Mr P's SMART Board

What Have I Been Doing?

2007-04-10T14:35:00.000+10:00

Because I came across an interesting video today, I checked in here again for the first time in a long time and realised that it has been almost a year since I have posted on the SMART Board blog. Rest assured I have not been lost, lazy or anything in between, it is just that most of my blogging has been done over at My Other Blog which deals with more Web 2.0 based stuff. This has taken up much of my focus alongside of the fact that I have had to move rooms and have not had such regular access to the board as in the past couple of years.

Having said that I have come across a couple of really interesting sites that any IWB user should check out. The first is the SmartBoards Lesson Podcast which is a weekly program that has discussion and guest presenters who describe how they use their SmartBoards as well as links to web based and other resources that might be useful to use with the boards. In the hosts own words,

"The purpose of this site is to accompany a free podcast that focuses on using SMART Boards in the classroom. Each episode will feature a lesson, a podcast, and user comments. The hosts, Joan Badger and Ben Hazzard, have been recognized as Canadian & International Innovative Teachers by Microsoft, SMART Exemplary Educators and Conference Presenters on the use of SMARTBoards in the classroom. Joan teaches Grade 6 and provides professional development for teachers in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Ben has taught from Grades 4 through 7 in Brampton, Ontario, Canada and then Sarnia, Ontario, Canada. The goal of this podcast to share lesson ideas that use technology to engage students in learning with a focus on SMARTBoard Interactive Whiteboards between educators."

Another interesting resource from eSchool News Online is a video excerpt from the recent CoSN annual conference in San Francisco, where a panel of ed-tech experts debated whether interactive whiteboards are worth the investment. An interesting discussion indeed.

For Aussie teachers an important conference to put in the diary is the annual IWBnet conference to be held at Emmanuel College, Birmingham Road, Carrara, Gold Coast Queensland 4211 on Thursday 30, Friday 31 August and Saturday 1 September 2007. The previous 2 year's conferences have been extremely successful and this year's program looks just as jam packed. I will be there....................

IWB's Hit The Big TIme

2006-05-16T07:39:00.000+10:00

I went along to the ICT in Education Victoria Conference the other weekend and was fascinated by the fact that in a program of 60+ sessions, six of these sessions dealt with interactive whiteboards. I was one of them of course :). Given the number of sessions on offer I was quite chuffed to have a full house. Once again my good friend Jeremy from Electroboard came to the fore with a brand new board to present with. I was also pleased to have the support of another colleague from school as a co-presenter. My colleague did a fabulous job demonstrating and sharing her work with the board. I learnt lots from listening to her as well and it was great to have support to keep me under control as I do tend to get carried away. Again one hour is just enough time to whet the audience's appetite and I am sure that we could have gone on for much more time.

Everything Old Is (well no quite as good as) New Again

2006-03-29T22:41:00.000+11:00

We have just taken delivery of three brand spanking new SMART Boards and wow isn't it making me feel a bit jealous. The boards themselves are a bit larger and their are some nice changes to the pen tray, especially where the eraser fits in. (One of my children snapped a pin off of our room's board the other day so the changes here are very practical). The pens are also slightly easier in the hand. The big changes are in the peripherals that are bundled with it. The lucky rooms now have wireless slates as well as keyboards and mice and the children are already getting into it with them. The modular speakers that come with the board are also great looking. Pity that the instructions that come with the speakers are diagramatic without text and that I am not as practical in reading them as might be hoped. Maybe tomorrow I will get the time to figure it out :). Another big plus are the projectors that are super crisp and clear.

Speaking of the projectors it seems that, especially in schools where dust is a pretty endemic, that there is a need to regularly service the projectors to maintian the display something mine is desperately in need of.

Venn Did "i" Miss The Point

2006-03-07T12:33:00.000+11:00

Isn't interesting how some holidays make you forget what you used to be able to deal without more than a passing thought. Today we were using the board for a small reading group activity. I had found two versions of the Hare and The Tortoise and had gotten the Venn Diagram template from Smart Ideas. The object was for the children in the group to find the differences and similarities between the two stories. Things were going well until we had the need to write in the letter "i". Naturally the children wanted to "dot their i's", however each time they did so the words were straight away turned into text and the component of the template that they had clicked on became active. This was altogether very frustrating for all and even more so for me as in the hurly burly of the class I couldn't think clearly enough about how to remedy the situation.

Later in the cool of the evening when the class had long gone home I remembered what I should have done. When I had opened the Venn Diagram Template, I should have modified it to suit the task, (eg added clipart and special text) and then sent all of the diagram to the background. You do this quite easily by first dragging over the items that you want to send to the back and then go to "Tools" and select "Make Background". This will make certain that the diagram and text and pictures that make up the template will not move or be changed. (N.B. you can get your background back to modify it again if you wish by once again going to "Tools" and then selecting "Retrieve Background".

'i" see the light :)

A "Time"ly Warning

2006-03-03T17:28:00.000+11:00

The Times Online report that

"Tests carried out by the UK National Radiological Protection Board have shown that the peripheral vision of users may be harmed even when they are not looking directly into the beam of the projector. Damage to the retina, causing tunnel vision, can result."

The whole article can be viewed at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1451266,00.html

The Lab-substitute

2006-02-23T19:37:00.000+11:00

At our place we have a nice computer lab that has 27 desktops and a data projector which is used to "teach" applications. Of course it is also heavily timetabled with very few chances for the "off the cuff" teaching as the moment requires. At the moment we are exploring blogging and wikis. Over the weekend I became aware of a great wiki based project called Wikiville. It was the perfect platform for introducing my new class to the concepts of wikis. Of course our lab time is on Friday so normally a whole long week would have had to elapse before we could explore the world of wiki.

