Using our SmartBoard is Getting Better and Better

We have been having so much fun using our SmartBoards. It is great to be able to witness the teachers becoming more and more enthralled with them. Let’s not even mention how interested and engaged the students are.

Currently we have 3 wall mounted boards and one portable board that is being shared by 2 teachers available. One of the wall mounted ones is installed in Tech Connect, hence available for each teacher as they rotate once a week through or on a sign up basis.

Since the beginning of the year, we have had one full day of SmartBoard Training and many one on one “Let me show you”s or “Let’s take some time some time to play together with the software and see what it can do”.

As I am learning with the teachers once incredible resource has been the Teachers Love SmartBoards blog. James Hollis shares some amazing Tricks and Tricks. Many times I read a post in my Reader and immediately am trying it out with the Notebook software. I can’t wait to get to school to fire up the  SmartBoard and try it out there too.

This past week I saw James’ screencast of some tips in working with tables in his post “SmartBoards and table objects up my sleeve“. He showed a great way to adjust the height of the rows, inserting objects in the table and then the use the cell shades can have. I decided to use this tip that same afternoon with my Tech Club kids. I created a table and inserted clipart/screenshots representing skills that they are mastering.  I then created a row for each students’ name, dragged the icon into each cell of its column and finally added a screen shade to each cell. As students are completing projects and mastering skills, they come to the SmartBoard and clik on the shade to reveal the “stamp” of completion. The list was a big success among the club kids.

I was so excited about my little table , that I showed the tip to my Kindergarten teachers. Their wheels started turning immediately and not a day later, they had created their own charts and used them with their students when tasting and sorting apples.

We have teachers come in to TechConnect in their own time and after school to learn about the SmartBoard. The majority of them have downloaded the SmartBoard Notebook software on their computers at home. They are browsing, downloading and tweaking notebook files in various degrees.

Introducing the SmartBoards have been a great success so far, exceeding expected teacher AND student involvement, engagement and interest.

SmartBoard and Wordle at Open House

Just a few days after the first day of school, we held our Open House. Parents are invited to hear an overview of the school year by the grade level teachers. First everyone assembled in our Activity Building, where the Principal and Board of Trustees welcomed the parents and go over some housekeeping items, then classroom teachers are dismissed to head to their classrooms while parents have a chance to visit with Resource teachers.

We had set up our new portable SmartBoard and invited parents to come up to the board to write a word “What the school meant to them” with the pen or their finger. It was amazing to see how many parents stood back and “almost” felt afraid to come forward to touch the board…. some started out and then backed off in the middle of the word… some marched to the front and had wrote in BIG bold letter their word… many just preferred to stand back and watch others…

It made me think of the completely different reaction/attitude I have observed in the children, when they were introduced to the SmartBoard this past week… All hands went up when asked who wanted to come up first to the board… no coaxing or  assurance that “You can do it”…

We then took the words and entered them in Wordle and came up with the following cloud.

Kindergarten SmartBoard Lesson

It was the first day for our Kindergarten students to come to TechConnect. Their teacher wanted them to become familiar with the the equipment that we have available in the room and the vocabulary. Since it is the first year we have also a SmartBoard, it was a great opportunity to let the little ones get up to the board and touch and manipulate it.

I pre-created a notebook with images of our actual equipment, inserted them into a slide and added textboxes with matching vocabulary words in different colors. Their teacher read the words to them and then asked them to pick up and slide the word to the matching image.