Teachers Love SMART Boards

SMARTBoards and Wordle

I have a draft about a website called Wordle that I was planning on posting next week. However, I found a much better post about Wordle that also has a fun lesson plan. The post called Wordle: Using Word Clouds in a Lesson comes from one of my favorite blogs called Box of Tricks. I highly recommend that you subscribe to the blog. In his post, José describes how he uses an interactive whiteboard to help with the lesson.

If you come up with any cool ways to use Wordle, let us know!

Here's the "word cloud" for my last post on Smartboards and Algebra. See if you can guess what my post is about before you read it.

Thanks José for another great post!

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SMARTBoards and Interactive Websites for Math & Science

I really like this idea of putting website resources in a fun little slideshow to share with other people. Here Karen Brooks puts together a slideshow that has a whole bunch of cool websites with interactive activities for Math and Science.

Please comment back on which one you like the best. I really like the Science website Alliant Energy Kids that has some great learning resources and good interactive review activities that are perfect for the SMART Board.

| View | Upload your own

Thanks for sharing Karen!

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SMART Boards and Special Education

If you're a SMART Board user, make sure you subscribe to the blog called Talking SMARTBoards & Much More! My friend Anne Marie always has some great ideas!
 

Here are Anne Marie's top Special Education picks:

SpEd Resources | Talking SMARTBoards & Much More! via kwout

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SMART Boards and 1st Grade Mathematics

I found a great website created by a third grade teacher by the name of Christopher Wright. He's done a great job gathering and sharing education eLearning resouces. While browsing through his links, I found that most of them worked very well with interactive whiteboards since kids only needed to touch and/or drag objects to answer questions or interact with the information.

Here is a list of Mr. Wright's 1st Grade Math resources. I like almost all these links although the Elementary Test Prep link did not work for me and the aaamath site has a few too many ads for my taste. I absolutely love the Willy the Watch Dog game!

Rolla Public Schools: First Grade Links via kwout

Thanks Christopher for putting together such great resources!

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SMART Boards and Villainy, Inc.

I love fun and creative ways to introduce math concepts to kids. I just spent the last 30 minutes playing around with a Middle School (grades 5 thru 8) math site called Villainy, Inc. that lets kids play a game to learn about various mathematical concepts. The site is very well organized, it has a standards guide, and it has a very good teacher guide. I think this would be a fun way for the kids to spend a Friday afternoon. The site would be great for kids working in pairs in the computer lab or teacher could guide the class and play these games on the SMART Board. The kids will love working together to help thwart world supremacy.

Here's a screen shot of the main page. Go ahead and click on the links in the black menu bar below.

Villainy, Inc. | Maryland Public Television via kwout

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SMART Boards and Secret Resource Locations

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:

• Ginny Washburne's del.icio.us site
• Danny Nicholson's del.icio.us site.

If you're going browsing, I'll see ya in a couple hours!

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SMART Board and the Spotlight Tool

Check out this wonderful video created by Matt Granger showing how to use the Smart Spotlight tool. You will need to make sure you're computer is connected to your SMART Board before you can use the spotlight.

[Click Here to Go Directly to the Video]

If you want to network with other SMART Board users like Matt and me, make sure you join the SMART Board Revolution Ning!

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SMART Board and Travel IQ Challenge

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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SMART Boards and Geosense

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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Smartboards and NG Wildlife Filmmaker

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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