Discovery Education Notes/Ideas - Good to know...

Dean Shareski - DEN Presentation - iT Summit 2014 - May 5

Planet Earth, North America, Life, Frozen Planet - All parts of Discovery
All of these are aligned to Saskatchewan Curriculum. The content is in your service the next day after it airs on Discovery Channel.
3 Ideas: Great Instruction, Students, Community 

GREAT INSTRUCTION
Wealth of information on discoveryeducation.ca
Curriculum Standards Search. Choose Saskatchewan, and then search subject areas and they will show you the aligned resources/media to the specific indicators! Awesome!
Not all resources will work in every classroom, but it allows you to see things that COULD work for you, and don't limit you. Add to your "My Content" folder.

H.264 300K - Download videos on this setting so that it will play on any device! Good to know!

Teacher Centre - Interactive Atlas - Turning content into interactive media. You can hover over any area (ie Saskatchewan), click the province/territory and videos will pop up about that area.
SOS - Spotlight on Strategies 
Move past just watching a video. Try to engage students and take that video watching further. A-E-I-O-U weekly digital media strategy. DEN blog - Educator Network

STUDENTS
Differentiated Instruction You can assign videos to specific students in your class. When the student logs in, they can see the "assignment" you have given them (such as watching a video, doing an activity, etc.)
My DE for Students aka. The Student Center
Put some ownership on students to help find resources for the concept you are learning.
TECHBOOK
K-8 Science replacement for a textbook.  - maps out a lesson, gives the objectives under the model lesson.
Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, Evaluate tabs
Students can have access as well as the teacher.  It is designed to work for both teachers and for students, no matter how your classroom is set up; whether you want to stand and teach or have kids take the learning into their own hands. The lesson/notes can even be read aloud!
login.discoveryeducation.ca/?TECHBOOK=1
- can do a free trial for 30 days. Can buy it after.

COMMUNITY
Builder Tools
Board Builder - Mix between Pinterest and Glogster. Add notes and videos. You can have students make their own or you make the board. Make sure it gets shared - and give feedback.
SHARE!!!! Build a community on Discovery Education. Share with the DE Community.
Discover Education - Educator Network
Creates a large impact when you engage on Professional Learning Communities 

I'm Back!!!

HELLO EVERYONE!
Here I sit at my teacher desk after a year's maternity leave, and I think to myself what has changed in a year? The answer is.....a lot. The students grow taller, many mature (a bit at least), and the coursework is changing as new curricula is introduced as well as being given some new teaching assignments for this year. Change can be good as well as bad, I'm sure you all know that, but in terms of teaching - change is constant and therefore needs to be taken in stride.
I will say that not all change in education is great, but teaching is a profession that requires you to think on your feet. And let me tell you something, after a year's absence - and I mean absence (I didn't read a thing related to school until a month before coming back), thinking on your feet and adapting to change can be painful and confusing. I love my new family, my little boy William is just the best thing I've ever done, but after a year of one-ended conversation with him, I was ready to have some adult interactions. I played a scrabble game in the summer and my head hurt all evening! It was time to come back. 
I started looking at the new curricula that I was going to be teaching, I was reading new novels, creating lessons and units and I was suffering from some of the worst migraines I've ever had. My brain literally hurt. I've talked to other teachers, to gain some resources and some 'heads up" on ideas for teaching this new curricula but I was hit with a lot of "I am just as confused and frustrated as you are", which begs the question, what are we supposed to do as a teaching community to help out each other, if no one else is going to help us from the top-down? The answer? Technology. 
Now technology has changed in a year, but not a lot. Not to an extent that a person couldn't catch up easily enough. We got some different computers in our school, and our marks now need to be done using a specific program but all in all, (at least at the school level), not much has changed. Technology though, is that island of hope we are all looking for when it comes to sharing resources. Of course face-to-face is great, and I'm still a firm believer in it, but technology is that enhancement, made to make our lives that much less hectic and simpler. I can hear some of you yelling "wait a minute!! Isn't technology the devil that makes us slaves to our computers and phones?" My response is this: technology is here. It is not going away. Join it, use it, or you will be left in the dust. With the ever growing social media, availability of smartphones, and inclusion of technology into our curricula, how else do you expect to be relevant to your students? I've kept up what I've needed to, now the next step is sharing. I need resources, these new curricula are empty of resources! Even the website dedicated to it, has no resources listed for many of the curriculum out there! So the task is to us teachers, to create, share and use technology to enhance our teaching. I'm back and I'm ready, are you???