What Are We Doing???

Interesting to walk past one of my colleagues rooms early today, (one of the rooms where a new board has recently been installed in), to see that the day's schedule written in Word was on full display. Nice idea to show the children what they have in store for the rest of the day, (now if only I was that organised??).

Later in the day, I offered a couple of other classes the opportunity to come in to use the board to display a couple of the energy based movies that I had sourced from Teacher's Domain during my time release. I had anticipated that I could work quietly in the back of the room whilst my colleagues took over the board and the movie demo, (hmmmmm nice idea). Unfortunately I had not loaded the Quicktime player on the desktop from where they could work so in the end it was easier to play the movies via my laptop, which of course precluded me from doing my own work, ah well what's preparation anyway????? With the next group it was a geat opportunity to multi task having the movie playing in one window and then making notes in the SMART Notebook in another window. It worked well, though my teaching colleague was not there to watch and take it all in for future reference as she had to go off to attend to their grade pet lizard, which had broken a toe nail off, (painful for both of us).

Later in the day it was time for another trial this time using the display feature of the board and simultaneously, the SMART Ideas software. The idea was for a reading group of four students to read from Tiki the Penguins Energy Guide For Kids then do a group concept map on what they made of the site. As it turned out there were some teething problems, reading from the board proved problematic so I had to resort to photocopied copies of the page for the students to read. I also had to supervise the boys a little more closely than anticipated as they began the concept map. After a couple of firm words however they became a lot more focussed and the resultant map was quite impressive and showed some neat understandings of the content of the webpage. Clearly I had over-estimated there desire to complete a map compared to there desire to see how many features of the SMART Ideas software they could master. in the next reading group session I will be better prepared.

Whatz Happening???

A quiet week this week, what with the AIM test and all that we didn't get to use the board a lot. I did manage "quelle horreurs" to draw on the SMARTBoard with a normal whiteboard marker, (honest sir it must have just jumped into my hand). You could almost feel the air move as the children drew a collective breath to see what would happen next. Thankfully there was nothing to worry about as the small black marks soon disappeared with the application of the duster. I also did come across a nice site that others might like into where you can access some interesting QuickTime movies and other interactives at Teacher's Domain. The site is a multimedia digital library for the classroom that provides learning experiences in ways no textbook can. You do need to register but this is free and well worth it.

If you are interested in Maths Strategy Games, I have just uploaded to my Simply Science site in the Other section, three maths strategy games written in Macromedia Flash that you can play online, (I've used our SMARTBoard Interactive Whiteboard to introduce the games and play them as a group activity), or also download as a playing board written in Word for playing off-line. See what you think at http://home.bellaireps.vic.edu.au/students/Simply_Science/
Maths_Games/Maths_default.htm

Another exciting event was the final installation of the other three boards. The Grade 1-2's in particular were most impressed. Everywhere I went out in the yard I was greeted by smiling faces of children saying thanks for making their SMARTBoard work, (in truth I had only a marginal role in the installation). Ms P. was even more ecstatic hardly moving away from it for the rest of the week.