Discovery Education, meet the Travel Channel.

This morning I’m back at the IL-TCE conference and will be presenting a session about podcasting in the afternoon. 48 hours ago, I was in the exact same location getting ready to present a blogging workshop. In between now and then, a total whirlwind.

After the workshop on Tuesday, I raced to the airport and flew out to Maryland. I got to the hotel around 1:00am, and after hanging out with a few regional managers who were still in the lobby working, I hit the sack. At 9:00am I found myself in a room full of Travel Channel folks who were getting a crew of ‘talent’ ready for a 12 week adventure overseas. There were cameras and laptops everywhere (Powerbooks of course), and within the first couple minutes we were addressed by the Executive Vice President of the Travel Channel as well as the CEO of Discovery Communications Inc itself.

By this time, you may be wondering what the heck I was doing there (to be honest, I was kinda wondering that myself). There was a pretty darn good reason though. The Discovery Educator Network got permission to send a teacher along with the cast and crew of the upcoming TV show 5 Takes! Josh Wolff, a Discovery Educator from Queens, is going to be spending 12 weeks exploring Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, and several other locations. Incredibly cool stuff.

Now, just sending a teacher along on the trip would be cool enough, but we figure we’re Discovery Education, we can do better. So he’s going to be blogging, creating video blogs, sharing digital photos and possibly even doing some live video conferences throughout his trip. He’s going to be taking his travel experiences and packaging them up to share with classrooms around the world. Through message boards and polls, students are going to be able to send Josh off to specific locations to research topics that they want to find out more about. While we can’t send every student in the US to Australia, we can send a teacher there who will be taking direction from students and classes here in the states to bring them them enriching multicultural experiences.

Of course, if that’s all we were doing, that would definitely be enough. But then again, we’re Discovery Education, we can do better. So we also have a team of curriculum folks who are going to be providing guidance to teachers who want to integrate Josh’s experiences into their classrooms. We also have people who are designing webinars for schools Discovery Education customers (which to be honest, are most schools in the country) to teach educators how to create virtual field trips, travelogues, and digital stories of their own. They’ll help teachers get the most out of Josh’s trip and learn how to create similar experiences for their own students.

I have to throw out a little disclaimer here. Alot of this stuff is still in the works. While the project is definitely a go, we’re still working out quite a few of the details and trying to figure out what we can realisitically do, because if we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it WELL. As I said, we’re Discovery Education.

By now, you can probably figure out why exactly I was sitting in that room surrounded by network folks. I’m handling the online aspects of Josh’s trip, which is obviously the bulk of what he’s sharing with you. It’s a big project and there’s a million details to coordinate, but I can’t complain. it’s way too much fun!

It’s funny, I know that I work for Discovery. Yes, that Discovery. However, it’s one thing to work for that company, and quite another to be sitting in a room as they create a show that I’m going to record on my Tivo and watch in my living room. Considering that I was in a kindergarten classroom less than four months ago, it feels like my entire world has been turned completely upside down. In a very good way though. While I may not have my own group of kids anymore, I get to work with a company that’s committed to using every resource available to making sure that schools are able to bring all the advantages of cutting edge technology directly to their classrooms.

I don’t just work for Discovery Education, I’m a fan.

2 Comments

Teach42 - Education and Technology, by Steve Dembo » Discovery Educator Abroad: Pacific Rim
3/20/2006

[...] Just got a new site up today! I’ve been in love with this project the moment I heard about it. I mentioned it in brief a couple weeks ago, but things are up and rolling now. [...]

Teaching
12/21/2009

Thanks for sharing. I stumbled into your site while looking for teaching innovations to use for my classes. I think what Discovery Education is trying to do is great. Having people share what they learned while traveling will be so inspiring for students.

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