Thursday, June 27, 2013

Become a Discovery Education Network Star Educator -- DEN Star





Are you using Discovery Education streaming videos in your classroom?  Are you using other Discovery Education products?  If the answer to either of these questions is "yes", then you have a great opportunity: YOU can become a DEN Star!

What is a DEN Star? Glad you asked. DEN Stars are educators who share their Discovery experiences with other educators in informal conversations, grade-level meetings, or staff presentations at least twice a year. For the teeny amount of effort that is required, Discovery Education opens up a world of collaboration and creativity to you. 

As a DEN Star, you become part of a group of educators who are not trying to re-invent the wheel; they are trying to make it better and more relevant in our digital world. Through DEN events like hangouts and webinars, we collaborate and learn from one another. Through live events, we get hands-on training on how to seamlessly integrate technology into our classroom. 

Discovery Education is an organization filled with talented and thoughtful educators who want YOU to be successful. So go on...you have a few minutes now that you're on summer break...log-on to your Discovery Education account. Scroll down the Welcome page until you see 
Get Involved with the Discovery Educator Network (DEN)  and click. Just a simple click...and a great opportunity opens up to you. I hope you will seriously consider the benefits of becoming a DEN Star. The training you will receive and the people you will meet are simply DENmazing!

Earn Your Whole Brain Teaching Certification: Join the WBT Book Club





Make your summer count -- earn your WBT Certification. WBT has made it easy to earn lots of certification points this summer via the WBT Book Club (wbtbookclub.blogspot.com) 

All you have to do is read Chris Biffle's new book Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids and write 250-word essays. Post the essays to the blog and, voila, you earn points. Up to 25 points per essay.

Don't let this opportunity  -- and your summer -- slip away. Get on the WBT train to Teacher Heaven!

Saturday, June 22, 2013

Whole Brain Teaching National Conference 2013



“Time goes by so fast in here.” -- comment from my students  

Just returned from the Whole Brain Teaching National Conference – it was everything I had hoped it would be. I got hours and hours of direct instruction on how to teach the Whole Brain way. For three days, we met from 8:30 to 3:30. The amazing thing is, as a conference student, I was never bored, never wondered when the next break was, never wished the speaker would just stop and let me go home. Why was that? Why is Whole Brain Teaching so interesting to the student? It is because Whole Brain Teaching requires total engagement from every student. Each learner must gesture and teach their neighbor. Students are SO brain-engaged that our minds don’t have time to wander. Didn't make it to the conference? Visit to the WBT website: wholebrainteaching.com. Everything is FREE! There are e-books, hours upon hours of videos, and a forum where you can get your questions answered.