Hooray for Handwashing

We have the Integrated Nutrition Education Program at Kemp which consists of weekly nutrition lessons with a science focus. I'm going to start posting these lessons and I'm curious which other schools are participating in this program? Has anyone else been making some SmartBoard lessons for this? Maybe we could collaborate.

The first lesson for 2nd grade was called Hooray for Handwashing. See the file I have attached for the smartboard lesson.

More to come later. The Smartboard file can be found HERE.

Smartboard Mania

I have had a blast using Smartboard so far this year. I have been adding literacy transparencies and lesson components from Storytown's Thinkcentral.com website. Each of these smartboard files is about 70 pages and has everything I need for teaching the literacy section including powerpoint vocabulary slides and spelling attachments. I have created a lesson for sightwords which acts more like a sightword center for the students. There are basic pages where students click on a color blob to hear the sight word and then must drag it to a grid with the corresponding print word. I'm having problems with immediate corrective feedback. I guess I need the district to send me to a class to learn to build flash files (hint, hint).

The other day I was behind on building the weekly sightword matching game so I put two students to work typing in the words. They did great. From now on I'm going to have my students build these weekly files.

Math has been fun with the objects available to teach place value. I've also been spending time at the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives. A must have for all who teach math: http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/vlibrary.html

SmartBoard Classroom Activities Secondary Grades posted to Atomic Learning

Below are links to SmartBoard classroom lessons/activities created by Global Learner, Justin Davis that have been posted on Atomic Learning.  Note, you must be logged in to your Atomic Learning account to access the lessons/activities.

• SmartBoard Classroom Activities Secondary Grades
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  • A. Language Arts, 7th Grade
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    • Vocabulary Lesson using the SmartBoard
    • Vocabulary using PP and a SmartBoard
    
    
  
  

First Full Day

Well, I had all the kids all day today (just like most of you). Still haven't hooked up the SmartBoard. There is just too much else to do, right off the bat. My plan for today or tomorrow is to read First Day Jitters and use the Promethean flip chart for it that Melissa found. I have downloaded Promethean for personal use and it will be interesting to see how it works out when I use a flip chart on a SmartBoard.
Lisa

This is cross-posted on the second grade global learner blog. (We have so many second grade teachers now, we had to make a blog for swapping tech ideas that fit with our curriculum.)

SmartBoard Vocab Lesson

I want to show you a great activity that I found that uses the SmartBoard and Wordle to teach and reinforce word meanings. I found it on "Teachers Love SmartBoards", a blog that highlights resources and games that you can use in your classroom. I think this game addresses several of the "Cornerstones of Good Vocabulary Instruction" from this post. The video shows how to create it for yourself. Links to the SIOP lesson, the Notebook file and a worksheet to go with the game are on the Global Learners Wiki. We played it at literacy night and it was a big hit.

Playing Catch up

On this past Monday, we had a teacher work day and I offered to help a colleague set up their smartboard, projector, and laptop. I had been going on and on about how sweet it was and how use full it will be. I helped them get it working and showed some ways I used the smartboard and I was told that they do not see using this very often and that they give it a C. How do you encourage those who are not easily interested in technology that it is worth it?

SmartBoard Blues

Hey gang! It's been an exciting time; as many of you know, we've been in session at Hanson for almost two months now!!!!

I have really become comfortable in utilizing the SmartBoard in the classroom. Interestingly enough, I had issues at the beginning of the school year in getting the SmartBoard out of "mouse" mode (blinking green light). It would not let me use the full capabilities of what I knew it could do, so I jumped onto their user-friendly support help site. I followed through with the instructions, but, alas, to no avail (dreaded red light). I ended up reinstalling a driver, and the thing's kickin' up like new (steady green light-Yes!). I also went on ebay and got a fifty dollar wireless presenter mouse for twenty-two bucks; I HIGHLY recommend it for those of you who enjoy the mobility of checking student work while being able to emphasize points and present from anywhere in the room.

