students what they need to do in their assignment. He simply embeds the html code from Blabberize and pastes it in the learning objective box and he's all set! He also suggested trying Dabbleboard, an online interactive whiteboard, Voicethread and Glogster.

The last session I attended was on Professional Development in Second Life with Fred Delventhal, from Arlington Public Schools. I've heard lots of talk about how educators, especially DEN Stars are using Second Life, but I haven't really tipped my toes into this yet. So I was interested to hear what this is about. Fred talked about how Discovery has set up PD sessions here and the different tech society's that are located in Second Life as well, such as ISTE and VSTE. It was a good overall tour of what's in Second Life, however I would have liked to have seen how you get started, create an avatar, and get them to move (I hear this is not easy at first).

Overall, it was great day, with a few surpises. I got to see old and current colleagues that I didn't know were going to be there and chat with some teachers from other districts, as well as learn some great ideas!