Wednesday, February 28, 2007

SMARTboards and differentiation

Joe Scrivens presented about how he used Notebook to differentiate lessons for multi levels of ability in the classroom.Notebook also allows for different learning styles, the cloner for example lets you build words from parts. All the learning styles can be built into the lesson. By using colors to jazz up the bullets, it may make it easier for some students to read and remember. Now we have time to build our own lessons in Notebook.


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Tuesday, February 27, 2007

A great time at SMARTboard Training, Wocester 2/2007

Thanks to Pamela for sharing these great photos!

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Day 2 of SMARTboard training in Worcester MA

John Blaser from Eastchester, NY, presented his rollout and training of staff in his school system. Critical Factors for Integrating SMARTboards into Classrooms, Schools and Districts. His district has 2800 students and has integrated SMARTboards , 125, into their classrooms for the past 2.5 years.There are still more SMARTboards to add to the district. As part of John's presentation he interviewed many teachers(40), administrators(8), and many email anecdotes. He asked 2 questions:

What was necessary or what contributed to the successful integration of SMARTboards into your classroom, school or district?

What are the benefits of integrating SMARTboards into your classroom, school or district?

Critical factors from the interviews:school committee support, support of administrators,training during the school day, must have substitutes, train right in the classrooms PROFESSIONAL development is KEY, will make or break how it is used in the classroom, trained by teachers and technology integration specialists

Implementation: Deployment and Configuration-

Integration Plan, Professional Development Model- teacher training in the building and knowing the people in the building to go to for support. Classes for inservice credit. Informal training in small groups at a grade level. Start with small goals and small implementation plans. Provide options for training, one size does not fit all.

Administrative Support-need to understand the enormity of the SMARTboards

Professional Development-key

Time Interest and Dedication-Allow teachers time during day, course work, afterschool all good options.It will take about a year to get the SMARTboard integrated into the teachers day.

Go to JohnBlaser.com for some of John's resources. 2/27/07 -823


Stephanie Carson, a product developer for SMART presented the newitems that are coming out. The Notebook is the mainstay of the productdevelopment.

Bridgit enables multiple users to connect easily and share real-timevoice, video and data with out making reservations, installing softwareon the desktop or uploading preesntation materials in advance. It alsouses VoIP. Allows the user to hand over the desktop and you canannnotate over the screen.*

SynchronEyes is a classroom management software.

SmartIdeas the concept mapping software. It is complimentary with the board.

The SMARTboard 600 series needs a seperate projector and has theability to move up and down. USB audio, wireless bluetooth, gowire.

The 600i series has an arm that projects 3.5 feet, which is theprojector. Purchase all through SMART. You can also run without acomputer. You can use a USB key to run your program. People can do theinstall on their own.

The Airliner wireless slate allows the teacher to teach from aroundthe room as well as having students participate using the board.

The Senteo Interactive response system.You can use for quizzes on the fly and immediate graphs are ready to use.

Sypodium is a product that allows inteactivity on a huge screen, not an interactive white board.

SMART is committed to education by providing professional development and unlimited support.

Many training opportunities are available at the SMARTTECH site.

SychronEyes- is a classroom management system great for labs, orgroups of laptop classrooms. You can push out files, so you can get theurl page all on the student computers.Windows compatible.

SmartIdeas concept mapping software. It is very intuitive and agreat resource. It is great for visual learners. It has great levelsand links well with Notebook. There are lesson plans already made onthe website.

Monday, February 26, 2007

Part 2 of the SMARTboard workshop

Robert shared this great source for all subject areas for high school teachers and students. Merlot.org
Gillyon, science teacher in NB, demonstrated how to use the virtual cell URL http://www.ibiblio.org/virtualcell on the SMARTboard. Spyguys http://www.learnalberta.ca/content/mesg/html/math6web/math6shell.html for math, geared for 6th graders, james bond theme and also had good review for gr. 7 and gr. 8
Optic microscope primer http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/

Merlot.org is a peer reviewed multimedia site good for high school, all subject areas.

Jen ,
Northbridge High School, uses the SMARTboard, links the video clip from United Streaming right in her presentation for her Geometry lesson.She downloads the attachment of the video file and links right into the notebook and it plays really quickly.
Jen,from Cavendish School, Grade 4, VT. She created a game using the duplicator function, students come up to the board and create words, there are clues available for students. She has 12 students in her class and after presenting to her school board, they are purchasing more for their schools. She shared a lesson on drawing a plant and labeling the plant. The URL for the main page is from the Birmingham Schools, there are plenty of other great resources too.

