30-day Photo Challenge

My DEN friends, @nsharoff and @McTeach, tweeted it, Melanie Holtsman blogged it, and I visited the White Peach Photo site where it all started.

Much as I want to participate in a 365 photo a day challenge, I take it too seriously and am too stressed out. I get one or two photos behind, it soon becomes a week, and 'whomp' I drop out. I thought, instead, that I would try a different photo challenge, since it's summer, and maybe I can "git 'er done" as Larry the Cable Guy would say.

'Course, I'm already behind ... it started yesterday with a Self-Portrait. Mine will be there today and I'll be all caught up and no stress!

Join me, if you will, and take some mighty photos. Click the link to join the group.

... now to find my camera to take today's shot.

Teacher Appreciation Week

Yes, I've been out of the loop for a bit but am inspired to include today's topic thanks to the DEN. The Discovery Educator Network remembers its STAR DEN members with daily notes and small tokens every day of this week. Since I'm no longer in the classroom it's really my only recognition as a teacher. I don't need it 'cause I LOVE what I do, but it sure is nice to hear. A simple pat on the back from people I respect and who indicate they respect me and the choice I made to be a teacher.

As part of teacher appreciation week, we were asked to fill out a form answering the question, "Would you share with us what being a part of the DEN means to you?". Theis wordle says most of how I feel but it can't express the attachment I have to the DEN, all the teachers who have touched my heart, and the amazing legacy of learning I have enjoyed as a member of the DEN.

Thank you to everyone who is part of the Discovery Educator Network!

Uncle Sam works for GUSD!

Preparing a presentation for one of the PTA groups on cyberbullying and cybersafety I wanted to include something at the end that was relevant but light-hearted, memorable yet cute, with the emphasis on the C U T E.

Enter acapela.tv and Uncle Sam is revitalized for GUSD. Okay, not the real Uncle Sam, but a very clever impersonator. This video hit the parents' funny bones and gave a lift to the serious tone of the evening. I saw the principal at our district Tech Fair last week and got a big hug. I think this did the trick.

There is a limit to the length of the speech and I think I hit that limit, but using Twitter made it easy to trim. Take a look for yourself and then take time to make your own. Oh, and be sure to have some fun while you're learning!

It Happens Every Year

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Last May, after our offices moved from the hillsides of the north end of the district to our "new" offices in the basement of the administration building, I first noticed it. (Yes, I miss the windows but no one can really find the basement, either.)

Driving down the streets toward the freeway I sense the lavender hue among the trees. Within a day or two it is stronger and the light from the setting sun highlights the flowers. The jacaranda trees are blooming again, a beautiful annual ritual.

Pronounced [jak-uh-ran-duh] it is described as any of various tropical trees belonging to the genus Jacaranda, of the catalpa family, having showy clusters of usually purplish flowers. (Pronunciation and definition from dictionary.com)

Seeing the blossoms each day for about three weeks makes me feel happy, cozy, even peaceful. Is it that I realize the school year is almost over or that the cool of Spring is moving into the warmth of Summer? Well, those may be true, but I think it's more that the color purple is one of my all-time, deep down favorites. I'm glad they stay in bloom so long. Their longevity cheers me.

Especially because, when I am old, I shall wear purple! (Jenny Joseph, 1932) and share my own happy, cozy, peaceful feelings.

Verizon Thinkfinity and me

It's been a few weeks (months?) since I posted a blog. Time got away from me with a few interruptions from life ... lol. All is better for now and I am in the beginnings of my first online class. A bit of a learning curve as Blackboard is new to me but really quite fun to use.

The class is about Verizon Thinkfinity and offers learners a deeper discovery of the Thinkfinity program. Free resources through amazing partnerships all offered by the Verizon Foundation. Very cool.

Below is a link to the flash video of the newly re-constructed site. I was first trained on the old site so here is my opportunity to move forward again. As one of our site techs uses as her email signature, "The trail of learning never ... ever ... ends."

