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Smartboard Notebook Lessons

If you're a reader of my blog, you know my motto is Sharing is Caring. Marcia Jeans, Instructional Technology Specialist for Wichita Public Schools, takes this wonderful concept to a new level by sharing her Smart Notebook resource page with other teachers. She posted the link to these resources on the SMART Exchange Forum.

Don't forget that Smart Technologies has a treasure trove of Notebook lessons for you to download and use in the classroom.

Happy New Year!

Sharing is Caring!

Smartboard Video Resources

It's time to start up the presses again here at Teachers Love SMART Boards. I hope everyone had a great holiday!

The wonderful people from Smart Technologies have started building a video library on YouTube. It is a great idea and I'm sure this will become a great resource. In addition to their videos, you can also find various training videos on my YouTube site. If you're looking for a quick video demonstration on how to use your SMART Board, let me know; I can usually put something together in a few minutes. I think video training is a great tool for learning.

Here's a fun training video that demonstrates how to add a YouTube video into your SMART Notebook software. This video uses a Firefox add-on called DownloadHelper to capture the YouTube video. If you're not using Firefox then I recommend using Zamzar to capture YouTube videos to your harddrive. I'm sure other people can recommend various ways to do this.

                                       

Launch in external player

Sharing is Caring!

SMARTBoard Christmas Holiday Resources Page

I have created a separate page of all the Christmas Holiday Resources found on my blog so you don't have to search around my blog. After you go to the page, you can also bookmark the page for future reference or add the page to your favorite social bookmarking site.

My family and I wish all my readers a very Merry Christmas!

Sharing is Caring!

SMART Boards and Holiday Fun #5

I have three holiday files to share with you.

The first is Christmas Carol notebook file created by my Twitter friend Rachel that contains picture clues for students to use to guess the names of popular Christmas Carols.

The second is a Christmas Letters notebook file that has all the letters in the alphabet created in a holiday motif. I got the pictures from the Christmas Alphabet website and copied the pictures to a Notebook file so you could use them easily.

The last file is a storyboard of Twas the Night Before Christmas. This could be a great activity to print or have the kids come up and draw on your SMART Board.

Sharing is Caring!

 

SMART Boards and Holiday Fun #4

If you were looking for another great Christmas game to play on your Smartboard, look no further. Here's a holiday flash-based game called Snow Line.

In this multi-level game, you have to use your logic to draw a snow line for Santa to pick up all the presents. Maybe I'm just a kid at heart but I really had fun playing this game!

Remember to use this game for educational purposes only.

This game is Smart Board tested and Hollis approved!

Merry Christmas! Sharing is Caring!

Twelve Days of Christmas

(Scroll down for SMARTBoard Christmas activities)

The original members of Straight No Chaser perform their comedic version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" at the Musical Arts Center, Bloomington, Indiana. December 7th, 1998.

This could be a lot of fun to show on your SMART Board. It's absolutely brilliant!

I couldn't resist putting this up on my blog.

Enjoy!

SMART Boards and Holiday Fun #3

Thank you to everyone who has sent in website recommendations for Christmas. I've taken the time to go through the sites and find activities that would be work well on the SMARTBoard. Here are additional websites for the younger kids that work great with your Smartboard:

Snowflake Designer: I know of a few really good sites that allow you to create an online snowflake. This site lets you do that but it also has step-by-step instruction for doing this with an actual sheet of paper. (This site is perfect for the Smartboard. My 6 year old loves it!!!!

Here are two interactive counting games for Kindergarten and 1st grade students (4 through 6 year olds). The first one is called Christmas Tree Count and the second is Santa Count. Both work great on the Smartboard and have some neat features to help organize numbers.

For the private schools, here's a great story-telling website for beginner readers that tells the story of Jesus.

Here are two more fun games for the primary grade students that you'll have to work hard to find any educational value. The first activity let's kids put Rudolf back together; the second one let's you build a snowman. What the heck, it's Christmas!

Thank you to everyone who has contributed suggestions. Please visit the priestsic delicious site that has all of these resources and much more.  While not all the Christmas resources are suited for the SMART Board, there is a lot of great stuff to use for the holiday season. Thanks to my friend Tom from across the pond for sharing this wonderful resource!

Sharing is Caring!

SMART Boards and Holiday Fun #2

Just in case you haven't had the opportunity to read the comments left here, I want to share with you a web site that has four fun Christmas activities for your SMARTBoard. The activities are once again more suitable for the younger students; however, the hilarity of the Reindeer Orchestra with make you laugh at any age. Once again, you'll have to be creative to find educational value here but I know it can be done! :0)

I'll be putting more fun holiday links here during the day and the remainder of the week so check back often.