With the board however we had no such problems and soon we were exploring how a wiki worked. Switching back to the Notebook we began constucting our first entry by dot pointing and then expanding them into statements. We then manipulated the sentences into an acceptable order before copying and then pasting them into Wikiville, all within the hour session. A number of children were so taken by the experience that they went home and added to the wiki from home. On reflection doing the intro via the board and using the Notebook was far preferable to doing something similar on the lab and we did it "just as the need arose".

A Camping We Will Go

2006-02-21T17:31:00.000+11:00

With the new year comes a whole new school camp to go to along with a whole lot of questions about what it is like. As none of we teachers had yet to visit it also, answering these queries and stemming the concerns of our newest Grade 3's was a bit tricky.

In the nick of time the light bulb in the head flashed on and soon we had "Googled" the camp. Their directly on the board were pics of the camp and surrounds in full screen colour along with the suggested menu, (which was eagerly devoured metaphorically) plus a list of the optional activities. Within ten minutes of exploration of the site all the fears had disappeared into a chorus of "I can't wait to do...." Pity the teachers in the parallel non-IWB classrooms, we'll have to invite them in later :).

Where Did The Computer Go

2006-02-07T19:22:00.000+11:00

Our school has a policy of rotating the computers through the rooms at the end of each year and on-selling the older ones to families. This is a nice idea except that it means that the desktop computers that you have taken such care over to ensure they are running to the optimum with all the software installed that you need are suddenly passed on to someone else and you invariably get the only four machines in the school that have been dogged all their lives by gremlin problems :). Worse still they don't have the Smart software on them so it is install again.

Thinking that I had to use the original supplied disks first, I loaded the Notebook software and then the Smart Ideas before going to the shared network drive to load the updated latest version. It was only in a later conversation with our supplier that I found out that the Update is in fact a complete version which does not require previous versions. Hmmm silly me.

A New Year Begins

2006-02-05T06:25:00.000+11:00

I should have done this earlier however as always I get distracted and then it is only when you can't get to sleep at 5AM that you finally get around to posting again. The new school year has started again however and with it comes a whole new set of challenges. Because we are not a totally IWB school, (we have four boards at present), most of the students that have come into my room have had minimal exposure to a SmartBoard so for lots it is back to the basics. This of course means the usual,

children resting their hand on the board and pen not working
children not pressing hard enough and writing in "dotted letters"
children trying to fix up their writing which throws the text recognition into all sorts of wierd variations
children whose fingers seem covered by some magic coating that causes them to jump as they drag things across the board
children whose shadows are totally out of proportion to their body shape and seem to expand and move around independently of them so that wherever the child stands, the shadow covers the part of the board they are working on
and the rest

Suffice to say however they are all suitably impressed to be as one child put it "in the Smart Room".

2006-01-23T10:45:00.000+11:00

Tony Poulter from the UK's "Board With Teaching" website is set up to help trainees and teachers to get to grips with interactive whiteboards. It has heaps of great background information plus lots of links that are very useful.

Spreading the Word Wider/Getting Organised

2006-01-20T15:30:00.000+11:00

As alluded to in earlier postings I have been messing around with blogs and other associated technologies. I now have another blog, (3 in total related to teaching, Simply Science, (All about science and the Simply Science Site), Mr P's SMARTBoard, (a chronology of my experience with an interactive whiteboard), and My Other Blog, (dealing with my experiences with ICT). To make it easier for me to keep up with all of these I am now also using Suprglu My Science and ICT archive is at http://jpearce.suprglu.com/

Spreading the Message

2006-01-20T15:15:00.000+11:00

Though I haven't posted here for a long time I haven't been ignoring the Board. Back in October I and a couple of colleagues from school were very ably supported by Jeremy from Electroboard in conducting a whole day PD for some other local teachers interested in getting into SmartBoards. The day was great fun and the feedback suggested that the participants both enjoyed and learnt lots from the day. As an assist to the day I prepared a CD for participants including movies using the screen capture facility in the Smart Notebook, (beware though that at around 50Mb, they need a good broadband connection). I have modifed the CD to go online at my Simply Science site. Teaching and Learning with A SmartBoard can be found directly at http://home.bellaireps.vic.edu.au/students/
Simply_Science/SmartBoard_Online/Index.htm

I've Been a Bit Slack

2005-09-20T18:28:00.000+10:00

Having been told by a number of people both personally and by email that they have been reading this blog, I have been very slack in committing anything to it for some time now. That's not because there aren't things to say, it's more that I have been too busy trying out all manner of other things. A couple of neat things happened though. A while back I went to Electroboard in Melbourne for their Expo and was made to feel very welcome indeed. I had a great chat to Alison and others and really chewed the ear of our local Vic rep Jeremy R. It was really impressive to check out all of the various iterations of the boards and the huge range of peripherals that are available to support them. If you get a chance to go to a similar expo by any of the distributors I would strongly suggest doing it. It can be really eye opening.

Following on from that I did another PD session for the Victorian Science Teacher's Assoc. Once again Jeremy came to the fore and provided a board for me to present with. Having the board is so enabling and makes the presentation just so much more engaging both for the participants and myself. You have eye contact with the audience almost all of the time and working from the board is easier to track than a mouse pointer. The session was great but the chat after was mostly about the board. Interesting to see that out of 20+ plus participants only 2 others had seen a board........

