New England Day of Discovery

This past Saturday, I spent the day at the Baker Elementary School in Brockton for Discovery Education's New England Day of Discovery, a day filled with workshops on a variety of topics relating to the use of Discovery Ed. materials in the classroom. I attended along with my colleagues Nicole Medeiros and Christine Connell and we all came away fairly satisfied.

Other than the fact that we sat in chairs designed for elementary aged students, Baker is a tremendous facility that is very clean with modern amenities. With Promethean Boards everywhere, the presenters were able to provide us with some interesting material.

After an entertaining keynote address by Animal Planet's Dan Riskin, I opened the day with a presentation by Glogster. While I would like to spend a whole day learning all there is to now about Glogster, I was able to get a couple of questions I had answered. Glogster, a program which takes posters and book reports into the 21st century, is something I have been playing with for some time now and would like to get some Durfee teachers on board. Currently, Ann Cabucio, in the Vocational Department, is using the free version of Glogster with her students. I will be showing some of those results on the Durfee webpage soon.

After lunch, we attended a presentation that featured several Web 2.0 activities, which was mostly centered on the use of Google Earth. That was followed by a session about the use of iPads in education and finally, I got to explore some of the administrative functions of the Discovery program.

Of course, the point of my attending such an event is to bring the knowledge gained back to Durfee and spread it to the staff. My hope is to start with Glogster. I am looking for staff interested in getting started with this unique program, which allows students to use their creativity in an environment that is safe and fun. I will be holding trainings on this topic soon and I am hopeful teachers will be as excited as I am about the benefits of this teaching tool. For more information about Glogster, visit their website.