Academic Aesthetic Podcast 51 - PETEandC 3 of 7

After writing up my summary of the PETE&C DEN event I noticed that it can easily be divided into 7 sections. So, rather than bombard you with a large report I'll post one section a day this week. Short, sweet, bite-size chunks of information work much better for me, and hopefully for you as well.

Again, this is also a podcast.

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The first breakout session I attended was run by the DEN's own Scott Kinney, who only had to drive down the road to attend the conference. (The lucky guy lives in Hershey.) His presentation was all about the diversity in our classrooms and how unitedstreaming could help us meet the needs of today's classrooms.

If I wasn't already sold on unitedstreaming.com I would have reacted to this like so many other vendor presentations, but since they had me at multimedia downloads I paid attention to find out what else unitedstreaming could do.

We started with a quiz, and the answers were a bit surprising to us. I'd list them here, but I forgot his source so I can't properly cite his statistics.

The main point of this warm-up was that our schools are a lot more diverse than we thought.

Since unitedstreaming has lots of features from subtitles to online quizzes to encyclopedia articles, It really does help people who have a variety of learning styles.

Self Realization

This morning I left two things on the counter that were meant to go to school with me:

1. My Lunch. I had no cash on me, so my lunch was in fact irreplaceable. I would just have to wait until after school to get a bite to eat.
2. My Camera. I didn't have any lessons planned for today that required the use of a camera, digital or otherwise. Even if something came up in a spur of the moment, I still had my standby camera and a 256 MB card.

So guess which item I missed more today?

That's right, the replaceable digital camera I didn't even need.

Hello, my name is Aaron, and I'm a digital junkie.

Academic Aesthetic Podcast 50 - PETEandC 2 of 7

After writing up my summary of the PETE&C DEN event I noticed that it can easily be divided into 7 sections. So, rather than bombard you with a large report I'll post one section a day this week. Short, sweet, bite-size chunks of information work much better for me, and hopefully for you as well.

Again, this is also a podcast.

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During the keynote I had the pleasure of sitting next to Cristina Runkles, whose third grade class has just started podcasting. We exchanged web addresses since we were both into blogging and podcasting.

I've already listened to her students' work, and it's good stuff! Just imagine what these third graders will be capable of when they graduate, having experienced cutting edge technology at such an early level.

Academic Aesthetic Podcast 49 - PETEandC 1 of 7

After writing up my summary of the PETE&C DEN event I noticed that it can easily be divided into 7 sections. So, rather than bombard you with a large report I'll post one section a day this week. Short, sweet, bite-size chunks of information work much better for me, and hopefully for you as well.

Oh yeah, this is also a podcast. Enjoy.

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The first keynote speaker was Kathy Schrock, and she did a great job going over tips for visual presentations. Now granted, I knew most of her tips due to my training as an art teacher, but I've sat through far too many presentations (done by adults who should have known better) that included sounds, transitions, pictures, fonts, and even colors that just did not belong.

And of course the whole thing was made even better because she put examples and notes from her presentation online for us. This took a lot of pressure off of the people who were taking notes, and it also meant one less handout for us to file and forget. (I myself intend to use wikis for my presentations, since my last wiki is still the number one downloaded resource on the new DEN site. ... how did THAT happen?!)

Link Reciprocation

I'm working on write-ups and/or podcasts for the PETE&C DEN event, really! But until then, I have something else to share.

I was going through my site statistics to find out what kinds of websites are leading people here. Some of them are obviously just from people clicking on that "Next Blog" link at the top to see another Blogger blog (is that too redundant?), but others are nice to know or, at the very least ... interesting. In a lot of these searches I'm finding myself in very nice company.

• academic podcast (Google Search)
• aesthetic art education (MSN Search)
• aesthetic drawing (Google Search)
• art (Google Blog Search) (I'm not on that page any more - it updates too often)
• Acting to Improve
• Edu-Blogging 101: Teacher Blogs (Yes this is a shameless plug, but it's also a way that somebody found this site.)
• flickr+limit (Google Search)
• "Helen South" books (Google Search)
• "new literacy" vs. "old literacy" (Google Search)

Ok, enough ego boosting for one day. My next post SHOULD contain a podcast, one way or another.

PETE and C DEN Event Vidcast

I'm sorry to say the quality of this video is below what I wanted, but I still got to talk to a lot of people at the PETE & C preconference that was sponsored by the Discovery Educator Network.

Title: PETE and C DEN Event

File size: 6.4 MB

Length: 2:14

Format: mp4

Show Notes:
PETE & C
Teach42.com
DEN National
DEN Maryland
DEN Pennsylvania
KathySchrock.com

Collaborative Lessons Wiki and Frappr Map

Are you interested in having your K-12 class work with another class in another school for a lesson, project, or other activity? That's why the Collaborative Lessons group is here!

Just place a pin in our Frappr map, including the subject to which you'd like your lesson to relate. Include an email address in your "shoutout" message, along with any other specifics you'd like to add, and then other teachers will be able to see where you are and what you'd like to do.

Sometimes teachers want to do a collaboration with another class but just can't think of a good lesson idea. That's what this wiki is for! If you've got a cool concept for a collaborative lesson just go to the appropriate page (or make your own if the page doesn't exist) and add in your idea.

Don't worry about mistakes or immature people going in to change the pages in a bad way, every change is saved so we can always go back to the way the site used to be.