What Are We Doing???

2005-08-09T20:07:00.000+10:00

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???

2005-08-05T18:41:00.000+10:00

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.

Who Owns This Board?????

2005-07-26T17:36:00.000+10:00

Had a couple of interesting happenstances today. Firstly I had related our experiences with the AIM test and the board to other teachers in the unit, suggesting that they might like to try "doing" their test practice the same way. One teacher was a little reluctant and suggested that another who has been into my room a couple of times previously might like to do the session instead. This was fine by me as my children were out at library for an hour. At the appointed time the grade 3 children dutifully filed in and they began the test. Again apart form some minor hiccups with pens in hands when trying to scroll or move pages, the teacher did as good a job as me, (and probably better in some respects). Great to see another teacher gaining confidence.

We also used the board last night to highlight where on the school server a folder of information regarding our current topic of energy is housed as well as display what some of the documents looked like. (Using the board sure beats the heck out of craning necks around a desktop monitor.)

In our little discussions about things this morning we got onto kinetic and potential energy, (which is part of the work we are doing at present). Talking about springs and elastic and things of that ilk talk soon turned to balls. I straight away thought, hey there must be some animations out there that show a ball bouncing and how it compresses. I remembered that I had FURLed a site with timelapse movies called Playing With Time but unfortunately they didn't have a movie of a ball. There was however a 20 second movie that spanned 0.1 second of real time showing a water filled balloon landing on a table available. Well did this spark some discussion. The children wanted to stop and start and reverse and then play back ad nauseum. They actually began to suggest and conjecture what might happen if the table were surface were modified. Without too much encouragement they began to come out to the board and draw over it which was quite impressive to see.

A Smart Idea Up To Date

2005-07-25T18:26:00.000+10:00

Over the weekend, in response to a query about another matter, I got an email back from Jeremy at Electroboard, (our SMARTBoard supplier), in which he passed on the information that an update for the Smart Ideas software was now available to move up to Version 5.

Having discovered how to download the software, (via the Try Now option), I was most impressed to see how fresh and new the interface looked and how some of the problems I had commented on in the older version, (see Not Such a SMART Idea Again????), had been addressed. The only minor whinge, (though I can see their reasoning), is that the clipart is available as a separate download which then needs to be installed later. As I said I can see that doing it this way allows customers to download a "light" version of the basic program over a slower connection. It also means that you are not dragging along clipart, that often won't be needed.

BTW, the aforementioned Jeremy also has a blog, (though I do note he isn't as regular a poster as I try to be :). His Growing SMARTer blog is at http://growingsmarter.blogspot.com/

Taking AIM at 2004

2005-07-25T17:09:00.000+10:00

After our aborted mis-adventures with using the SMARTBoard to demonstrate how to take an AIM test of last week, I finally found the 2004 version to match the student books we already had. A number of scans later, I had digital image copies of the 2004 test items ready for display. Gathering the grade 3's together it was then a tour through how to best do multiple choice tests.

Displaying the scanned pages in Windows Picture and Fax viewer again we were soon very busy checking through the reading passages to find the answers. The children were also involved coming out to the board to shade the bubbles next to the "correct" answers. There was one minor drawback in this and that was each time we scrolled the page, the shading was lost. I also had to tap the page twice to firstly agree that I didn't want to save the page as an image, and then next to actually scroll the page. This was a minor inconvenience, (especially if a child still had the pen in their hand...... :).

Because we had the correct test, this time through went very smoothly and we finished the test well within the expected time which in itself was a re-assurance to a number of children, (now let's hope they can carry the same dedication to the task into the real test in a week's time.)

Curses, Foiled Again Batman..........

2005-07-19T17:31:00.000+10:00

Each year in our system, the children in grade's 3 & 5 are subjected to a set of state-wide tests quaintly titled the AIM, (or Achievement Improvement Monitor..... Sounds like some form of strange lizard to me :). As we want to do the best by our children, and given that the AIM format is quite foreign to our students, (it is an optical reader corrected, mainly multiple choice test that requires children to shade bubbles and all that next to the required answer), we give the children that chance to see previous tests so that they know what they are getting into. This obviously requires a lot of photocopying. To address this problem, I had the brainwave of scanning a previous test into digital form and then throwing it up onto the SMART Board to work from there.

After waiting for the lamp on the scanner to warm up, (perhaps a blowtorch might be a alternate option :) I had a copies of the test all ready to go. As they were jpegs I decided just to use the Windows Picture and Fax viewer. This allowed me to zoom as required and then advance through the pages of the test. Having collected another group of grade 3's from the room next door, (and palming off my grade 4's), we sat down to do the test on the board. Alas someone had mixed the tests and to my horror the children's reading books that the test items referred to and which I had dutifully given them were from another year to the test pages that I had scanned. SO MUCH FOR SAVING PAPER !!!!!!!!

Despite this major hiccup, we were able to work through a couple of items that didn't need the reader book enough for me to say that yes, once again the board has been quite adaptable to presenting work in a cost saving way.

Not Such a SMART Idea Again????

2005-07-14T16:56:00.000+10:00

One of the joys of teaching is to sometimes have a pre-service teacher in your room getting classroom experience before launching into the career full time. So it is that I had the pleasure of Mrs N's company at the end of last term. As she had a bad case of flu she missed a couple of days and needed to come back to do some work with the children. As a result she chose today.

