Basic SmartBoards Skills for World Languages Teachers

If a teacher is lucky enough to have a SmartBoard at their disposal, it is their responsibility to use it beyond a “glorified projector screen”. It requires a shift in thinking from the teacher’s part to see a SmartBoard not “only” as a teaching tool, but as a learning tool.

I am taking a particular look at best practices of using a SmartBoard in the World Language classroom. My interest lies in how to best teach language teachers to go beyond a “drill and kill” vocabulary-translation type exercise and to use the SmartBoard in a way that allows students to experience the target language. In order to be able to use a SmartBoard with more than lower level thinking skills (remembering) involved, the teacher will have to have basic skills in order to manipulate and existing notebook file  or create new personalized ones.

While there are many notebook files being shared for commonly taught languages such as Spanish and French, there is a lack of examples for languages such as Hebrew, Chinese, Russian or Arabic. Partly because of difficulty with the non-latin alphabet, partly because the are just “less commonly taught” languages.

Learning to Tweak SmartBoard Files

What are the most important SmartBoard skills for these ‘less commonly taught” world language teachers to learn? What are the basic skills so they can tweak notebook files that don’t work perfectly for their students? What are the skills they need to ultimately create their own files ?

1. Take a look at the main toolbar.

Become familiar with

• moving between pages (slides)
• creating new pages (slides)
• opening and saving notebook files
• copying slides or objects
• undo/redo
• deleting
• screenshade
• full screen/split screen
• screenshot

• tables
• selection pointer
• pens
• eraser
• arrows
• shapes
• bucket fill
• text

2. Organizing Content in slides/pages and groups

3. Gallery-

• searching
• Interactive and multimedia
• Pictures
• Notebook files and pages
• Background and themes

4. Object manipulation

• drag and drop
• selecting
• rotating
• resizing
• cloning
• locking
• grouping
• order

5. Screen Capture Tool

Drag the cross hair across the area of the screen that you would like to capture.

• write in your target language in another program and insert into notebook to use as any other object
• capture an image of text in your target language and insert into notebook to manipulate further

6. Video Capture Tool

Click on red button to start recording.

• record in your target language
• share and review lessons or recorded stories with your students

7. Download  and open someone else’s notebook file

• SmartBoard Jewish Educational Database
• SmartBoard Exchange- Search for the name of your target language to see if any pre-made notebooks are available
• Make sure that your downloaded file has the “.notebook” extension. If it doesn’t try to rename the file by adding the extension manually in Finder or Explorer
• Tweak individual pages to customize learning for your student

8. Share your created notebook files with other teachers of your target languages

• Upload the file to your blog
• Send file as e-mail attachment to colleagues or listserve
• Offer to share files as you participate in conferences, workshops or webinars
• Submit the notebook file to a database -
  • SmartBoard Jewish Educational Database
  • SmartBoard Exchange-

What are some skills you would consider important for a World Language teacher to learn in order to create, tweak and use the SmartBoard software to bring their target language to life.

Math Lesson? Empower Learners?

Here is what I started out with:

Topic: Addition & subtraction of fractions, mixed numbers, improper fractions.

You have:

• 4th & 5th graders
• A SmartBoard.
• 40 minutes

You need:

• reinforcement
• practice
• check for understanding
• engagement

How can I step away from the front of the room and “present” the topic, then explain step by step, then give them a worksheet to see if they can duplicate the “path” that I have shown them?

I want my students to be “empowered learners” as Alan November points out. I don’t want them to be passive recipient of knowledge that I am trying to fill them up with.

Adapted from Alan November (pp.188-193), Curriculum 21 (ASCD, 2010) by Heidi Hayes Jacobs.

I chose five different smartboard notebook files created  by various contributors from the Smart Exchange.

• Mixed Number: All Mixed up? by Anthony Santoro
• Mixed Numbers by abteach03
• Mixed Numbers and Improper Fractions by Smart
• Math Mixed Numbers Addition and Subtraction (Regrouping) by D. Stewart
• Fraction Story Problem Practice by Anthony Santoro

I let the class know that “this lesson” was going to be a little different . They were going to be looking at “lessons” other people had created. They were going to be exploring these lessons and evaluating them as to their effectiveness in regards to their own understanding, ease of use, techniques used, success in helping them learn the concept.

I put students into different groups and asked them to come up separately, as a group, to the SmartBoard to look at one of the notebooks. They were to explore a few slides and narrate their thoughts out loud. They were to explain their steps as they were figuring out what to do. Some of the techniques used in the notebook were more intuitive than others. Some of the slides were a digital version of a paper and pencil method, while others were animated and interactive. What techniques helped their learning style? Which slides were more engaging than others? Was it clear what each slide was expecting the learner to do?

Below are several screenshots of the notebook slides.

Will students know the content (mixed numbers, improper fractions, etc.) better after these 40 minutes? Are they learning to be participants in their own learning? Are they learning about different learning (their own) and teaching styles (tutorial/lesson designers)? Are they hearing explanations from their peers? Are they encouraged to make suggestions to make a lesson better? Are they actively involved? Are they preparing to become their own “tutorial designers” as they are dissecting other examples?

What do you think?

Keep in mind that this was a one time modeling lesson for this group. What would I do different next time? Create an evaluation rubric ahead of time for them? Maybe  even create a Google Form to submit their evaluation directly into a spreadsheet? How can I have their classroom teacher follow up this kind of lesson? How do we embed the new roles to empower learners  suggested by Alan November?

How would you make this a successful lesson to empower learning? Share your ideas how to tweak, expand or change it? What would you come up with? Be creative… Please share!

Graphing, Counting, Keeping Track, Connecting Concepts

I had the pleasure of observing a wonderful first grade teacher today, Mrs. L. She is seamlessly integrating authentic data, math and her SmartBoard into daily lessons as well as making and connecting year long concepts.

Students at our school are encouraged to bring non perishable food items on Fridays for donation to the local food pantry. The teacher created  a simple page in SmartBoard notebook:

• Added the “grid-medium”  paper as the background
• Added numbers on the left side, starting with 1 at the bottom

• After counting the donated food items, choose the shape tool in your toolbar to draw a bar as tall the the number of the bars counted.

• choose the bucket tool
• select “solid fill”
• choose the desired color
• click inside the bar to fill it with previously selected color

Each rectangle is one square wide and exactly as many squares tall as the food items collected each week.

Each week students count out load the food items collected. They sort them into different categories, such as pasta, cereals, cans, etc. One student comes up to the SmartBoard and creates a rectangle, representing the number of overall items collected. The rectangle is than moved to be placed adjacent to the last week’s bar.

The teacher asks questions such as:

• Which week had the most/least items collected?
• How many items did this/last week have (three weeks ago?)?
• How many more did the”green” week have than the “blue” week?
• Let’s compare the “red” and the “blue” week. Which one has fewer/more items?
• What sentence can we say about the week in “yellow”?

The teacher also lets students come up to the board to use their fingers to count “how many more” one rectangle has than another. You can allow them to physically drag one week’s rectangle over another to see which color looks out on top (make sure that the longer rectangle is on the bottom layer (right click > order > send to back)

As she is introducing new math concepts throughout the week, the teacher adds new related questions to the weekly update session of the Food Donation graph.

Download the SmartBoard Notebook file

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