CreationStation

 Prior to implementing the SAFARI Montage system, Allen ISD was using school-based media retrieval systems. That was back in 2006, and David Spann, AISD’s Executive Director of Technology, says that the district set its sights on a centralized digital media system. “The goal was to streamline, and with SAFARI Montage, we no longer have a need to put VCRs or DVD players in all of our classrooms,” he explains, adding, “The content on SAFARI Montage opened up a lot of avenues for our teachers.”

TIES 2011 was held on December 12 & 13 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Tierney Brothers, a dealer for SAFARI Montage located in Minnesota, had an amazing booth setup consisting of four SMART Boards, four iPads, a SMART table and, of course, SAFARI Montage! SAFARI Montage was shown on several different devices within the booth.

Congratulations to Della Curtis, coordinator of library information services for Baltimore County Public Schools and winner of Tech & Learning magazine’s 24th annual Leader of the Year program. Della, who has blogged for us here at SAFARI Montage HD Network, has been honored for her visionary leadership in the creation of a true library without walls through the use of the technology she has brought into BCPS, and the way it has been integrated into administrative and instructional needs in a cost-effective manner. 

I recently collaborated with an innovative group from Hastings School District. This district, which is located in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota, has many forward thinking staff. While meeting with this group of education professionals the topic of mobile devices and SAFARI Montage was discussed. Can they work together? What would it take to get this done? What are the benefits of marrying our [Hastings School District] SAFARI Montage system with mobile devices? Those, among many other questions, lead to great discussion and a list of integration strategies. Below I have shared three of these strategies in detail.

At Allen ISD we have been active users of SAFARI Montage and CreationStation since 2007. One of our most active user groups is our English Language Arts team and this year we made a big push to support their need for literary adaptations on SAFARI montage through CreationStation.

Forsyth County School District in Georgia is visioning for how to change education in our school district to meet the needs of students today and in the future.

In today’s world many teachers are starting to integrate more and more digital content into instruction. With SAFARI Montage teachers do not have to download internet content the night before class and hope it will play the next day! Our content is not streamed from the internet but instead we use a file sharing process, where the content is provided on a server that “lives” in your school building or district. What this means to you as a teacher is with one click, from one interface, you can access thousands of digital assets to include in teaching.

In speaking with SAFARI Montage users in schools districts around the country we have heard of some really interesting and exciting ways that SAFARI Montage is being used to support back to school initiatives.  Here are a few of our favorites...