Her task was to construct a concept map type of reflection on what the students thought about maths. "Aha." I said, "Why not use the board and the SMART Ideas software?" After watching some of the colour drain from her face, (she had barely used the board yet, let alone the software.....), I re-assured Mrs. N I would be there to help. A quick demo and five minutes later the children were in the room, eager to go.

Now of course I should have known better and thought she was making a very valiant attempt Mrs. N soon needed my assistance. After we finally both figured out how to write on the board with the pen and then turn it into text based objects after less than four or more attempts things became a lot smoother. I did notice her general reluctance to write over other entries, (a bit like not making the page too messy), whereas I tend to just compose wherever on the board and then move it to the spot it is needed, (shrinking and modifying on the way). Anyway we soon had a range of ideas and points listed on the board and again the utility of doing it this way soon came into great advantage as Mrs. N and the children moved them easily around to make a well ordered arrangement reflective of their comments on maths.

The question was then raised as to whether we could print the concept map. The answer yes however didn't quite provide the result we were looking for. Despite a little exploration of the menus, we could only print a relatively small, (a slightly smaller than B4 size copy of the map), when we were rather looking for a full A4 page presentation. I know that I could have copied and pasted the map into Word as a picture file and then enlarged it that way but there was not enough time in that session as Mrs. N had to keep moving. (A later quick look through the Help files for SMART Ideas also failed to suggest any other way around the problem.) Suffice to say we also had similar problems with earlier versions of Inspiration software, (though they seem to have solved that one in Version 7).

Now Where Is New York

2005-07-13T18:13:00.000+10:00

Here we are back at work and the children are as eager as ever to learn??? (well some of them at least :). The first week back has proceeded pretty much as normal though now I have reclaimed my time release as all other teachers have had their "orientation to the board" session. Each of our other three boards have been mounted over the hols however a mix up with the USB cables has meant that they are not yet operational in the respective rooms just yet. GRRRRRUMBLE !!!!!! (Why is it that the technical assistance is often the most problematic aspect of these sort of implementations?).

Back in room 11 though things have proceeded much more smoothly. This week we had some visitors from the US who were visiting the school for a whole different set of reasons other than checking out the board. The Prin however asked if we wouldn't mind doing our "show and tell" routine which the children were more than happy to oblige with. It is most interesting to see how all are getting very proficient at "working" the board, doing the "wow" things with the SMART Notebook software very efficiently, (writing greetings, converting to text, changing fonts, rotating and resizing etc with professional ease). I just sit back and marvel.

This time they even took the lead and suggested showing our visitors things out of the gallery. A quick browse found the map of North America and our poor visitors had to try to explain where New York was, (which in this case proved a little tricky).

Much less tricky, (but more impressive), was our next "exhibition". This time we showed off one of the great features of the board, the ability to deliver "just in time" immediately relevant experiences. An hour earlier in a class discussion we had been talking about internal combustion engines and valves, (yep these kids are 9-10 year olds). Over recess, I had done a quick Google on "internal combustion" with "Flash animation" and of course come up a page from How Stuff Works, (why did I bother, I should have known that....). Our guests were blown away by the way in which the children were so engaged by the animation and immediately, without prompting drew parallels between this animation and ones viewed previously showing the workings of the heart. One visitor later actually commented on how engaged the whole class was with the experience and how well they were understanding a concept the teacher concerned knew little about.

Later we were to have another group through but time constraints meant they only looked in at the door as we "read" a Flash animated story on the board. I had by that time remembered however a "little" download I had made during the hols. Google Earth proved quite a hit as we zeroed in on New York and then later on Melbourne and Geelong. This is an absolutely fab tool, highly recommended. Also worht downloading, (though only over a very good broadband connection is the 180 Mb NASA World Wind application that delivers even better "realtime" satellite images. HUGE!!!!!!

Conferencing again

2005-07-09T20:21:00.000+10:00

Another holiday, another conference. This time it was CONASTA, the Australian Science Teachers' Annual Conference. I had offered to run my session on ICT and Science and once again sought the assitance of Electroboard, (the suppliers of our SMART Board) in providing a board for the presentation. Once again Jeremy came through with excellent service and the session went like a dream. Only one member of the group had seen a board in action, and the others were stunned by the capability and ease of it to deliver information.

Oh Damn Not Such a SMART Idea

2005-06-14T19:53:00.000+10:00

With June comes the time to do the mid-year student reports. Alas the need to gather data, write the reports etc has meant that not a lot has happened with the board over the past couple of days. Today though it was time to put it to work again as we began to prepare our children for their first child-centred interview. (This year instead of it being the formal parent-teacher meeting to talk over progress we are going to have the children lead the interview presenting their work themselves.)

To ready the children for the interview it was deemed important to provide guidelines within which the children could discuss and present examples of their work. To help them organise thier presentation, I decided that I would use the board. Half way through the listing of the subject areas I realised that each had sub sections that needed to be listed and then subdivided again. Though I could, (and did), add extra pages quite easily, having to juggle around the pages seemed not quite as efficient a process as it might have been. It was around about half way through that I realised that I should have used the SMART Ideas software. Using SMART Ideas would have allowed me to more easily multi-layer my work and then later display the criteria in outline format. Instead I had to resort to Cut and Paste to bring things together. A lesson that may be well learnt when doing similar activities.

