Saturday, June 27, 2009

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.

Monday, June 22, 2009

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

Thursday, May 28, 2009

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.

Monday, May 18, 2009

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.

Tech Ed People

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.