Cliotech: July 2009

22 July 2009

Websites I Found Interesting - Diigo 07/21/2009

DEN National Institute 2009 - Great Links and Ideas
Published page from the NI Google Doc spreadsheet
tags: DENNI, DENNI09, links, PLN, PLC, learning, web_2.0, technology, education, social_networking
DEN Blog Network » Highlights from the Den National Institute
tags: DENNI, DENNI09, education, technology, web_2.0, second_life, video, learning, PLN, PLC
DEN Blog Network » National Institute
tags: DENNI, DENNI09, Discovery_Education, discovery_educator_network
Hashtags from the DENNI 09
tags: DENNI, DENNI09, Twitter, Hashtag, PLC, PLN, education, technology, web_2.0, learning
Flickr: Discovery Education's Photostream
tags: DENNI, DENNI09, Flickr, Discovery_Education, #DENNI

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

13 July 2009

DEN National Institute 2009

Websites I Found Interesting - Diigo 07/12/2009

iLearn Technology » Blog Archive » 20 iTunes Feeds for the 2.0 Teacher
tags: itunes, podcast, resources, learning, ilearn, education, Podcasts, technology

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

09 July 2009

Organize Your DE Media With Ease

I love being able to bookmark content on the Internet to make it easier for me to access anywhere, anytime (especially, when I really need to find that great video segment I used last year for tomorrow's lesson . . .)

Discovery Education streaming and Science used to have a product-specific My Content that allowed users to create folders and subfolders and populate them with all the media assets and assessments required to build engaging multimedia learn experiences for their students. The drawback was that users who subscribe to multiple services could only see the assets bookmarked to one service at a time. The new launch of Discovery Education boasts an enhanced My Content folder that is universal, allowing users to access media content and instructional activities from all DE services to which they subscribe. So, I can build a folder that contains video segments and articles from DE streaming, virtual labs and eBooks from DE Science, student activities from DE Health, and lesson plans from DE MediaShare all in one global interface. Users will be able to access the new My Content from the icon in the global DE banner as well as from the My Content module on their My DE home page.

For users exploring the new interface, DE's developers have put in a helpful "What's Changed" button that will summarize the enhancements to My Content.

Your My Content section has been enhanced and is now global across products. This means that you can add and access content from any of your Discovery Education services through a single My Content interface. Please note that in order to make this transition easier we have created a folder for each product you subscribe to, and your My Content from each product is now located within that folder. If desired, you can now move your existing folders from the product folder into the root My Content view.

In addition, we have added a Trash Bin which holds your deleted content. In the case that you accidentally delete content, you will be able to click on the Trash Bin button and restore that content to the appropriate folder.

In a future post I will be addressing the new My Classrooms feature. Once students are set up with a Student Center account they will also have a My Content folder to which they can save media and research. Teachers will even be able to access their students' accounts to see what students are bookmarking to My Content.

Discovery Education
Discovery
education
technology
media
classroom
Turbo Tagger

08 July 2009

Maximize Your Searching Time in Discovery Education

If there is one natural resource consistently in VERY short supply for teachers it is time. When I was in the classroom I never seemed to have enough time to gather all the resources to build the type of learning experiences I envisioned for my students. That's why I was so taken with the new grid view search results page in Discovery Education.

Take a look below. (or, click here to see the image in a new window)

The new grid view yields 4x more search results in one page than the old list view in the previous version of DE.

In addition, users can mouse over the media asset to open up a preview window with a description, 10-second video preview (if the asset is a video or video segment), and other related information. Users can add the media asset to their My Content folder with one click on the the preview window's Add to My Content button. All of this without ever even opening the media asset page!

It's a time saver for educators who are searching for media content to build learning experiences and instructional activities.

But, if you really miss the old list view, you can always click on the List View button to revert back to the more traditional search results view.

Discovery Education
searching
media
technology
education
Turbo Tagger

07 July 2009

Share Your DE Gems With Your PLN

Here is another REALLY cool feature to the 2009 launch of Discovery Education -- sharing media assets out to your professional learning network with a simple one-click post.

Check it out . . . (click here to see the image in a new window)

By clicking on the new Share tab on the media asset page you can share your media gems via popular networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Delicious, and Diigo. Of course, you need to have accounts established with these third-party services before you can share to them.

You are also able to access a unique URL address that is linked to the media asset (which could be a video segment as opposed to the full video). You can use this URL to post DE media to your class webpage, Blackboard site, wiki, blog, Google Earth placemark, etc. It is not a violation of copyright as anyone who clicks on that will be forced to authenticate (i.e. sign in) before viewing the media. Thus, only DE subscribers will be able to access the media.

I am really excited about the possibilities for sharing and collaborating made possible by the new Share features.

06 July 2009

New Discovery Education Unified Search

Have you logged into Discovery Education in the past week? If not, you REALLY need to log in to check out the new content and features upgrades.

I am going to be blogging about these upgrades over the next couple weeks. The new feature upgrade for today is the unified search on the new universal DE header. This new search function will allow users to search across all products to which they subscribe or to limit their search to just one product. Users can also filter search results by selecting one or multiple grade level ranges and can also filter by just one media asset type. This unified search will save users a lot of time and will make searching much more efficient. The universal DE banner will appear atop the entire Discovery Education suite. Users will only be able to search the media libraries of products to which they currently subscribe. If you are interested in taking a test drive of one of the DE products, visit http://www.discoveryeducation.com/products/ to request a site preview.