I believe that I expressed some of my frustration at the limited access that we had been granted on putting new programs on our classroom computers. We were juggling in the first few weeks just to retrieve our files, which really didn't add to the overall happiness. Still, kudos to the tech folks for dealing with a bazillion open tickets at one time.

I am really excited about being able to mentor other teachers in incorporating technology into their classroom.

Comin' soon to a blog near you...

"Ending the Isolation - Collaboration Rules!"

- Justin

Goals met (at least partially) and Smart Board Reflections

(Cross posted from my teacher blog.)

Got up early this morning and really wanted to go on a bike ride, so I pumped up the Cannondale, got in the saddle and off I went. It was an absolutely perfect morning for a bike ride. I headed north and found myself on highway 7 before long, then I headed west. Next thing I knew, I saw a sign that said "Lafayette 6; Boulder 17." I smiled and decided to make the trip to Lafayette. It didn't take me anywhere near as long as I thought it might; an hour or so after I left my house, and I was in Old Town Lafayette. I hung out for a while, then made the trip back for a total of 28 miles in roughly two hours. I was pretty psyched, and it's most of the way towards my goal of riding my bike to Boulder. Since I was roughly 10 miles from Boulder, I definitely know that it's within my reach to finish it out to Boulder. I have to admit that I was glad I turned myself around, even though I was tempted to finish it out to Boulder. I like to finish out the last half-mile or so to my house on a dead sprint, but that just wasn't going to happen today. About five seconds into the sprint, my legs gave me a very firm "Nope, not gonna happen, buddy" response, and I decided instead to do a nice, easy warm down ride instead. Heh.

I've been using the Smart Board quite a lot now, and it's been working out fantastically. We were working on the 11-sentence paragraph in class last week, and what could have been dry and boring ended up being a lot of fun. We spent some time filling out the graphic organizer together on the Smart Board, and I had 100% engagement for 100% of the time in all of my classes; not bad for a Friday afternoon before a long weekend.

I think I've actually perfected the podcasting, too. I recorded each of my classes on Friday, and I'll be uploading and linking them on my class website later on today. (I also plan to upload and link the Power Point presentations I used, though I will likely upload them as .pdf files since not everyone may have Power Point or even Microsoft Word, but Adobe Acrobat Reader is free.) Initially I was going to do all sorts of editing of the podcasts and only upload the "best," but the principal encouraged me to just upload them as they are and let the students fast forward through them as they need to.

Of course, there are some definite implications around doing that, not the least of which is that my classroom walls are definitely going to disappear and there will be full transparency, particularly since not only my students can listen to the podcasts, but their parents can as well. I told my students not to worry... I know how brilliant they are, and now their parents can hear it as well. :-) I do plan on emailing the link to as many parents as I have email addresses for, and while it seems a little scary to open myself up like this, I don't see it as a bad thing at all. I'm really excited about it.

I've gotten most of the students logged on and blogging already, and that has been a fantastic experience so far. The students have the option of blogging or reading during independent reading time, and it's not unusual to have a line of students four to six deep waiting to blog. So far I only have two desktops in my room, though I'm trying to get more put in. If you go to the class website, I've linked to the students' blogs there, so anyone interested can read and comment on their blogs. There is still some tweaking to do around the blogs, but they've gotten started, so the biggest part is done. I'm planning on working with my reluctant colleague after professional development this week and want to have her up and blogging as well.

I hit upon a bit of a flash as well around sub plans. What I hope to do on days when I know I'm going to be out is to upload my lessons as Power Points and record what I want to say in advance, along with a notesheet for my students to fill out and email back to me, then email links to the Power Point and podcast to my students, along with the notesheet to fill out. Then, on the day(s) when I know I'm going to be out, I simply reserve the computer lab for my students, the sub takes them down there, where they then log in, and can watch the presentation, listen to the podcast, and do the work there. Chances are I'll let them work collaboratively, but certainly any student that wants to work alone could... I guess it will depend on the nature of the assignment. I can even check in on them while I'm wherever I am and address issues/questions as needed. They really CAN have class 24/7! Of course, making sure I have access will be an issue, but I think it's one I can resolve (I hope).

