SU2C + Discovery Health = Lifesaving

An excellent digital resource from Discovery Education

One of my favorite cancer resources is Discovery Health, and I use it in the classroom, even though I teach English. Why?

1. Because this product has relevance to every curriculum.
2. Cancer touches every family.
3. I have students battling cancer, as well as their family members.
4. Art imitates life, and literature, print and non-print media, increasingly explores health, wellness and diseases in writing life.
5. Because I am rewired digitally, and while not an iGeneration, I teach them, and they make an impact on my daily life, in and out of the classroom. So does Discovery Health.
6. And because I have cancer.
7. Because I am beating back cancer with resources available to me in a format I embrace -- Discovery Health.

Airs tonight!

I learned about SU2C because it appeared in Discovery Health when I accessed it to use for a classroom concept. Let's face it, we all lead busy lives, so I don't always watch TV, read magazines (hard copy, at least), and I almost never ever read a newspaper. What I grab and go with happens via social networking and classroom preparations, aka lesson planning. That's how I found out that I will be watching Stand Up To Cancer tonight at 8 PM Eastern.
And to be honest, anything that can improve the quality of life, improve a lifestyle, or save a life--that's for me. Thank you, Discovery Health, for really making your products authentic, relevant, and well, lifesaving.

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Life Lessons

Some gifts keep giving. Of all the learning and teaching resources available to educators, instructional technologists, students and parents, nothing equals the power of the Discovery Educator Network. Discovery delivers cutting edge technology before the edge is cut, providing some of the finest professional development, products, resources, and 21st century learning available globally. Celebrating DEN Teacher Appreciation Week, May 3-7, 2010, Discovery gave their STARS a week-long thank you of unbeatable educational gifts. Among them was extended access to the Discovery Education suite, connecting to a world of learning with 9,000 full-length videos, and Discovery Health.

In the past, I have used Discoverystreaming Plus to plan lessons for my students. There is nothing safer on the planet for classroom use, but now I am truly creating life lessons, this time for myself as well. Using my Teacher Appreciation package from the DEN, I began constructing a diet plan for beating back cancer. Since I like learning like a digital native, I prefer videos to text because multimedia engages the math-science underdeveloped half of my brain. Now the Teacher Center and my Builder Tools enable me to create special life lessons that connect me with my students, too many of whom have family members coping with serious illness.

When I decided to use my cancer diagnosis as a teaching tool, I suspected that cancer touched every family. Now that I know how true my suspicions were, educational tools from Discovery Education will give new meaning to authentic learning in a 21st century context. Life lessons. Some gift do keep giving.

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A Lost Art

Two years ago, I joined the 365 Days Flickr Challenge, largely because I was so impressed and influenced by shutterbug Jennifer Hartman Jensen's blog, Everyday In A Photo. And because so many of my DEN PLN participated, I wanted to join them. The goal of the challenge is to see your world in a whole new way through a daily photo. Truth be told, I did see my world in a whole new way, enjoying the challenge to capture the moments in which I live. I saw the finite parts within the whole, looking at composition with a different lens. Stamens and pistils, water on a leaf's blade, a startled duck in flight from the pond, first light rising behind our mountain, a blue valley--I lived more intensely inside the photographic moments.

Then my dear friend Jennifer Dorman, who anchored the PA DEN blog, broke the news via her social networks that she was hired by Discovery Education (we saw that one coming, Jen), leaving a vast void to fill. Since I was the other blogger, an occasional poster, I tried to fill her footprint. Impossible, but slowly I found my niche, leaving 365 Days in permanent suspension. No regrets. Just exchanged one challenge for another.

Now life presents a different challenge, one I did not anticipate that feels a lot like 365 Days. Similar, but different. I am no longer taking a literal daily snapshot showing my world in a whole new way. But I am living a whole new way, relishing life moments with a new intensity for seeing, feeling, and being.

Quite honestly, I do not want to lose this mindset, fully living fully freighted inside the moments. It's a good thing. Life no longer looks like fast-speed forward. I'm not TiVoing my life, nor am I trying to fill more space in high definition resolution. I'm just living in the moment, and I suspect it is a lost art.