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Shhhhh. I have a secret. Make sure everyone has left the room.
Did you know that you can save and share your favorite
websites with other people? You can! And one great way to do this is by using del.icio.us. del.icio.us is called a social bookmarking website.
You can use del.icio.us to:
* Keep links to your favorite articles, blogs, music, reviews, recipes, and more, and access them from any computer on the web.
* Share favorites with friends, family, coworkers, and the del.icio.us community.
* Discover new things. Everything on del.icio.us is someone's favorite -- they've already done the work of finding it. So del.icio.us is full of bookmarks about technology, entertainment, useful information, and more. Explore and enjoy.
So what's the big deal? Well, a lot of people who use SMART Boards save their favorite interactive whiteboard websites using del.icio.us. Here are two great del.icio.us sites to browse through if you're looking for some good resources:
If you're going browsing, I'll see ya in a couple hours!
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I know a lot of teachers are looking for some fun activities for the SMART Board this week. I am very disappointed with many of the Internet games I've found for the Spring/Easter holiday due to the number of advertisements contained on these websites. Therefore, I'm going to share with you another fun site that will allow your students to create, share, and save pictures using a "Lite Brite" online simulator.
You could have your students create a fun holiday picture or use it as an educational tool by having your students design patterns or different types of shapes. I think it's a simple and fun tool to use on your SMARTBoard interactive whiteboard.
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Here are some fun Easter holiday befuddled pictures for your students to unscramble.
1. Easter Basket Befuddlr
2. Easter Eggs Befuddlr (more difficult)
3. Easter Chick Befuddlr (more difficult)
Check back this week for more holiday resources.
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Check out what Danny Nicholson from The Whiteboard Blog found as a replacement for Geosense...
It's the Travel IQ Challenge from Travelpod.com. Since they allow you to embed the game into any website, I'm providing the game on one of my pages so it's free from advertisements. I'm certainly glad Danny got back from his vacation so he could share this. Don't forget to check out his blog as well as his company's website, Think Bank Ltd, that contains all sorts of great resources for your interactive whiteboard.
Here's a screenshot of the game:
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Update: This site is no longer recommended by Teachers Love SMART Boards. One of my very astute readers (Donna) noticed that the game has a chat board that cannot be turned off and appears during game play. If you decide to use this game, please take extra caution.
Here's a great game to play on your SMART Board called Geosense. You can play it alone or against other people. The game tests your knowledge of world geography (or U.S. or Europe) by giving you the name of a city and you have to locate the city on the map. Your score is based on how fast and how close you get to your target.
Thank you, thank you, thank you Cool Cat Teacher for sharing this link on your blog!
Here's a screenshot of Geosense using the World Map:
In this shot, it asked me where Sacramento, USA was located on the map. It took me 5 seconds to guess and I was 240 kilometers off my target (I know, pretty pathetic. You can enlarge the screenshot by clicking on it.)
This site has been SMART Board tested and Hollis approved so enjoy yourself. Once again, thank you Vicki for finding this and sharing this on your wonderful blog!
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I ran across a wonderful blog post entitled, How the SMART Board has Changed My Teaching from author James Tubbs on his blog misterteacher.com. This post highlights his initial experiences in using the SMART Board interactive whiteboard in the classroom. I think James captures the excitement of having a new SMART Board in the classroom and he keenly identifies some of the new challenges that come along with having such a fun and effective tool.
Also, if you want to hear about the first night I spent with my iPhone and why that has anything to do with a SMART Board, read my blog post entitled, The Wow Factor and the SMART Board Interactive Whiteboard: "Do You Got Wow?" on the Digital Learning Environments website.
Have a great weekend!
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I ran across this wonderful (although slightly dated) article on interactive whiteboards in the classroom entitled, Boards Get Brains, Chalk Vanishes by David Cohn. It comes from Wired online magazine and it does a great job explaining how interactive whiteboards can help differentiate classroom learning to make it more engaging.
Here's a a short piece from the article:
...the real virtue of the interactive whiteboard is in showing students how to use the computer.
"Instead of handing a kid a laptop and saying 'good luck,' it's nice to be able to model something for them," Bang said.
And because the system works like a computer, most teachers have little problem picking it up right away and using it to teach their students.
"That is part of what is ingenious about Smart Technologies' board -- it is immediately familiar," said Columbia elementary school's Mishler.
These articles can be used as great ammunition for making your case of getting a SMART Board in the classroom.
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I'm having so much fun this morning playing with National Geographic's Wildlife Filmmaker. It's really cool. Basically, it's an online movie making application where students can drag video, sound clips, music, and captions onto a timeline. What a great way to introduce the concept of movie making and editing!!!!
I created a 60 second movie in less than five minutes that shows various bird videos. I put in some fun music and I give time for the students to guess the name of the bird before the name is displayed.
Here's a screenshot of the process:
I'll admit that I'm having some difficulties getting the video saved; maybe somethings going a little haywire with National Geographic's server this morning.
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I have a new website to share with everyone that's dedicated to digital learning. It's called Digital Learning Environments: Tools and Technologies for Effective Classrooms. The site is sponsored by a number of key players in the technology world including Intel and HP. Here's a screenshot of the main page that includes hyperlinks to all the sections of the site.
Every couple of weeks, I will be blogging about various ways to integrate the SMART Board and other digital tool into the classroom. Here's a link to my first post, The Wow Factor and the SMART Board Interactive Whiteboard: "Do You Got Wow?" My next blog post will present information, ideas and applications for creating screencasts and using them as a learning resource.
Please share this new website with anyone interested in using technology more effectively in the classroom.
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One of the best ways to share information with colleagues is to use social networking tools. I use Twitter to follow a group of technology integration specialists from around the world. I connect on a daily basis to ask questions, contribute to classroom learning, find out about cool resources, or simply to share a funny joke.
