Teachers Love SMART Boards

SmartBoard Start Center Customization

Here's a free training video on adding a program or application directly to your SmartBoard Start Center. This is a quick and easy way to start a program(s) that you use primarily with your Smart Board.

Smartboard and Starfall

I wanted to share a video with everyone. This is my six year old daughter Jasmine and me playing around on the Starfall website. We've used Starfall with Jasmine for the last couple years and I think it is an outstanding companion to the Smart Board.  Jasmine simply loves using the Smart Board.

Teachers Love SMART Boards in French

I have been playing around with a new tool from Yahoo called Yahoo Pipes. Using this tool, I have created a feed of my blog in French. Users can subscribe to this new version of Teachers Love SMART Boards to receive updates about this blog in French. I have no way of knowing how good the translation is since it's done by a computer but hopefully it will allow me to reach out and share my resource with a broader audience.

Smartboard PowerPoint Resource Page (don't tell anyone)

Shhhhhh...don't tell anyone about this wonderful website packed full of PowerPoint presentations and educational resources covering all subjects under the sun. I'm not even going to mention the name Pete's Power Point Station because then other teachers could just search for it on Google.

Remember...keep this one a secret. If you tell other teachers, they will also have access to all of these wonderful resources and can use them to help their kids learn. Or, if you're someone like me who thinks we should share the our educational knowledge base, you can TELL THE WORLD!

SmartBoard Games for Primary

Last night, I wanted to play a memory game with my six year old daughter using my Smartboard (it's really cool having a Smart Board at home). While searching for a memory game to use, I found a site that has some fun games and activities that would go well with the Smartboard and primary school aged children. These activities are simple, fun, and interactive and I'm sure teachers could find some creative uses for a few of them.

These interactive games for your Smartboard are provide by a company called Entheos. You can play these games without downloading them or you can download the "flash" file and play them independently of the website. Please note that I'm not recommending the "Dementor" game but all the other ones are pretty cool.

Smart Board Comments and ESL

My friend Jon Fisher from Mr. Fisher's Global Learners Blog recently made a comment about my blog entry "Smart Board ESL Website." As educators we must remember that much of the information we receive is viral. What does this mean? It means we hear about great resources through "word of mouth."

This is exactly why blogs are becoming such a wonderful resource for teachers. Comments spark the sharing of ideas and enhance the original blog entry. In the case of Jon's comment (which talked about ESL for early grades),  I reviewed a number of ESL websites that were sent to me from another reader of my blog named Keith. Keith maintains another resource website for Smart Boards.

After reviewing the ESL sites, I am able to recommend the website "manythings." It has some great ESL resources that would work extremely well on a Smartboard. In addition, it has a page titled "Easy Things for Beginners" which provide great resources for the early grades.

This one post contains four great website links for teachers interested in ESL and/or Smart Board resources and was written as a direct result of Jon's comment. Thanks Jon!

SmartBoards: Do We Need Them?

Please watch. It's truly one of the most enlightening and emotional videos I've ever seen.

Smartboard Notebook Lesson Example

I would like to share a Smart Notebook lesson created by a student taking a Technology in Education class. This is one of her first attempts at creating an interactive lesson and I thought she did a great job. She gave me permission to display her lesson and she encourages comments about her lesson.

Smartboard Interactive Websites for High School

Interactive whiteboards are not just for the younger kids. Many great websites exist for High School students as well, including the Chatterbee's website.

Here are my top three favorite things about this site:

1. The In-class presentation page: This page includes links to interactive websites for health & medicine, Science, Social Studies, and History. This is a great resource for students looking for interactive websites to help them with their presentations.

2. The Invisible Web Search page: This page provides a list of some great search engines that help both students and teachers find great educational material. My favorite one is Infomine.

3. The Rocketbee search page: This page provides multiple types of searches all on one page. You can search for pictures, quotations, news, answers to questions, etc. This is a great resource for anyone's bookmark page.

SmartBoard Case Study Article

It's always good to read about how the SmartBoard can make a difference in the classroom. Here's a short article written by Lesley Christianson called Teachers Use Smartboard Technology to Engage Students.

From the article:

“I just got this about a month ago,” Maiers said during class last Friday. “I was a little surprised because there were only a few in the district, so I was excited. I was a little scared because I’m not exactly tech-savvy, so I jumped in with both feet.”

SmartBoard website recommendation

The Director of Educational Technology from Arizona recently told me about a great web resource for the Smartboard. The site is called LearnAlberta.ca and was created by the Government of Alberta Canada.

I've spent quite a bit of time this morning viewing all the different activities for grades K-12. I'm extremely impressed by the quality of many of the activities. It should be noted that not all the activities are available. When you're looking through the activities, you will not be able to use the ones that have a lock next to the activity name.

Teachers from the US and other countries will have to correlate the Canadian standards to their school. However, one really cool thing about activities from other countries is that they can often present an entirely new way of thinking about a concept.