Len
Euart, from Plymouth, MA. He is a technology coordinator at the K-8 schools. He uses BrainPop, BrainPop Jr. and EnchantedLearning.com with his SMARTboards. The lesson he used was about using Capital Letters. Len, adds the standards to the lesson. He copied the buttons as links for his teachers to use. Brainpop Jr. has the ability to read the text to students. Then there is a built in game with practice/assessment of the skill.
Gary, from
Hebron CT, teaches 7th and 8th grade science. He has created notetaking worksheets for his students, students add the information. He has a way to check the answer. Then students write their assignments in their agendas. He uses the SMARTboard for labeling the parts of the heart.
Pam, middle school language arts, New Brunswick, CA. She has a
SMARTboard in her room, the computer lab and one portable one. The district has just purchased 80 more. 70-80% of SMARTboard use is with Interactive software or websites. Once teachers have seen the benefits of the SMARTboards they are engaged and motivated. Pam uses the links to online movies for the lesson introduction. Then students come to the board and put objects in correct categories. Her students love the Mission to Mars interactive site from the NASA website. Students have 10 minutes as a team to make decisions about their trip to Mars. Now that her teachers have seen the motivation of the SMARTboard software they are excited to do more. Her 7th grade students all have laptops, housed at school.

Wendy,gets to share resources with all of us. She demonstrated the Jeopardy game with the interactive graph and all the notebook resources.We used the
Inkaware insert text into Excel! or insert text as Graphic for signature.

Rachel, a
SMARTboard educator, from NYC shared how to get scanned images into notebook.If you already have images on your computer, to move things into the notebook software, then look for insert, find your already saved images and it moves it to the software. She showed how to use the view option and split the screen.

SMARTboard Workshop, Worcester, MA

I was invited to attend this New England workshop with area SMARTboard educators. This is a sharing opportunity for area educators and by blogging about what I am learning, I am able to bring you along on this workshop.

Check out this site first. http://education.smarttech.com/ste/en-us/

There are more than 450,000 whiteboards in classrooms. 15 million students using the technology.

There is a great contingent from New Brunswick, CA presenting their best practices. Allan, teaches at Blackville High School, Blackville, NB, Grade 10 and 12 English, history and media studies.

He demonstrated his Jeopardy Ancient Rome game prior to testing to help with recall. He used the powerpoint jeopardy template and then linked the blocks to the different pages. The linking capability was critical.There is also a timer included on each page.

Shaun, from Blackstone Valley Tech School in Upton, MA presented his website. He has included all his worksheets on his site which he is able to use also as an interactive worksheet on the SMART board, file print, one option is smartnotebook print capture, (the smart notebook has to be open). This option is available with anything you have on the screen, it captures it to the notebook and creates a great print option.(This is a by-pass of the scanning process.) It actually prints into the notebook in better fashion then a scanner, YOU can not manipulate the items in the document, it is a graphic object. The camera feature allows you to take a picture of a piece of the page and put it in your SMART notebook.

Shaun talked about how his class notes are available for students who need assistance, he makes this available for all students as part of his website.

Cheryl spoke of how Wells Junior High School has deployed 30 SMARTboards as part of a renovation project.

Derrick, from Fredericton, New Brunswick, CA , District Office 18, is a math mentor and works with teachers in his district. Using the notebook for his lesson, he demonstrated that the URL's are interactive, he inserted the graphs that students worked on in class.He showed how a lesson for making a cube demonstration, for visually impaired it is easy to zoom in and enlarge the page.

Eithne, from Blackstone Valley Tech School in Upton, MA, where her school has 1100 students a 13 town district, as part of their renovation they have 84 SMARTboards in their school and are working with a range of expertise with staff.She is demonstrating the new version of Notebook 9.5 and is relaunching her training. She used the notebook software to create the training materials. How to take their materials and print and add to their notebook. Eithne took her materials and integrated them into a SMART notebook file, with page numbers a customized training manual. She included the URL link to Atomic Learning so it is a comprehensive package for teachers to go back to. It has a whole section of 3 min. movie clips on how to use Notebook
9.5.

Elizabeth, from Burnt Church School. New Brunswick, they started with one portable SMARTboard and now all classes have one. Her students are using Notebook for their presentations. The students created their project about how to market something using digital photos and the notebook and how to use notebook as a presentation.

Gail, from Bathurst New Brunswick, she models lessons for teachers in math. She created her training lessons with Notebook. There are over 100 SMARTboards in her schools. So, she has organized her her lessons by grade level and topics.It takes about one hour to prepare a lesson.the WOW was the URL http://illuminations.nctm.org/Activities.aspx?grade=all&standard=all

Gail also shared a site where you can get free clipart. Animated objects http://dgl.microsoft.com

Once there search for a particular topic and you with then just copy the image, and then go to the notebook and paste onto the page.

Robert share a place for public domain source for images. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain_image_resources

All this happened during our first session for the morning.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Blizzard of 2007!

We are in the midst of the Blizzard of 2007! While the snow is falling, the winds are blowing and temperatures are in the teens, with below zero wind chills, we can all be quite comfortable in our homes while reaching out on the Internet. I can check the weather in Tampa where my mother is at 46 degrees F, the weather in Montreal at 9 degrees F and snowing, and keep tabs on what is happening in Maine. You can imagine that I am also checking the snow amounts at Sugarloaf where at 4 PM they measured 17 inches. All this to say, that although we had a "snow day" today, many of us were still able to work and research thanks to the Internet we have in our homes.

I am working on compiling data from the NetDay 2006 survey. Thanks to all who took time to fill out the survey. You will be pleasantly surprised with the results. I know I am very pleased. The survey gives us a direction for our technology vision.
Cheryl Oakes, Valentine's Day in a blizzard!

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