Thanks Karen for putting these links together and sharing them with others!

Sharing is Caring!

SMART Boards and Holiday Fun #1

The holiday season is here so I thought I would help teachers locate some fun holiday Christmas activities for their Smartboard. The first activities are for primary grade students.

Here's a fun little game where the students can build their own snowman. You'll have to be creative to find any educational value in this one. That's okay, it's still fun!

Here's a wonderful activity from Starfall called Ten Little Snowmen. This activity not only helps the young kids to read, it also let's them build a snowman along the way.

Here's one more activity that's a lot of fun. It's a sliding Santa puzzle perfect for the Smartboard.

I'll be posting more SMART Board holiday activities as we count down to Christmas!

Sharing is Caring!

Smart Board Games for a Friday Afternoon #4

Look no further. Here's one of the absolute best games you can play on your Smartboard on a Friday afternoon. It's a flash version of the game Hangman that is guaranteed to keep the kids happy. It's an outstanding version of the game that allows you to choose words from various categories. It's perfect for almost any grade level.

An option for teachers is to find the words in the Hangman dictionary and bring in the Hangman flash file into your SMART Notebook software. You could then add pictures of the words to help the children in the lower grades.

Oh what the heck, please wait a few minutes while I create a Notebook file that does this for the animal category. {Jeopardy theme song plays...}


Okay! It's been about 20 minutes but I've created a two-page Hangman Animal Notebook file (right-click to save file) that contains the Hangman flash application as well as all the animal pictures contained in the Animal category. Enjoy!!!

Sharing is Caring!

SMART Board Newsletter: Contest Winners and Holiday Resources

This month's EDCompass newsletter is now available. It's a great issue that focuses on differentiating instruction. I enjoyed the newsletter this month and was excited to see the list of Lesson Activity Contest Winners. I highly recommend that you download and review all the lessons to see how other teachers are using Notebook. In addition to the contest winners, the newsletter also includes information on seasonal resources in their Classroom Content section. Here's a summary of what's included in the newsletter:

Celebrate the season with the following Christmas lesson activities. There’s also an activity to help you practice differentiation.

Christmas Activities: Language arts students in grades 1–3 can complete Christmas word games and crossword puzzles, and even build a snowman!

Christmas Math Fun: Math students in grades 4–6 can practice addition and subtraction, money, and time word problems.

Four Key Events in the 20th Century: Social studies students in grades 7–9 can identify the main causes of four key events in the 20th century. Differentiation can be achieved by adding various website links and customizing the questions to help students explore the different historic events.

Thanks to all the wonderful people at SMART Technology who continue to bring us these wonderful resources!

Sharing is Caring!

SMARTBoard and Picnik Photo Editor

I have a wonderful new tool for your SMART Board; well actually, it's a website! The website is called Picnik and it allows you to edit pictures without needing any software installed on your computer. It does all the work for you. Since they just added some fun things you can do for the holidays, I thought I would share this wonderful resource with you before the holidays.

I created a short video showing you the basics of using Picnik with your Smartboard interactive whiteboard. So grab your digital camera and let's have some fun!

(Click PLAY > button to start video)

                    

SMART Board Forum on The SMART Exchange

Do you know of the wonderful new forum available to SMART Board users? It's from SMART Technologies and it can be found on the new SMART Exchange.

If you're not familiar with The SMART Exchange, here's more information directly from the site:

At SMART, we believe in the value of education. For 20 years, SMART has been dedicated to supporting educators with innovative tools that improve learning outcomes. SMART is passionate about technology-enabled learning, and we want to share our stories and insights with you.

The SMART Exchange is powered by your potential. Collaborate with your colleagues and other educators from around the globe. Connect with a variety of SMART experts including product managers, content specialists and technical support staff. Share your knowledge, celebrate your success stories and inspire your peers.

From what I've seen, the new SMART Exchange will quickly become an invaluable resource for all SMART Board users. I will monitor and contribute to the new forum; I will also maintain the forum found here and you can still register on my forum to receive a whole bunch of free resources.

Sharing is Caring!

SMART Board and Space Exploration

I love this website from the British National Space Center (BNSC) that not only provides a wealth of information on Space Exploration but also provides a wonderful Learning Center that contains outstanding resources for all age levels. The flash animations for the lower grades are especially engaging and are perfect for your Smartboard interactive whiteboard.

Enjoy!

Sharing is Caring!

SMARTBoard Lesson Podcast - Edublog Award Winner!

