The Kids are Back
"Hey look, it's up." Boy were the children excited as they realized that the board was in. "Is it ready to work?" was the universal query. It sure was despite the dangly cables etc.
First up it a talk about the need to be safe near the board, not look into the projector, not make hand shadow shapes onto the board, not to sit too close, to take care with the pens etc and generally treat it with respect, (though I can never actually recall any child ever treating a blackboard with disrespect, lol). Next it was the write our names exercise again and this time change it and move it around. (Somehow I had changed the transparency settings and all of the text was translucent but it was too late to spend time finding out how to reset it. First valuable lesson for both myself and the children that using the board was going to take a little patience.)
Having done the name thing it was time to have a look at Flash story, (fortunately I have "harvested" a couple from off the net so we didn't need the blue spaghetti network cable to be plugged in). Viewing the story was a big wow.
Next up was reading groups and a chance to demonstrate for the children the computer based reading activity option that each group would work through. This really demonstrated how useful the board would be. Previously these demos took place using a desktop monitor with children sitting and kneeling close by craning their necks to see. The board meant all could see and that I could even use some children to demonstrate what to do via the board, (a big plus already).
For writing time it was the "ever popular" "What I Did In My Hols" topic, lol. Ah well at least they all had something to write about. Again the board came into play as the place to write those "hard" spelling words. (Previously we had written these on the normal whiteboard and later transcribed them to add to out Words To Spell Chart.) This time it was one write and then a print and we had both. Only one problem is that the words are not uniform size when converted to type. I will have to investigate this further, maybe the handwriting template in the Gallery might be useful.
Later in the day we introduced the SMART Ideas software on the topic of ANZAC Day as this was our topic for the week. Even though we have used Inspiration software previously it was interesting how the children were captivated by the representation on the board. Again however there were many fumbles on my behalf in getting things onto the board and then neatly ordered. Thankfully the children were generally forgivingly patient. There was definitely a need to re-inforce that we were all learning here.
After the children left for the day I fiddled with the ANZAC Day concept map a little more finding out how to more properly use the connectors. I also discovered the Export function especially the export to HTML. This will be possibly quite useful later.
First up it a talk about the need to be safe near the board, not look into the projector, not make hand shadow shapes onto the board, not to sit too close, to take care with the pens etc and generally treat it with respect, (though I can never actually recall any child ever treating a blackboard with disrespect, lol). Next it was the write our names exercise again and this time change it and move it around. (Somehow I had changed the transparency settings and all of the text was translucent but it was too late to spend time finding out how to reset it. First valuable lesson for both myself and the children that using the board was going to take a little patience.)
Having done the name thing it was time to have a look at Flash story, (fortunately I have "harvested" a couple from off the net so we didn't need the blue spaghetti network cable to be plugged in). Viewing the story was a big wow.
Next up was reading groups and a chance to demonstrate for the children the computer based reading activity option that each group would work through. This really demonstrated how useful the board would be. Previously these demos took place using a desktop monitor with children sitting and kneeling close by craning their necks to see. The board meant all could see and that I could even use some children to demonstrate what to do via the board, (a big plus already).
For writing time it was the "ever popular" "What I Did In My Hols" topic, lol. Ah well at least they all had something to write about. Again the board came into play as the place to write those "hard" spelling words. (Previously we had written these on the normal whiteboard and later transcribed them to add to out Words To Spell Chart.) This time it was one write and then a print and we had both. Only one problem is that the words are not uniform size when converted to type. I will have to investigate this further, maybe the handwriting template in the Gallery might be useful.
Later in the day we introduced the SMART Ideas software on the topic of ANZAC Day as this was our topic for the week. Even though we have used Inspiration software previously it was interesting how the children were captivated by the representation on the board. Again however there were many fumbles on my behalf in getting things onto the board and then neatly ordered. Thankfully the children were generally forgivingly patient. There was definitely a need to re-inforce that we were all learning here.
After the children left for the day I fiddled with the ANZAC Day concept map a little more finding out how to more properly use the connectors. I also discovered the Export function especially the export to HTML. This will be possibly quite useful later.
posted by mrpbps | 5:40 PM
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