Yesterday, one of my favorite tweets, Lori, shared a great resource called Roy the Zebra. The funny thing was that I had just bookmarked that website a few days ago because I was planning on sharing the site with my readers here. I do not remember where I discovered Roy. I'm sure one of the blogs I subscribe to mentioned it somewhere or maybe I saw it in an educational forum. I usually make it a point to mention where I found something but sometimes the synapses just don't fire as often as they should.
What I'm trying to do is encourage everyone to subscribe to blogs, create their own blog, join a social network like Ning or Twitter, or do anything else you can think of to connect with other teachers who share your interests.
Okay, back to Roy the Zebra...
Here's what the site has to say on their About page:
The site is home to a package of interactive games, stories and resources that have been developed to help emerging readers learn to read. The site can be used at school or at home. It's one of the most comprehensive interactive literacy resources on the net that is freely accessible... no area of the site is password protected.
RTZ also aims to make life easier for educators who teach reading skills. We hope you enjoy the site's simplicity, fun characters and logical structure. You'll never be more than 3 clicks (...if that!) away from what you need.
Recently over 360 educators assessed the effectiveness of the resources on www.roythezebra.com - 100% of the respondents agreed that RTZ had helped their pupils become better readers, 100% agreed that the site made reading fun and 100% said that they would use RTZ in the future.
Once again, I have tested this site and I found it a great resource to use with your SMART Board interactive whiteboard. Here's a screenshot of an interactive rhyming game:
I would like to thank Lori for sharing this site on Twitter.
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A big "thank you" to my readers for responding to my online poll "What is the SMART Board?"
I would like to share with you why I think this is such an important question and why I think the SMART Board is such an innovative and exciting tool to use in the classroom.
The possible answers and the percentage of people who answered the question What is a SMART Board? are:
The technical answer to the question is "An input device." While the answer may surprise many of you, it's not surprising that over 80% of you thought it was "Both an output and input device."
First a reminder, an input device is anything that gives data or information to the computer. The most popular forms of input devices are the mouse and the keyboard. Is the SMART Board an input device? This is a no-brainer. When you touch the SMART Board, it sends data to the computer so it is indeed an input device. An output device, on the other hand, is anything that gives data or information to the user. Common output devices are printers and monitors.
Is the SMART Board an output device?
I will admit that the answer to this can be a little tricky. It is this "trickiness" that makes the SMART Board such a wonderful and fun tool to use. Firstly, I would like to ask you if your mouse is an output device. Does the computer send any signals to the mouse that could tell you anything about what's happening on the computer? For example, does the computer make your mouse vibrate or light up or do anything at any time? The simple answer is no. The mouse does not give you any information about what the computer is doing. So how do you know what your mouse is doing? The answer is that the computer sends information to the monitor and the monitor shows you a picture of a cursor. You rely on the cursor to tell you when to click your mouse.
Now for the SMART Board. Does the computer send any information to the SMART Board to let you know what it's doing? The answer is no; the computer sends information out through the projector. The projector's image on the SMART Board is the data that tells you what's happening on your computer. Therefore, the SMART Board is not an output device.
The transparency in which the SMART Board works in conjunction with the projector (output device) is what makes the SMART Board such a fun and exciting tool to use. It is this transparency that makes it seem like the SMART Board is both an input and output device.
Two things help make it seem like the SMART Board is both an input and output device. Firstly, because the projector is projecting an image on the surface of the SMART Board, you never look at the actual output device (the projector) to see your data, you look at the SMART Board. Secondly, the SMART Board eliminates the need to control a separate object (your cursor) to control your computer. This is a requirement when using the mouse. With the mouse, you're relying on the monitor to show you where the cursor is to tell you when to click the mouse. With the SMART Board, YOU become the cursor.
I believe this subtle difference gives us the perception that we're interacting directly with the information. It's the difference between telling a taxi driver where to take you and driving there yourself. (I don't know about you, but I remember being a lot more excited the first time I drove a car compared to the first time I took a taxi ride.)
All of this is perception of course. However, I believe it is this perception which helps engage people when they're using the SMART Board. This is exactly why I believe the iPhone is such a popular and fun tool to use. With the iPhone, we don't use buttons to make a cursor move up or down and select the things we want, we simply touch on what we want. I believe this type of interaction is much more powerful than we know and I believe this is what puts the SMART Board in a class by itself.
Let me know what you think!
I was browsing the Smart Exchange forums and found a great activity posted by Carol who works for Smart Technologies. The activity from ToonUniversity helps primary aged children learn about place value. You can view the activity by clicking on the screenshot below:
The site has a lot of free activities that you can use. My favorite is the one that helps primary aged kids learn about coin values. Using the SMART Board, the students simply touch and drag the coins to the ramp to try to get to the amount shown at the top. My 7 year old daughter loves it!!!
If you enjoy these games, you can browse through the ToonUniversity website for other resources. Some of the free educational games require you to use the keyboard which makes it a little harder use on the SMART Board but many do not. You can also subscribe to the site to get access to all their resources.
Thanks for sharing Carol!
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Here's a website called Science NetLinks that all Science teachers should have saved to their favorites. Here is a description from the site:
Providing a wealth of resources for K-12 science educators, Science NetLinks is your guide to meaningful standards-based Internet experiences for students.
Not much more to be said. You have to check it out. It's jammed full out lesson plans, online resources, interactive activities and much, much more.
Check out this learning activity called All Systems Go. It's simple and highly effective. Best of all, it works great with the SMART Board interactive whiteboard. Here's a screen shot of the activity where the student would touch and drag the various body parts to complete different systems of the human body. The voice in this activity sounds just like Arnold (I'll be back) Schwarzenegger.
Please share this with your fellow educators.
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