Seeing Eye To Eye, With The Boss

2005-06-09T17:20:00.000+10:00

Part way through the teaching this morning and the Principal came in with one of those, "I'm about to ask you a favour looks". It seems that a fellow Prin who also taught at our school was visiting this morning and my Prin thought it would be neat if he saw the SMARTBoard in action. Not a problem says I, just drop in as you wish. Fortunately I had that morning sourced some more animation/graphics, (the latter from the SMART Gallery), related to our new focus the eye.

Ten minutes later it was "Okay children, let's sit down on the floor and show Mr C our board." Fortunately the children are getting used to their new found celebrity status as the whiteboard room and they took things in their stride. They were so good that they did most of the demo showing the pen to text capability, along with other features such as changing properties, using the on-board keyboard and sundry other features. I almost felt redundant.

After our quick "wow" intro it was down to some serious work on the eyes. Again the BrainPop movie was just what the doctor ordered to show off how the board can be used to the max. We were able to stop pause and replay to our hearts content. Even more powerful however was the way in which we could draw on the image and annotate to make a point before we replayed. Mr C was most impressed, straight away suggesting that he needed to bring in his whole staff to check out these whizz bang boards.

Time To Draw Breath

2005-06-06T17:09:00.000+10:00

Oh wow was this another biggey or not? Today in our little discussions that we have often, up came the subject of breathing and how the lungs work. Well last week we had discussed the circulatory system and in passing had related this to the lungs. Today it was full on with the breathing. Of course I headed straight for BrainPop but alas the respiratory animations were in the pay section. A Google on "animation and respiratory" bought up lots of references to Brainpop, which I didn't need and also to KidsHealth, which didn't quite cut it either. Then I remembered How Stuff Works. Now even though this site is more aimed at senior students than my little grade 3/4's, it does have some neat animations so over I cruised. Sure enough, in among some interesting but rather dense text, were two excellent animations showing just what I wanted. Leaving the pages up over recess, when we came in it was "on with the show". Once again the board showed it's versatility as we stopped, replayed, annotated, labeled and generally had great fun dissecting the system. The number and breadth of questions and "what if's" that were generated, (not by me I must add), were really impressive. Twenty minutes later the children were still wanting more so we had a look at another animation I had found at kidshealth dealing with asthma. That was very informative for many of the children had either direct personal experiences with this disease or knew someone who had experiences.

We didn't use the Skool.com animation in the Human Body part of the Gallery in the SMART Notebook as I thought it more suited to individuals rather than a whole class situation. I did find on the net a couple of nice short articles on breathing that soon became cloze documents in Word. I also found a neat labeling diagram at Enchanted Learning which rounded out a neat two hour session.

Look Out For The Poddle

2005-06-02T16:54:00.000+10:00

Well I nearly put my foot in it again today, (that's the Poddle not the puddle). As my senior unit colleague was coming into my room again whilst I was off playing soccer outside, I enquired what she was going to regale my little darlings with. She said that they would conclude the work on mass they had been doing by looking at how you can make several alternate combinations of mass when measuring with pan balances. I "foolishly" said that I thought I had seen an interactive that covered just this type of activity and left saying I would get it ready. Of course a quick search reminded me again that there are increasing times when my memory is not as functional as I recall it used to be. Alas in my set of Learning Federation objects, (see Oh For A Keyboard below), and at other sites I couldn't find what I thought I had seen. Undaunted it was off to Google and after about five minutes I found the Poddles at PBS Cyberchase games. After a quick five minute exploration at lunchtime we had the activity in hand. A later debrief revealed that the Poddles was just what the doctor had ordered.

Another neat activity that was greatly enhanced by the board today was with a reading activity. All children had a copy of the text however when we came to look through the passage for "tricky" words it was the digital copy shown onto the board where attention was drawn. Adding annotations directly to the passage via the board only made it even more clear as was the possibility of highlighting how the surrounding text can offer assistance on working out what "tricky" words might mean. Much more powerful than holding up an A4 or even A3 piece of paper and asking children to direct their attention to it.

Oh For A Keyboard

2005-06-01T22:19:00.000+10:00

Today we had a fit of the frustrations and found out about one of the limitations of the onboard keyboard. We were looking in particular at nets of solids and had "successfully" (?), used the Smart Notebook for drawing a number of freehand examples. I then decided to switch to Word and show the children how to use Autoshapes to create custom made nets. Of course moving the autoshapes around just using the arrow buttons is not all that accurate and I wanted to show the children how to use Ctrl with the arrow keys. Using this combination allows you to move shapes a pixel at a time, (a much more satisfactory way of positioning shapes). Alas, try as we might, the on board floating keyboard just doesn't have the functionality to enable the use of Ctrl and the arrow keys. Alas it was back to teaching from the laptop keyboard at the back of the room. Not nearly as satisfactory I noticed.

As we had a couple of free minutes at the end of the day we had a play with "Wishball", a learning object from the Learning Federation All Government schools in my home state of Victoria should have copies of these learning objects in their schools. Most if not all are eminently suited to use on an IWB.

Out Of The Mouth Of .......

2005-05-31T20:08:00.000+10:00

Sometimes, (if you listen well enough), the children we work with give you some really telling insights into how to teach them. Today I was let into a really neat notion. We had in our morning chats begun talking about veins in plants which led to a discussion on veins in animals and then to hearts and circulation etc. Over recess I quickly located a number of Flash animations of the human heart in action. As with most animations, each only showed part of the process so I deemed it prudent to have a look at a number of such animations. It was in the process of viewing them that one of the students piped up that this particular one was not right because all the chambers were contracting and relaxing together as opposed to the previous one where there was an up and down pattern. Instantly, (well sort of instantly :) I realized that here was the real teaching point of this exercise. Straight away I switched from me being the "teacher" explaining what was happening to allowing the children to learn by commenting on and contrasting the ways in which each of the animations differed. Soon the children were deriving their own questions and answering amongst themselves. Maybe this is one of the more enabling aspects of the IWB, that we can together explore a range of alternate learning experiences side by side and contrast and critically examine each for what they have to offer and what they choose to omit.

