good stuff

I have been so impressed with discovery education and feel so overwhelemed because there is so much it's hard for me to decide what to make my lessons about. I think the assignment builder is going to be great. This will be so helpful in trying to created differentiated lessons for students.

I used a great bullying video on Friday to compliment a lesson I was doing. Again, it was fabulous because I just picked the segments that fit my lesson the best. In fact, I will probably be doing a follow up and the segments I didn't use will be great for that part.

I'm really impressed so far and really, really, hope that the district get a subscription for the whole district as this would be a valuable tool for all of our teacher's to have access to.

See you all tomorrow..maybe...if it's not a snow day!

Well, it's Sunday early afternoon. Took care of God, and now the Packers are taking care of my husband. I worked on two lessons yesterday, and I really feel good about them. I teach remedial reading, and I found great video clips on some of the themes in the novels I teach the students. For instance, I found an awful lot of video on abuse. There is one entire video about dating abuse that, I think, the kids can really relate to. The video seems to be quite up-to-date except for the fact that the boyfriend makes a "tape" of music for his girlfriend. Will my students even know what a tape is any more? The message, though, is great. The other disadvantage of the video is that the acting isn't that great. However, I'm not sure my students will realize that. The other video on abuse involves child abuse. This will augment my lessons for another book that I teach. This video is an Oprah Winfrey special, and it is quite gripping. I know the kids will enjoy watching it, and I know that many of my remedial students will relate. Many come from homes that have lots of these problems in them.

Well, I had best go. The Packer game only lasts so long, and then I need to get supper for my husband. Hope you are all having a great weekend. I'll see you in class Tuesday (unless we have a snow day?????).

Discovery Digital Streaming Teacher Tools

The teacher tools in Discovery Digital Streaming are very useful. I can see how the Assignment Builder, Quiz Builder, Lesson Plan Library, Writing Prompt Builder, Calendar, and Interactive Atlas are all excellent tools for teachers to use to create exciting and effective lessons for students. I think that students would greatly enjoy working with these tools and, because of the engaging and interactive nature of the digital medium, would learn a great deal. There is great potential here. One component I was a little disappointed with was the few lessons that were pre-made by Discovery Education (assuming I searched correctly...which may not be true due to my being a novice at this). Perhaps over time they will be adding more. Is there a way to save all assignments and lesson plans into "My Content"? All in all, I am very pleased with what I have discovered about Discovery Digital Streaming.

Dec. 2 class

I have been sorting videos and filing them into categories. I found information that I am able to use this week but I attempted to watch something before running it for the class and the computers in the building I work at do not allow me to play anything. The library/media specialist said that the network doesn't have enough memory. The technology committee has been discussing this because high school teacher want access to digital streamming. I am going to attempt to download info onto a disc because our computers have recently not been able to connect or read any flash drive. Sometimes it feels like we as teachers are told about technology and try to step into the current techno world and then take 2 steps back because of the time it takes to get our equipment to work properly.

Incorporating E-mail

Hello,

I am bravely going to attempt to send my students an e-mail with the URL they need to complete a digital streaming assignment. (I have already created distribution lists for each class.) I did have a student--a student from the Ukraine, no less--test a link sent via e-mail and it seemed to work.

I asked students to bring headphones, and, as you guessed, this seemed to pose no problem. I do not yet have an answer to my question of how to sort my list of attachments by priority, but we'll see how things go.

I found all the new information in last night's class interesting, but am somewhat disappointed that there doesn't appear to be much available in several of the areas of high school English that I was trying to work with, especially literature. Anyone else finding problems like that?

It is nice, though, to see all these different things, even if they don't directly apply to what I want. It's always good to learn about new resources, and I'm sure that as the streaming thing grows, a lot more info will be out there.

See you next week.

I am so very frustrated. For some reason, I received error messages that duplicated my assignment. However, the assignment was not correct, and I could not add to it or change it, and it did not show up in my assignments under the lefthand section of the assignment creator. However, it did show up in the righthand box under My Assignments. However, there it had numerous clones. In all, five of these were created -- quite a mess for a neat freak. Anyway, I need to get this cleaned up. I cannot go on because I hate messes. Help, please!!!

Now, for better news. I am sure that everyone (ha, ha) wonders why my name is georgethedog. That's because my daughter has two babies: two bulldogs. The first one she got was named Dolly, but no bulldog looks like a Dolly, so she renamed it Georgie (short for Georgette). Her picture is the one above.