Teachers Love SMART Boards

SMART Boards and Sharing Resources

The mission of this blog is simple. Share information and resources so teachers will utilize their SMART Boards in a way that increases learning in the classroom. That's why I end each of my posts with "Sharing is Caring!"

I'm really encouraged that more and more educators are sharing what they have and what they know using the Internet. For example, yesterday, Sheryl left a comment on the post "SMART Boards and 1st Grade Mathematics" and provided a link to her resources. Her website, called The Learning Pad, is simply fantastic!!! It has links to some of the best interactive websites covering all subject areas.

Where else can teachers go to find free resources for their SMART Board? You don't need to look any further than the Gallery tab inside your Smart Notebook software. If you click on the Gallery tab and select Online Essentials for Educators, you get a list of resources from Smart Technologies including:

• Teachers´ Hub
• Lesson activities
• Curriculum standards
• Lesson resources
• SMART Exchange
• SMART-accredited titles
• EDCompass newsletter

One place that is often overlooked is the Download section of the SMART Exchange. If you search around a little, you'll find tutorials, videos, Notebook files, research articles, and a whole bunch more. For example, check out the resources available from the Illinois SMART User Conference.

Illinois SMART User Conference - SMART Exchange via kwout

Notice that Smart Technologies' Ginny Washburne shares her favorite resources on her Delicious site. Just another great example of...

Sharing is Caring!

SMART Boards and Science NetLinks

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.

Sharing is Caring!

SMART Board Notebook Lessons: Mathematics

While browsing around the SMART Exchange forum, I ran across a post entitled Notebook lessons for Elementary and Middle School Mathematics. In this post, Harvey shares his wonderful website that contains (among many things) a list of math Notebook lessons. Harvey does a great job describing his lessons and he even includes a screen shot so you can get a better feel for the lesson's content.

(The screen shot below has links to all the lessons)

almarolh -   Harvey's Home Page via kwout

Sharing is Caring!

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 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!!

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 Board Lesson Plans

The first place to start when looking for lesson activities for your Smartboard Notebook is Smart Technologies lesson activity website.

Feel free to modify these lessons as you see fit!

Note from SMART Technologies:

Lesson activities can only be used with Notebook software, included at no additional charge with every SMART Board interactive whiteboard. You’ll need a Windows 98 (or above), or Macintosh OS X operating system to view the activities.