Teachers Love SMART Boards

SMART Boards and WatchKnow Video Library

In all my workshops, I find that I never miss an opportunity to recommend the WatchKnow website for finding educational videos for the classroom. This is also a great place to locate videos that you may want to download and incorporate into a Notebook lesson file.

This site is maintained by the users and organized in a way that can really help teachers find relevant videos for the classroom. I also like the rating system that is used to help teachers make a educated decision on what videos to review.

You'll want to start searching through the site right away once you see it so please go there right now and take a look. When you're done, make sure you look at all the things you can do with WatchKnow by watching their introductory video.

Here is the video if you want more information now:

If you can't view the video here, you may have YouTube blocked. Click Here to go directly to the YouTube video.

Please don't forget to share this incredible resource with the teachers at your school.

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SMARTBoards and e-Learning for Kids

One of my very first blog posts talked about the non-profit e-learning site called e-Learning for Kids. That was over two years ago! I'm happy to say that this amazing website is still around and is only getting better.

I didn't really say too much about this site on that initial blog post...I didn't need to. It doesn't take long to realize what an amazing resource this is for the SMART Board classroom. The site contains over 100 courses covering Math, Science, Computer Skills, Language Arts, and English.

In addition, the site contains over 50 courses in Health and Life Skills. The courses in this area range from understanding how the body works to understanding things like depression, bullying, and preventing diseases. It is by far the most comprehensive collection of activities for learning and understanding about the human condition. 

The age-level for the courses ranges from 4 to 12 years old and the design of almost all the courses was done with Interactive Whiteboards in mind. It is truly a pleasure to see such wonderful educational content on the Internet free of advertising.

Firefox users should look into using the Flash Game Maximizer add-on to help enlarge the flash activities so they fill your entire SMART Board.

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SMARTBoards and a Balanced Diet

Health education is so vital these days but it can be quite difficult (and a little boring) to explain the concept of a balanced diet. Luckily, teachers can use some great interactive websites and their Smartboard to help students learn the concepts of a balanced diet.

ActiveScience GSK has a great interactive activity called...wait for it...Balanced Diet that lets students interact with six different people, read about their goals for a balanced diet and then choose the best meals throughout the day. They are provided feedback about their choice of diet that helps educate them about the importance of the types of foods they are eating. This activity also has supporting worksheets including a word search and a word scramble.

A couple of things to point out, this application provides helpful information when you move your mouse over certain items. This is a perfect time to try using the Floating Mouse feature of the SMART Board.

Here's a short tutorial that will help you use this feature.

Also, the units in this application are in metric. Why not incorporate a quick activity for estimating or converting from kilograms to pounds and meters to feet and inches. It's not necessary for this activity but it's a perfect opportunity to bring together multiple subject areas. Here's an online conversion calculator that you can use to check your conversions.

ActiveScience GSK has other great interactive application including The Humans and Animals activity for younger students that has interactive modules about senses, movement, habitat, food, life, and appearance.

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