If you know of any other great resources like this, please leave your recommendation in the comment section!

SmartBoard Newsletter: The Funding Issue

Smart Technologies has released their newsletter entitled "The Funding Issue."

After reading through the newsletter, I discovered some very interesting links as well as some welcome news from the U.S. Congress.

1. The newletter has a great link to an article called "Need Funding: Grant Providers and Winners Share Tips for Getting Approved". In this article, you will find some very valuable information on grant funding. In addition, they share a great Case Study of the School District of Jennings and how they use Smartboards to improve student achievement.

2. A bill called Achievement Through Technology and Innovation (ATTAIN) has been introduced in the US Congress that will help build upon the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) program. (This blog was created as part of an EETT grant awarded to two school districts in Arizona.)

3. Please check out the 4th page of the newsletter that discusses how a 5th grade teacher uses her Smart Board to correct student work in a way that is both engaging and meaningful.

SmartBoards for Smart Teachers

I would like to acknowledge a special group of educators from Hayden-Winkelman USD in Arizona who will be learning how to use the Smart Board Interactive Whiteboard in the classroom. Like most teachers, they are dedicated in their pursuit to help educate the children in their community.

Many of these teachers are being introduced to Smartboards over the next few weeks so I would like to show them a quick video demonstration of the Smartboard in action.

SMART Board Demonstration

Smartboard Notebook Tools

I want to remind educators about some of the great resources found in the Smart Notebook Gallery. Today, I'll present a quick video tutorial on how to find and use the countdown timer.

I also want to remind you to click on the help menu of your Notebook software and select "Check for Updates..." to ensure you have the most recent version of the Smart Notebook software as well as the Smart Essentials for Educators.

SmartBoard ESL Website

I've noticed a number of people searching for Smartboard + ESL. I will do some research to find some good sites to for your ESL students. I do know of one site that has a lot of good ESL resources that would work well with your Smartboard.

It's called Activities for ESL Students at a4esl.org. This site was created as a project of The Internet TESL Journal and contains thousands of great contributions by teachers. I highly recommend clicking on the "Flash" link in the menu to bring you to the flash-based activities.

If you know of any other good ESL resources for the Smartboard, please include them in the comment section.

SmartBoard Research Article

It's very important for teachers to understand how to utilize an interactive whiteboard most effectively. I found an excellent research paper that probes three case studies of teachers using interactive whiteboards in the classroom. The paper is called Collaborative Research Methodology for Investigating teaching and Learning: the Use of Interactive Whiteboard Technology.

I recommend reading the three case studies and the concluding remarks at the end. I'm certainly glad that the authors discuss the importance of ongoing training and support. The authors conclude that without in-service support and training, it is not likely that teachers will have knowledge of or utilize all the features of the interactive whiteboard.

SmartBoard Blog Report #2

It's Sunday and time for the SmartBoard blog roundup.

• The first blog entry is Pdtodo's 91st entry for their SmartBoard Lesson Podcast. This week Ben shares the anticipation guide strategy in a SMART Notebook form and an enhanced notebook form with Senteo functions. Joan and Ben also share their thoughts about the Senteo (student response system) product.
• Here is Mr. Jon Fisher's post on how to do "Video Screen Captures using Smart Board." Jon has some great posts on his experiences in using technology in the classroom. It's definitely worth a visit.
• The "New Teacher Resources" post on the blog Smartboard 2007 is where I found the "Mapping Our World" website. I'm sure you'll find other good stuff here as well.
• You can visit the blog entry "How are you using your classroom smartboard?" for some great responses to the question.

SmartBoard Interactive Website - Mapping Our World

Here's a wonderful resource for your interactive whiteboard that teachers that can apply to any subject area if used creatively. It's a website called "Mapping Our World."

It comes with three lessons: The Globe Unwrapped, What on Earth, and Holey Moley. Each lesson comes with complete teacher notes and the website provides a curriculum link file. I would share more about this great resource but it's better to check it out for yourself.

If you can't use it in your classroom, I'm sure you know someone who can!!

SmartBoards Blog Additions

I have added a few things to my blog recently that I thought would be of interest.

1. In the top of the right column, I have added a new page to the blog called "Teacher Resources." This page will contain various resources for teachers to use in the classroom. The first resource that I mention on this page is BrainPop. So many schools are already using this tool and it's a great resource for any classroom.
2. I have added a quick survey on the right-hand column. The current survey asks about how your SmartBoard is mounted (giggidy) in your classroom. You may need to scroll down a little to find it.
3. If you're new to blogs, you may not know about feeds and email subscriptions. Feeds allow the user to subscribe to blogs and receive notifications about updates sent to a feed reader. What is a feed reader? There are many feed readers to use that allow you to customize the information sent to you. I personally use My Yahoo and Netvibes. Read more about feeds from FeedBurner. As for email updates you can type in your email address where it says "Get Personalized Updates" on the right-hand side of the screen. An email will be sent to you when this blog gets an update. No worries, your email address is never shared; it is completely secure and you can unsubscribe to email updates at any time!!
4. I put in a search engine on the right side of the blog called "BlogBar." This is a great way to search for information on this blog. For example, if you want Google to search for the word "math" but only want results from this blog, type in math and make sure you select the "This Site" radio button. You will then get a listing of all pages that have the word "math" anywhere on this blog.