As well as teaching, I am also trying to achieve my Masters in Education. Tonight when I went to my usual Tuesday class I was pleasantly informed that next term my supervisor and two others of her colleagues from Uni were coming all the way down the highway to check out our SMART Boards in action.

Oh as we were working away today, the principal came past showing a prospective family through the school. They looked most impressed when they came past with the board in full display. (Maybe I should rig up a system whereby the boss can let me know when he is on the "show the school" visits so we can "wow" some more parents :).

Back At The Coalface

2005-05-30T19:49:00.000+10:00

At last the hearing has returned and I no longer have an excuse to stay at home so it's back to the classroom and checking out what the children have been doing since I have been away. First thing on the agenda was to catch up on the stories that they have been publishing. Alas some of the children had taken advantage of the nicer nature of the replacement teachers who have been filling in for me this last two weeks. The stories have become a little lax with some dodgey punctuation and some other errors appearing in their final draft work where none should be. Normally this would have meant some quite tedious one-on-one repetitive work, explaining to individuals how to go about remedying this. Aha but not so with the IWB. We soon had poor H's work up on the board for all to see. A caution to all that his was not the only piece of work that had these problems was enough to get a bit more focus on the piece. Soon we were explaining the in and outs of using the "invisible" characters in Word to show us where there were too many spaces, where "Enter" had been used where it shouldn't plus revealing a number of other features which would help make their otherwise interesting stories that little bit more intelligible. Overall the SMART Board provided some excellent productivity gains with an otherwise 2-3 hours of individual instruction being replaced by fifteen minutes in sit, (that is not allowing for the vagaries of some of my little darling's memories in remembering and applying what we had covered).

We've Done Well

2005-05-27T18:25:00.000+10:00

Though I am still not officially back at work, my Principal and I went up to a School Leader's seminar this week conducted by IWBnet at Penleigh and Essendon Gramar School in Melbourne. It was interesting to note that the numbers attending were so in excess of the anticipated audience that all the places available were taken.

As part of the day we got to check out some other whiteboard manufacturers as well as some of the software associated with IWB's. We also got to have a look around the school and hear of their experiences. As with us, they were most enthusiastic users of the technology and the teachers involved were excellent ambassadors, not only for the school but also for the technology. They did have some cautionary experiences that they were able to share with the audience. P&EGS have also installed SMART Boards. They however paid for contractors to install their IWB's including associated hardware such as Jet controllers to control the projector and sound systems. Having used the IWB's they now considered this to be largely redundant expenditure and will not be going to such extremes in future installations.

They had also decided in two rooms to go cold turkey and have only the IWB as the sole board space for the classroom. The teachers suggested that this was not such a good idea as they would have liked a small space at least on which to record notes/messages that would be there as a reminder for the whole of the day. Overall for us it was really heartening to find out that we were at least up with the leaders in the adoption of IWB's and that we had made some good decisions in our choice of board and the manner in which we are proceeding with there installation.

One interesting reminder to come out of our discussions during the day was the importance of the digital camera, not only to record events but also to be used to capture student work to throw up on the IWB. Often such work is larger in size than a scanner however with today's higher resolution cameras capturing such work is much easier. Of course once you have the work on display it is very easy to use it to make teaching points and also save in digital portfolios.

Greatly Enhanced Presentation

2005-05-23T11:38:00.000+10:00

Despite my infirmity, (I can only still partially hear at best), I went along to the Conference and made sure that I sat up the front of sessions I attended. Arriving at the conference I was more than pleased to find, as promised by Jeremy, my SMART Board ready in the room I was to present in. I shouldn't have been worried at all as I had had a number of conversations with both Jeremy and the folks delivering the board since the arrangements for the loan were made. (Their service has been most impressive indeed.)

As I had some spare time at lunchtime I offered to do a sort of intro to the SMARTBoard for any other delegates who were interested. A dozen or so people came up to the room and we had a quick intro to how it sets up and works. Most of the attendees were secondary teachers who went away most impressed with the capabilities of interactive whiteboards.

In the display area there was another IWB distributor displaying the board they had for sale. That product was pretty interesting too and the demonstrator was busy most of the time. It seems IWB's may be about to make an impact in our system.

As to the session I presented, it went very well. The SMARTBoard certainly did make it that much easier to present with as I was always facing the audience and they could see all the moves I was making. (My presentation is full of hyperlinks and embedded objects so participants could see everything as it unfolded as well as where it came from.) The display of interactives is superb especially as I took the plugin speakers.

An Offer To Good To Refuse

2005-05-19T20:14:00.000+10:00

This weekend I am to present a session at the Annual ICTEV conference. On Wednesday I received my first copy of the interactivewhiteboard news from http://www.interactivewhiteboard.net.au/ In the newsletter it was mentioned that Electroboard were willing to provide a SMART Board to conference presenters. As I am also going to present sessions later in the year at a couple of science teacher's conferences I sent off an email enquiring about the possibility of a board for these. Cheekily I also mentioned the ICTEV conference. Imagine my surprise when next morning in my Inbox was an email with attached loan agreement for the conference on the Saturday. This was followed up by a phone call to me from Jeremy, the account manager at ElectroBoard seeking to make sure that they could deliver a board to the conference for me to use. Suffice to say i will now have a board with which to better present my session, (I was very impressed).