What is Thinkfinity?

Paul E. Glott is a polyglot!

When new students, fresh from another country, entered my classroom I worked hard to learn basic comments in their languages. They would giggle as I tried to say the words and recognize that I knew it wasn't easy to learn a new language. When they accomplished a task I was able to say, "Good work!" or, "Very good work!" in words they understood, and that made them smile.

I only wish I'd had THIS tool back then. Paul E. Glott thinks about what you've typed into his notebook and translates it into the language you choose. He posts the words with type and also speaks them so you can hear the proper inflections. You can get your own widget at acapela.tv and learn to your heart's content. Try it!

DEN SCIcon2010

Saturday, January 9th was the Discovery Education SCIcon2010. A virtual conference based at Discovery's headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, the southern California in-person was held at the Corner Bakery in the Irvine Spectrum. It was a good turnout and everyone had a great time. It was a day of videos, presentations, and downloadable pdf files. Truly a plethora of information and I can't wait for the next one.

All of the SCIcon2010 sessions are available in video format, as well as all the handouts, at the DENSCIcon web site.

I was unable to attend in Irvine so I logged on at home. Technical difficulties with the audio plagued the webinar, but Brad's livestream session worked great. By the way, Brad and other DE 'scientists' hold monthly DE Science classes at the site and the next class is Tuesday, February 2, 2010.

There are links to the other sites as tabs on Brad's Science in Action blog. Just click the DENSCIcon2010 tab or any others to find wonderful information for science. I was never much for science when I was in school but it was never taught science this way.

Many of the resources are available without logging into DE - what a bonus!
Think Green, Learning Lab, and Science Homework Help

I hope you have a chance to look at them and consider some at-home investigations and experiments. Just think of Boris Karloff in his la-bor-a-tor-y ... ok, ask your folks about him.

A Time for Thanks

A tweet from @asbella inspired me to email a number of people in our district and ask them to finish the sentence, "I am thankful for...". I used Google forms to create the starter so the responses would be anonymous. I copied and pasted the answers into a wordle at wordle.net and here is the result.



It's easy to see what is most important to our staff on this special holiday. May you, too, have a happy and blessed Thanksgiving 2009!

Things Change ... and Quickly!

Gary created it > Wesley put it on Facebook > I clicked on it and embedded it > you are reading it. That's quite a bit of connecting taking place.

Gary Hayes created this tool and placed it on his site Personalize Media as part of his post Gary's Social Media Count and now it's here for you. What a statement about how quickly things change!

Summer 2009

What a summer of experiences and discovery and learning and fun!

I have been remiss in updating my blog but this was a summer to enjoy and I did. Summer began with a trip to Silver Spring where I had the privilege of attending the Discovery Education Network (DEN) Leadership Council (LC) Symposium. Focusing on each state's different LC chairs (Chair, Events, and Blog) we shared, planned, and forecast the upcoming year.

Saturday's "Day at Discovery School" pre-NECC (National Educational Computing Conference) event provided a whole new set of DEN members and networking. A school bell began our day and it was more fun than I can remember having in 'real' school.

Sunday was the 3rd Annual "Constructivist Celebration at NECC". Wow, what an incredible day. While I follow Gary Stager on Twitter I had never met him and he was a great speaker. Peter Reynolds (my educational hero) gave the keynote; Melinda Kolk from Tech4Learning spoke; and attendees were gifted with some fabulous software.

NECC followed in Washington, DC and it was as inspiring as always. I attended a number of seminars, networked in the Cyber Cafe, and collected ribbons for my name tage. I met Lee and Sasha from Commoncraft; Jim from Glogster;

I took the metro into DC each day and delighted in the freedom of getting to and fro in such an easy way. I only wish my own home town had such a great system for travel.