This is great opportunity to remind my readers about the SMARTBoard Lesson Podcast which is one of the best website resources for SMART Boards. Actually the authors of this wonderful site, Ben and Joan, have been awarded the Edublog Best educational use of audio 2007.

Congratulations Ben and Joan!

SMARTBoard Word Magnets

Here's a wonderful website companion for your SMARTboard called Word Magnets. This is one of the most powerful yet simplest ideas I've seen. It's definitely a must have for any SMART Board user.

Enjoy!

Sharing is Caring!

SMART Board and Flash

Flash technology has become a very popular method for creating media that contains animation and interactivity. Because of this, Flash media is often the perfect companion for your SMART Board.

I want to share a website called AIM Your Projects With Flash that not only teaches you how to create flash objects, but also provides a comprehensive listing of example flash projects.

Enjoy!

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For anyone using Firefox and who wants to be a little ambitious, you can always check out SWF Catcher which can help save flash files to your computer. This tip comes from my friend Quentin from TeachingHacks.com. 

Sharing is Caring!

SMART Board Vocabulary: Help End World Hunger

Question:

How can you teach vocabulary on your SMART Board while at the same time working to end world hunger?

Answer:

FreeRice

Here's information from the site:

FreeRice has two goals:

1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

This is made possible by the sponsors who advertise on this site.

Whether you are CEO of a large corporation or a street child in a poor country, improving your vocabulary can improve your life. It is a great investment in yourself.

Perhaps even greater is the investment your donated rice makes in hungry human beings, enabling them to function and be productive. Somewhere in the world, a person is eating rice that you helped provide. Thank you.

Please pass this site along!

Sharing is Caring!

 

Smart Board Games for a Friday Afternoon #3

I have two fun things (games) you can do with your SMART Board on a Friday afternoon that qualify (almost) as educational. The first is a fun little game perfect for your SMARTboard called Railroad Builder. You have to move pieces of railroad track on the board in time so the train can get to it's destination.

The second one comes from my Twitter pals. It's a website called Befuddlr and it's extremely fun and addictive. You'll have to get creative in how to make this into a lesson but you'll be glad you did!

Have a great Friday!

Sharing is Caring!

SMARTBoards and High School Science

Today I found a wonderful website for High School science teachers that's packed full of interactive resources for your Smartboard interactive whiteboard. The site comes from North Central College and the title of this page is Science Animations, Movies, and Interactive Tutorial links.

If you're not a science teacher, please share this website with your colleagues!

Sharing is Caring!

SMART’s Notebook™ software Version 10 - Look what's coming! #2

Smart Technologies Notebook Version 10 is coming soon. Let's take a look at three more new features. If you click on the links, you can view a short video demonstration of that feature:

Magic Pen (This one's very cool!)

Use the Magic Pen’s three tools to help you deliver effective lessons. Write notes that will disappear in ten seconds, direct your students’ attention with a spotlight or zoom in on an image with a magnifier.

Object Animation

Animate any Notebook software object. You can create effects such as fading in, spinning or flying in.

Themes

Create a theme for your Notebook software lesson activity. Set design features like font, background color and images, and apply them to one or all of your Notebook pages.

You can also go to my Notebook 10 Feature Playlist to see all six videos.

Sharing is Caring!

SMART Board Resources for Math

Here's a great example of "Sharing is Caring" provided by Danny on the Teachers Love SMART Boards forum. The site is called Subtangent Math and it's packed full of outstanding math resources for your Smartboard interactive whiteboard.

All Mathematics teachers should be aware of this site. If you're not a Math teacher, please share this site with your fellow teachers!

Thank Danny! Sharing is Caring!

SMARTBoard Free Resources

I would like to share a couple great resources for your SMART Board interactive whiteboard. You will need to download them first and then simply run them from your computer.

1. This is a fun application for early readers. It allows kids to drag letters and numbers onto the SMART Board:

Download Fridge Letters Application

2. This application is a fun little spinner tool for the SMART Board. It's well worth the time to

Download Spinner Application

These free resources were provided from Awen. Awen is a Cardiff-based multimedia publisher specialising in the creation of fun educational interactive programs for children. Awen's range of software is popular in primary schools and homes with parents, teachers and children alike. The products are designed to assist teachers and parents in the teaching and learning process, while keeping things fun for the children.

Sharing is Caring!

SMART Board Video Tip: Erase and Reveal

Here's a short video called Erase and Reveal created by Rebecca Duncan. This technique allows students to use the eraser to magically reveal hidden text and images within SMART Notebook lessons.

Let me know if you have any tips or tricks for your SMART Board that you would like me to pass along.

Sharing is Caring!