Best Practice 3: Discovery Educator Network

What is Discovery Educator Network?

The Discovery Educator Network (DEN) is a global community of educators who are passionate about teaching with digital media, sharing resources, collaboration and networking. With over 100,000 members, DEN provide professional development to educators worldwide. DEN also have exclusive access to wide rang of resources, professional development and networking opportunities which connects teachers both on-line and in person.

Basically at DEN, educators are able to read blogs and discussion boards as well as to search for content by grade level of a particular subject area. At the same time, the DEN streaming library contains hundreds of speeches with transcripts and encyclopedia articles. On the other hand, students also benefited from the DEN where they can access targeted streaming media content, assignments and quizzes. What is more interesting is that the DEN streaming media can be incorporated into WEB 2.0 applications to allow students to express their learning through different mobalities.

Success Story

The Discovery Educator Network (DEN) is a global community of educators passionate about teaching with digital media, sharing resources, collaborating, and networking. The DEN 4500+ STAR Discovery Educators have provided professional development to over 1 million educators worldwide, both on-line and in-person. Discovery Educators have exclusive access to a wide range of resources, professional development activities, networking opportunities and exclusive Discovery.

An online survey was done in March 2011 at Harvard Graduate School of Education to determine how the DEN has affected the school's professional development and their use of technology. The result found out that around 90% of educators said that the DEN has tremendously contributed to their professional growth. Nearly all reported that their use of technology had improved as a result of their involvement. The DEN clearly meets the needs among educators through providing an opportunity for them to share successes and receive meaningful and relevant support from each other. Not to mention keeping them keep abreast of current educational advances.

At the same time the respondents said that the DEN had helped them to professionally grow in their field. Educators are having access to great resources, getting new ideas about how to integrate technology and being able to keep up with current trends. Nearly all respondents reported that their technology use had improved and increased in some way as a result of their involvement with the DEN

Source: http://blog.discoveryeducation.com