I am attending the DEN Leadership Council Symposium in Silver Spring, MD and a 4th birthday, pre-NECC "Day at Discovery School" event as well. One of the great presentations was "What's New in Discovery" illustrating the new, updated site for Discovery Educators and Discovery Streaming. One incredible facet of the site is MediaShare which is open to all members of the DEN. DEN members can explore and store the files/lessons that have been uploaded but only STAR DEN members can upload to the site and DEN STARS have the most options (hint - another GREAT reason to become a DEN STAR) as Media Share allows multiple uploads/types and converts all video to Flash. Read on for more info!


Steve Dembo, of the Discovery Educator Network, shared with us that MediaShare is a media management server marketed to school districts in order to aggregate/upload/store materials in one place. This product evolved from Discovery Education's need to contain info in one place. All DEN members can get into/download materials, but only STARS have full upload access. Under a single asset, you can place as many files/resources as you want (read - the beauty of MediaShare) visible to all in the DEN. You also have options to share with with the DEN and your District (either-or/both) + the “national audience”;

Media Share does have a limit for files up to 100mb per file. You can upload as many as ten (you saw it, 10!) 100mb files! When you are finished with creating a MediaShare resource, even if you do not click “done,” your uploads are still there. The resource is created and is in “search”; you can find it by going back to your resources.

MediaShare will accept embeddable code in the “description” box; so instead of uploading a file, go to a VoiceThread for the embed and paste in the description box. When you put the code in “description,” it “resolves” and becomes the end product of embeddable code. The beauty of MediaShare is that you can upload multiple media into the description via embeddable code, including a ustream.tv box so that the next time you did the presentation, you could have the live feed as a resource in real time. MS is a very flexible system: but remember to always check “check to allow embedding/direct linking” if you want to share your upload outside MediaShare.

Delicious/TechyNana

My good friend and colleague Shelley O began using Delicious.com and keeps raving about how wonderful it is. I really didn't want to start yet another bookmarking site but persuasive Shelley got me over there.

It really is easy to use and easy to moderate. I found the network button so I can auto-send new sites I mark to Shelley and other educator colleagues. I created one tag especially for the Tech Leaders in our district so now every site I email to them is tagged so they can just click "their" tag and find what I've sent so easily. Eventually the email dates will coincide with the delicious tags and even easier to discover.

I created a word cloud of my delicious site:

Make yours at http://www.wordle.net

No Future Left Behind

I found this wonderful movie on the ISTE Storytelling site. Peggy Sheehy and Marianne Malmstrom collaborated from their two campuses asking students to talk about education and their future.

Listen and learn the bits of wisdom that can be gleaned from the students, if we only dare to ask them.

I Love This Quote!

Another 'tweet' I received today was a 'twitpic' from @jenwagner. She posted a thought from @jorech that I really like. I may print it and post it or give copies to the techs in my office. I am blessed that the techs who support my work truly appreciate what we do in education.

Enjoy this ... I do.

Thirty Ways to Use Wordle

Okay, I was trying to find the new Bloom's Taxonomic Hierarchy Pyramid shown on the VisualBlooms wiki but I got side-tracked - go figure, me?

I love using Wordle and couldn't resist a look at Mike Fisher's post on Thirty Ways to Use Wordle. He collaborated with Tom Barrett, an educator in Nottingham England (I follow both of them on Twitter) and allow the SlideShare to be embedded so here it is. I hope you enjoy as much as I do and find time to incorporate one or more of the ideas. Thirty has grown to 34 and if my suggestion to add to the preso is included they will be up to 35 ways!
My suggestion? Use Wordle to show This Week's Spelling Words!

Twitter Mosaic & Friends

Just saw a post on Twitter from @bethstill sharing a picture on Twitpic of a shirt she purchased to wear at NECC in June.

I recently changed my Twitter name to @TechyNana so I decided to see how my shirt would look. I headed right out to TwitterMosaic and, fortunate enough to follow so many wonderful techies, I found the beautiful mosaic shown below. (I also purchased my own shirt and a new coffee mug - woohoo!)

Get your twitter mosaic here.