Oh the session is titled ICT and Science. You can view an online version at my Simply Science Site at http://users.pipeline.com.au/jpearce/default.htm

Oh Dear I'm Sick

2005-05-19T19:56:00.000+10:00

Just when everything is setup to really run with the SMART Board I get struck by the dreaded flu. The worst part is that I can barely hear and working in a classroom environment is basically impossible. Alas I have had to take sick leave.

Unfortunately timing is everything and this week is Education Week and on Thursday we were to have an open session. Because I knew that a number of children would have parents, and grandparents visiting at this time, and that they would be expecting to show off the board I asked the relief teacher is she wouldn't mind if I came up to school and we sort of did a tag team for the last hour. She readily agreed and again it was interesting watching the adult reactions to the board. There was a lot of wowing at first but then again there was a general reluctance to actually engage with the board when given the chance to write etc. The children were very eager though to take over and as they guided their adult company in the use of the board they showed that they had a very good grasp of how to operate it, (much better in some cases than I had actually thought. Maybe I should take more of a back seat more often just to see what the children really can do?).

At home I had decided to "interactivate" a new strategy game. Though I could have used the SMART Notebook I decided this time to make it in Flash. The advantage with Flash is that through the use of action buttons you can automatically reset the board to starting positions. In addition I find it just a little easier to draw.

The game was again very successful this time the children actually a little reluctant to leave the board to play the paper version.

Happy OHS at Last

2005-05-14T13:53:00.000+10:00

Come Friday, (why then I ask), just as everyone else is heading down for the weekly debrief, into my room come the technicians smiling broadly. "We think we've got it." was the chorus. Straight away they proceeded to unroll extensions and cabling and began moving desktops computers around the room. Soon we had whiteboard connections, well sort of. We could get the laptop to operate the board via the switch box but the desktop proved another matter altogether. A few minutes spent on the SMART site and we had the reason. It seems that the SMART Board is configured to work out of USB Port 1 only. A re-arrange of the cables and we had the desktop functioning too. Next for the big test, going via the switch box and doing a switch over.

This trial provided a really interesting outcome. With the laptop connected via the switch, we were able to get the green board indicator light on which meant it was receiving. The only problem was that the movements of the pen on the board didn't leave the normal pen impression. Instead the cursor on the desktop was careering around the screen mimicking the pen on the board. Whilst rather comical it was not quite the result expected. With a scratch of the head the techo mumbled something about another male-female cable and set off back to the office. Thirty minutes or so later, with everyone else having now gone home for the weekend, this extra cable proved the solution and we had a switching setup that enables us to move between a desktop and my laptop.

This was important because it meant that I could still do work on my laptop out of school and use it at will. It also meant that I then didn't have to worry about students inadvertently or otherwise accessing or changing material on my laptop. It also gave us a point from which children could then easily access their work to quickly show to the class.

Along the way I also had my laptop configured for the wireless setup that the school has just installed. This was good because it freed up a data point that the relocated desktop could now access.

Suggesting the use of a wireless keyboard with the board as has been suggested in some of the reading I have done, proved once again problematic. It seems that having a number of wireless devices such as keyboards in a school setup such as ours can lead to interference between devices. The suggestion was that it might cause more problems that it solved. As a result it looks like this idea is on the backburner.

Now all we need are the speakers set which look like they also require switching device. Ah well bit by bit we are getting things together. Thank goodness we haven't tried to do everything at once.

Council Impressions

2005-05-11T21:05:00.000+10:00

As the school has invested quite a significant amount of money in the SMART Boards it is always prudent to keep the School Council informed on the use of the infra-structure they authorise. With this in mind I was asked to attend and do a short 15 minute presentation for the Council Meeting tonight. It's amazing though how somehow time flies when you are having fun showing off. Some 30 minutes into the quarter hour slot I finally stopped talking long enough to take questions. Of course there was the question of durability as well as how the children enjoyed it. Interestingly there was a general reluctance by council members to actually come out and write on the board. Overall thought there were lots of smiling faces of approval from the council members as they left.

There was however also one very pertinent question asked by one member as he was leaving. He wondered if many of the things I had shown eg the interactives, Flash stories, some of the work and the like, could not have been done just as easily with a data projector and desk-top. In doing things this way we would be cutting out the cost, (at around $5000), of the boards. This of course would mean that we could then afford to put a data projector in almost all of the rooms instead of only the four boards.

In many ways he had a point, especially with some of the activities I had chosen to demonstrate. A quite valid argument could well be mounted in this way. In thinking on it later I did consider that maybe I had missed an opportunity to make a greater point perhaps because of the nature of the demonstration. The presentation was very static, me talking while they listened. This contrasts with the whiteboard teaching situations I have experienced so far have which have been more dynamic and involved with children as well as myself working via the board. Even with a projector the logistics of moving to and from the board are much easier and child friendly than doing the same via a desk top keyboard.

The more data projectors suggestion also didn't take into account the teacher position in the class and that the board allowed me to be in front of the class at all times. Thus I could take into account those often critical facial and other indicators of student engagement. (If we had only the desk-top computer to work from I would have been positioned behind the children.)