The implications for all of this on my teaching is mind boggling. How on earth did I get anything done in the classroom before?? ;-)

153 Useful Educational iPod Resources

I’ve used my iPod to provide PowerPoints for my students. It makes for a great flash card tool. Great for first grade since I have a couple of students who need more help with sight words.

I found this article on Yahoo tech which points to a couple of other educational resources (Online Education Database and Kottke.org) and I thought I'd share it:
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/raskin/18019

The sites they mention are:
http://oedb.org/library/beginning-online-learning/100-ways-to-use-your-ipod-to-learn-and-study-better
and
http://www.kottke.org/plus/50-ways-ipod/

This link is for some really cool podcasts on Smartboards:
http://pdtogo.com/smart/
This is a cool link too. This is one I use for keeping up on my Spanish. It's a series of free podcasts (costs if you want the transcript) called NotesInSpanish:http://www.notesinspanish.com/ Its a fun way to learn on the go. Other languages resources from OpenCulture: http://www.oculture.com/2006/10/foreign_languag.html -sadly there is nothing under Icelandic languages.
This site has tons of resources for podcasting: http://www.podcasting-tools.com/

Okay so that's more like 154 resources.
So how are you using your iPod?

crossposted on http://http://mrfishergloballearner.blogspot.com/

Photo from Louder: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hermida/390819852/

Smart Notebook Update

The clever SmartBoard people from Canada have added a new feature for Smart Notebook, the Lesson Activity Toolkit It allows for teacher (and student) creation of lessons and activities in a really easy and straight forward manner. Who out there will give this a try?

Here's a great way to use your SmartBoard

How often do we run out of funds to take students on field trips? Or you just don’t want to take them on a field trip because of the behavior problems that could arise? Imagine taking a virtual tours or a virtual field trips without the stress of finding funds or the chaos of students being out of their routine!

What about in science - you could put a plant (or other specimen) on the doc cam, hooked up to the SmartBoard and projector. Now you have an interactive opportunity to label the parts of your object or help students observe pieces they may not notice on their own.

Here is a website that will search smart-board lessons with state standards. On this page you can search by browsing curriculum standards or subject/grade level.

http://education.smarttech.com/ste/en-US/Ed+Resource/Lesson+activities/default.htm

There seem to be endless possibilities!

Screencast with SmartBoard

On May 17, 2007 a screencast of Google.com math features was created during the Global Learners Professional Development. The screencast was captured within SmartBoard software and then uploaded to youtube. I have embedded the video here as an example of how this can be done. The video could be improved by using better examples. However, I can see the value to our students of screencasts just like this. Imagine a scenario where a student missed class or just didn't follow what your explanation of an Algebra problem. If the screencast of the problem being worked were captured and loaded to a class blog the student could go back at any time and review. Anyone interested in trying this? If you are post the result on this blog.

Global Learners in High School Math

Darren Kuropatwa is by far one of the most prolific and creative teachers that is generating usable online content and testing emerging technology (and integration ideas). Mr. Kuropatwa is a high school math teacher in Canada that is widely known for his various math blogs. Last year I read the now defunct Ellie's 7th grade math blog (I assume because Ellie has moved to 8th grade). Mr. Kuropatwa used this blog to help teach his niece math. The blog included innovative lessons and opportunities for Ellie to practice skills. A Difference is the blog where Mr. Kuropatwa reflects on his practice and talks about strategies that he is trying with his students. I am blown away and humbled by this individual's extraordinary efforts. He uses wikis, blogs (checkout today's post on probability), vaestro (checkout the thread with the EFL students from China...talk about Global Learners), SmartBoards, slideshare, and any other technology he can get his hands on to reach his students and find ways for more effective learning. My hat is off to Mr. Kuropatwa...thanks for providing a shining light.