I love comments and emails so keep em coming!

SmartBoard Resource

I'm very excited about a new resource I found called XTIMELINE. Xtimeline is a website that allows you to create, share, and explore timelines.

Obviously, this lends itself nicely when using a SmartBoard and can be used by teachers and students to create wonderful interactive whiteboard lessons.

Our district uses a wonderful technology integration model called GenYES. This program is designed to be a professional development program for teachers where the students partner with another teacher, create a technology-based lesson plan for their partner teacher, show their partner teacher how they created the lesson, and then help the teacher implement the lesson in the classroom. Xtimeline would be a great tool for this program.

Here's a link that will take you to a timeline for Harry Potter that I thought would be fun to look at. However, there are plenty of educational timelines already made that could be used immediately. The possibilities are endless.

If you've used this tool, please leave a comment in the comment section to let others know how it went!

SmartBoard Blog Report

Take some time to read blogs about SmartBoards from the past day

• How are you using your classroom smartboard?

Any teachers out there have smartboards? How are you using it? Do you find it helpful as a teacher resource?

• SmartBoard Fun

I just wanted to tell a little about how my class has been using the SmartBoard

SmartBoard Activities using PowerPoint

I get more emails about what I think are good PowerPoint activities to use with the SmartBoard. PowerPoint continues to be a very popular SmartBoard software program so I will continue to recommend some great websites that have good PowerPoint activities to use on an interactive whiteboard.

Here's one of my favorite sites that has some great PowerPoint templates. It's called Parade of Games in PowerPoint and is free to use for educational purposes.

The website design is very friendly and comes from the faculty at the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater. Because it's a college site, some of the examples have college-level questions and answers. However, it is extremely easy to modify for any grade level.

SmartBoards in the Classroom - Positives and Negatives

I wanted to include a list of some of the positive and negative aspects of using an interactive whiteboard (SmartBoard) in the classroom.

Positive

• Teacher can manipulate objects in direct response to student inquiry
• Presentation of learning material is improved
• Class focus and access to the same learning resources is improved
• Teacher planning effectiveness is improved
• Teachers can share resources more effectively
• Student motivation is improved
• Students collaborate and communicate more effectively
• Student thoughts are communicated in a more organized manner

Negative

• Difficulty in students reaching the board
• Difficulty in setting up and keeping board in alignment
• Additional training is necessary
• Lesson Plan preparation time is increased

As for the negatives, I can only say that it definitely helps having your SmartBoard mounted permanently and having your projector mounted in the ceiling. This reduces the problem of shadows as well as initial setup. From my experience as well as what I hear from other teachers, if teachers have to setup the SmartBoard prior to class they will eventually refrain from using it as a tool.

The training is also an issue. Training must be directly tied to the classroom. All-day workshops will provide an initial level of excitement; however, without follow-up, the training is doomed to fail. Training must carry directly to the classroom. Also, the amount of information conveyed to the teachers should come in chunks so teachers can focus on mastering specific skills one at a time. Training needs to be conducted regularly and throughout the entire school year.

Please share any additional positives or negatives in the comment section

SmartBoard Lessons

How do you create engaging lessons on your own? One of the best places to start is by downloading the Lesson Activity Toolkit. The Lesson Activity Toolkit installs into your Notebook software and is accessed through your Gallery tab.

From Smart Technologies...

"Toolkit helps you create engaging and interactive content like word games, quizzes and sorting tables, and offers you Adobe Flash tools like hide-and-reveal and drag-and-drop. Your lessons move and respond with as much energy as your students."

After playing around with it, I'm definitely hooked! This is one of Smart Technologies best new SmartBoard resources. To read more about the Toolkit before downloading, go to the Lesson Activity Toolkit page.

Once you familiarize yourself with the different items, I'm sure you'll be creating all sorts of cool SmartBoard activities in a matter of minutes!

Smart Boards - How to Integrate into Classroom

I enjoy spending Sunday mornings reading blog entries from other teachers. It's really amazing how many teachers share the same challenges and obstacles.

I want to recommend a short article I found on Teachers Network written by Allisyn Levy called How to Integrate a SmartBoard into Your Teaching. It's a great introductory article with some simple but powerful suggestions for how to use your Smartboard.

If you find any other good articles for teachers just beginning to use their Smart Boards, please leave a comment or send me an email.