Matt’s Media Tips 11-28What I am Thankful For

‘Tis the season to look around you and recognize the many things that you are thankful for. I, for one, am thankful to be living in such an exciting time where learning can be accessed anywhere any time. And I’m not just talking about in the classroom. One of the most powerful things that you can do today is to grow your own Professional Learning Network. In my last edition I mentioned the Discovery Educator Network - a community of educators sharing their ideas with each other 24/7 - a community that I am most thankful for. This week I posed a question to my PLN via Twitter and Facebook. My tweet and their responses are listed below. After all what would this Thanksgiving/Holiday season be without sharing a bounty of knowledge with good friends and family? Enjoy!

Take Teaching to the Next Level Where Microscope and Mouse Meet Connecting to a Global Community of Educators

A great tip - thanks Anne. (Hold down the Command Key, the Shift button, and the number 4 to grab a screenshot on a Mac). I also noticed that Anne shared a great site with @KathySchrock called krunched.com/krunch which looks like a great link aggregator.

Also very cool - thanks Alex. Jing screen capture by TechSmith is a great free tool that grabs video and screencasts that can be embedded as movies within your presentations - also awesome for interactive whiteboards (SMART, Promethean, etc)

Joe shared Evernote which, is free, works on any platform, and syncs automatically. Which means you can access your “second brain” as Joe puts it from any device at any time.

And Ruth shared a CourseSmart App which gives her access to digital versions of books.

Thanks all! And, of course if you haven’t heard yet, Discovery Education also has a digital Science TechBook which goes way beyond digitized text and includes interactive labs, glossaries, live in person PD, lesson plans and more. Check out the webinar on the next page to learn more!

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Discovery Education Webinar ScheduleDiscovery Education Webinar ScheduleDiscovery Education Webinar Schedule

Dates Time (EST)

Link

11/29 7pm - 8pm

DE Science Techbook: What does it look like in my Classroom?During this session we will answer the million dollar question - What does the techbook look like in my classroom?

11/30 7pm - 8pm

iThink iNeed iPads in the ClassroomPresented by Steve Dembo For Educators Sure they're bright and shiny, but are they really learning devices? We'll take a close look at how exactly these technologies are being leveraged in the classroom and what the best Apps are for educational purposes.

12/5 4:30pm-5:30pm

Back to Basic with Discovery EducationGet back to the basics of Discovery Education! This session with get you started with helpful information on navigating Discovery Education STREAMING and uncover resources that you never knew you had!

12/5 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.

Word Spree Lite - ThanksgivingRemember the game MadLibs? Well here’s a digital version of that word smithing game.

You are given a choice of 15 stories. Each player is asked to generate nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. and conjugate them in the present or past tense...so I suppose there’s a classroom application there.

However the game is truly meant to be a fun and goofy app.

You can also share your stories via Facebook or Twitter and, after all, isn’t that what Thanksgiving is all about - friends and sharing?

All-in-all, the app is free and worth gobbling up!

Multiplying AcornsThis App definitely seems worth its $.99 cents price tag. I like that you can have multiple profiles (up to three users) at the same time. It also combines video and audio together and, since it requires students to manipulate the squirrels and acorns and choose what interests them most, this app is inherently designed for differentiated instruction. At the end of the day I think that Multiplying Acorns would be a great interactive math learning center.

You can get it from the Apple App store by typing in “Multiplying Acorns” or by clicking here.