Farr-Out Links to Learning » SMARTboards

Resources for Primary Teachers & Their Students

Jen — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 02:06:25 +0000

Tomorrow I will be working with Primary Teachers and their students. I thought you might enjoy exploring some of the resources I will be sharing so I have copied and pasted material posted on my teacher site into this blog post. Feel free to peruse additional material posted on my work site using the archive link on the orange bar of this blog. The archive link of my blog bridges to information I mirrored from my ONC BOCES site. You will find over 50 links to diverse resources I shared with K-12 educators during my temporary assignment as a Professional Staff Development Specialist. Use the comment link at the bottom of this post to share your favorite “Primary” links!

Letter and Word Recognition

Alphabet Action
Writing and Alphabet Practice Pad
Starfall - motivate children to read with phonics using the many interactive resources on this site

Numbers, Shapes and Patterns

Memory

Collections

Peep and the Big Wide World
Greta’s Game Station – many links to curriculum-related games. Check the bottom of the page to find games that are categorized by math subject
CBeebies’s – a BBC portal of educational (and fun) games, stories, coloring activities, etc.
PBS Kids GO! – games, activities, videos, and more….very interactive.
Boowa & Kwala – many interactive opportunities
Learning Games for Kids.com – WOW!
Great K-3 Sites for the SMARTboard

SMART Technology

Interactive Whiteboard Resources – this is a UK collection; the many Flash resources included on the site are excellent in terms of content
SMARTboard Portals – a portal of links to excellent material posted by teachers. Look for the files I posted at the bottom of the page.
Pete’s PowerPoint Station – find numerous PowerPoint presentations and activities that you can download and use in the classroom.
SMART Notebook Express - view, save and interact with SMART Notebook files online, at no charge.

Busy Teacher Cafe - use the many reproducibles on the site to project them on your SMARTboard

Web 2.0 Wonder: ClosR.it your Images

Jen — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 04:03:13 +0000

Go to ClosR.it to create a widget similar to the java scripted widget I have included in this posting. Don’t know what a widget is? In computer programming terms, a widget (or control) is an element of a graphical user interface (GUI) that displays an information arrangement. Personally, I prefer the non-technical definition: doodad: something unspecified whose name is either forgotten or not known. Doodad is one of my favorite words, but then again, I diverse…

ClosR.it is the simplest way to share and zoom your images. Registration is fast and easy, but does require an email account and verification code. Once you have registered, you simply upload a photo or image, assign your widget a name and tages and voila! Choose a widget image from your gallery and select the format you would like to create. You can send the photograph to a friend via email or copy code that will allow you to embed the widget on a webpage or blog.

ClosR.it makes it simple and easy to explore/enlarge photographs or images by zooming in and out. You can use the zoom controls included with the widget or use the scroll button on your mouse. You can also show the image full screen and and move the image around to view detailed portions of the photograph or image. These widgets would be very effective as a display during a lecture or on an interactive white board and could also be used to help students with vision problems view and enlarge photographs simply and quickly. Note….large sized images enlarge with the best quality; thumbnail images do not enlarge well and will pixelate and become blurry.

Photograph of my mother and Great-Grandmother taken many years ago.

Prometheus or SMARTboards?

Jen — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 03:15:15 +0000

Interactive whiteboards come in many shapes and sizes and offer similar features. While I have not worked directly with the Prometheus boards, I believe the true strength of using interactive boards actually revolves around the software used to develop the lessons teachers plan to deliver while using the boards. When I offered “SMARTboard Savvy” workshops in my last school district my teachers were far much more interested in the software we used to develop our lessons than they were in learning how to use the board itself. Building interactivity into a lesson requires a shift in the way we think and deliver our lessons and the software is the vehicle that helps us think about that interactivity.

Today, I downloaded and worked with the new Prometheus software called Inspire edition. The Inspire software featured many of the same features that were included in the most recent SMARTboard software…Notebook 10 with some distinct differences. The interactive activities included in the Prometheus software were not quite as “sleek” as the interactive activities included in the Notebook 10 software. However, the activities were adequate and very colorfully attuned to younger students. I also liked the templates that were included with the Inspire software. The fact that two students can “write” on the Prometheus whiteboards is also a plus when it comes to developing interactive activities. SMARTboards only allow one user to touch the board at a time.

So far I have found a lot of common elements (don’t you love spotlights and cover ups?). I have also learned that while each software package includes an import function that will presumably allow you to import a file created with one package into another (for example Inspire will allow you to import files created for SMARTboards in Notebook 10 and vice-versa) many of the features that are unique to one package simply do not import effectively. I would suggest that you only try imports that incorporate text and images.

I will continue to explore and compare the two software packages, but I am curious is there anyone who has worked with both packages? And…what were your experiences and observations?