Teachers Love SMART Boards

SMARTBoards and Lessons for the Kindergarten Classroom

    Someone recently sent me a nice email that said, "A lot of people can talk about "sharing is caring", but you actually put it into practice."

    Believe it or not, that's one of the nicest things anyone could ever say to me. That means I'm doing it right and following my belief that, "the secret of success is not in the hording of information but in the sharing of information."

    When I use the word "success," I'm not just talking about me, I'm talking about everyone involved in the sharing process! When you share information, you not only increase your ability to be successful, you also increase the the ability of the people you share it with. What a marvelous concept!

With this thought in mind, I would like to introduce you to someone who really knows how to put the concept of "sharing" into practice. Her name is Nicole Mobley and she has compiled an amazing collection of SMART Notebook lessons. Here's what she wrote on her about page:

Obviously someone with way too much time on their hands, right? :-) In truth, my name is Nicole Mobley and I am a kindergarten teacher at Sandlapper Elementary in Columbia, SC.

I got a SMART Board 2 years ago and started making lessons at night after my daughter went to bed! Since then, I have become a SMART Exemplary Educator, allowing me to attend many conferences with SMART Tech.

I have learned to much and love to share what I've already done. I figure there's no sense in keeping it all to myself!

I hope you enjoy my lessons! THANKS FOR VISITING!

~Nicole

If you have a few seconds, why not sign Nicole's guest book and tell her "thank you" for sharing all her wonderful lessons. Thanks for Sharing Nicole!

Sharing is Caring!

SMARTBoards and a Fun Vocabulary Game

Here goes Jim again talking about Sharing ideas and resources...

This blog really is about sharing resources and ideas!

Here's a comment left by Tracey McGrath on the post “SMARTBoards and Wordle:"

Great Post! Here is another example of using wordle with an IWB. I created a wordle word splash using the vocabulary words to introduce a new story. After importing it to my notebook, I used the shape tool to cover the individual words. Students then came to the board to reveal a word. They had to give me a sentence, a synonym, an antonym or tell me the syllable count of the word they revealed. This activity is great for building vocabulary and also a great way to provide differentiated instruction.

One of the first things that caught my eye was Tracey's mentioning of "differentiated instruction." Since my creative juices were flowing, I thought I would try to develop a Notebook file that can be used on the SMART Board that not only utilized Tracey's great idea for using Wordle but also had a way for differentiating instruction.

The game is played by students coming up to the Smart Board and tapping on a colored bar. The bar will magically disappear to reveal a hidden vocabulary word (in this case from the book "Holes" by Louis Sachar). After the student selects the word, they tap on the spinning wheel to determine what they have to do with the word. If they are correct, they update the scoreboard.

Here's a quick video demonstration:

 
You may Download the Notebook File and use this application, however, it only has vocabulary words for the book "Holes." I will be creating a Notebook training course that will guide you through the process of creating this game using Notebook using any list of vocabulary words. If you're interested in taking the course when it is released, please send me an email at jim@teacherslovesmartboards.com and I'll send you a message when it's released. It should be ready by mid-October.

Thanks for the great idea Tracey!

Sharing is Caring!

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!

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!

Free SMART Board training from Smart Technologies

Looking for a quick two-minute SMART Board training fix?

Take advantage of these wonderful, free two-minute training videos from the people who bring you the SMART Board, Smart Technologies.

Take a look!

SmartBoard Free Lesson Customization

I thought it would be fun to demonstrate how to create an interactive lesson using the Smart Notebook software and the Lesson Activity Toolkit.

The best way to decide what type of lesson to create is to get suggestions from other teachers. If anyone has a good idea for an interactive lesson that they can use in their classroom, I will take the suggestion and create a customized lesson and make the lesson available by this Friday. While I can't create more than one customized lesson by Friday, if I get multiple suggestions, I promise to do my best and find a good interactive activity that could be used.

Please post a comment with your suggestion!

Smartboard Notebook Lesson Example

I would like to share a Smart Notebook lesson created by a student taking a Technology in Education class. This is one of her first attempts at creating an interactive lesson and I thought she did a great job. She gave me permission to display her lesson and she encourages comments about her lesson.

Smartboard Interactive Websites for High School

Interactive whiteboards are not just for the younger kids. Many great websites exist for High School students as well, including the Chatterbee's website.

Here are my top three favorite things about this site:

1. The In-class presentation page: This page includes links to interactive websites for health & medicine, Science, Social Studies, and History. This is a great resource for students looking for interactive websites to help them with their presentations.

2. The Invisible Web Search page: This page provides a list of some great search engines that help both students and teachers find great educational material. My favorite one is Infomine.

3. The Rocketbee search page: This page provides multiple types of searches all on one page. You can search for pictures, quotations, news, answers to questions, etc. This is a great resource for anyone's bookmark page.

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!!