Sorry About That

2005-05-10T19:51:00.000+10:00

Mid afternoon today we were busy working away, (this time without the board accompaniment when I noticed the Principal walking past in the company of two other gentlemen. Knowing that our Prin was showing a couple of neighbouring Prins around I volunteered to "show off" the whiteboard. As we weren't totally connected the Prins left with a view to coming back shortly. Unfortunately this co-incided with my change over time for the senior soccer, (see "Brave Colleagues" below). Of course the Prins had not made it back before I had to go. Fortunately the aforementioned "Brave" Senior colleague was able to do a great little sell on the board when the Prins did return some ten minutes after I left.

Clozed Correction

2005-05-09T17:52:00.000+10:00

We had been doing a cloze exercise as one of our reading group rotations this week when I hit upon the perfect way to go through the correction/analysis of responses, why not the board. This was easy as I had a digital copy of the passage so it was a simple matter of throwing it up onto the board and the entering all possible alternatives into the spots where the words had been removed from, on the board. Much nicer that simply listing the alternative words on the board and then checking back to the passage for the context as the contest was already there.

Memo to the future, make sure as much of my work is kept in digital form so that we can throw it up on the board. Last week we had done a "torn story" activity where a passage had been disassembled and needed to be put back in order. Damn we could have gone throught the correction of that on the board with the passages in separate blocks. Doing that in the Notebook format would have allowed children to slide them around and rearrange them however we liked.

Decomposing Interactively

2005-05-06T17:24:00.000+10:00

As many teachers can relate teaching subtraction with trading can be a lot of fun, not. Some kids just don't seem to be able to catch what is going on. Again demonstrations on the floor with Multi-based Arithmetic Blocks is okay for most but for the children whose attention wanders just that little bit, (read for that the ones who have trouble latching onto what is happening), it is often not as effective as one might hope. As this was the topic of the moment it was great to remember that I had seen some MAB interactives at the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives For Interactive Mathematics, (wow what a title) at http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/index.html. A quick connect to the internet and a Java update later, (the interactives are written in javascript), and we were on the go.

Boy did the use of the board make a huge difference. All at once everybody was involved, especially when the blocks decomposed. Even better was the fact that the blocks were colour coded so that we could talk about the top number, (or minuend for the technically inclined mathematicians) as being the number you had that you could give away. The number being subtracted, (subtrahend, yeah I looked the term up....) was red. Therefore when we went to work in our books we did our examples in these colours and the confusions in the main disappeared as all the children knew that it was the blue they had to give away and the red they were to give.

There was one minor irritation and that was that the interactive didn't actually record the decomposition and trading just the way we like to show in our classes. Though the computation shown could be overwritten on the board with the pens, each time the screen was refreshed for the following step this annotation/recording disappeared and had to be replaced which was a potential distraction.

Brave Colleagues

2005-05-05T17:11:00.000+10:00

Each week, because I have some previous experience in the area, I take senior soccer for an hour. This means a swap with one of the other senior teachers who comes into my room to take my grade 3/4's. Having already been in for the intro session with her class, Mrs N was brave and forward enough to ask that if I set the board up, could she use it with my kid's assistance. This has been the start of a neat little professional arrangement as Mrs N has now not only continued to use the board with my class but has also enquired about further using it with her class when mine are out of the room.

Another day we were out of the room for 2 hours checking bikes. Another colleague who has had experience with boards in another setting was offered the room. She took it for the whole 120 minutes and loved it. No need for a guided tour from me at all.

Out of the Mouths of Babes

2005-05-02T17:08:00.000+10:00

Interesting observation from one of the Prep teachers not long after having been in our room for the intro session. Seems they went back to their room where they were about to use the Overhead Projector to do some work on a large sheet of butcher's paper on the wall. One child passed the comment that "Hey we've got a smartboard too, just like Mr P's"

Prior to the session the class teacher enquired if we could use an interactive from http://www.teachingtime.co.uk that she had been using in class to teach time. Seeing the clocks on the "Big Screen" was great for the children. We also has an experiment with the clock in the SMART Notebook which proved quite easy to use.

Other Uses

2005-05-01T16:39:00.000+10:00

It has been really interesting having other classes come into the room to access the whiteboard when my class have been out of the room. The preps, (reception) class in particular seem to take to it really easily. Again the standard patter involves a talk about the projector and about not looking into the bright light, then safety around the board before showing them, (usually on some unsuspecting child's forehead), that the pens don't actually make a mark in the normal sense though on the board they create magic. Then it's onto exploring some of the attributes of the board eg the display of Flash interactives or thinking tools to something else hopefully related to their class work. In this way I hope that we are providing a sort of PD for the teachers as well.

This morning the Art teacher came in and enquired if there was any way that we could display digital images of the children on the board so that they could draw and shade around their projected image with pencil to have the sketchings of a large portrait. With a minimum experimentation we found images on the network and projected them onto some large sheets of paper blu-tacked to the board. 15 minutes later our test child had a very life-like torso portrait to work with. Result one happy Art teacher and we became a wandering class for the sessions that she has with the extension art group as they "draw" their portraits. A totally unexpected use for the board indeed.

On another occasion a visiting Canadian student teacher from another room enquired if he could use the board to run a PowerPoint presentation that he had made for his class. A quick show and do explanation and he was away, as of course was my class as we offered to vacate so he could use our room. (My children are becoming well practiced in packing up to decamp :)

Play the Game

2005-04-29T18:37:00.000+10:00

Wow, the kids really enjoyed playing "Trapper and Escaper" on the board so much that I am not sure that they really wanted to go off and play on the game boards. There was a lot more interaction as different children were able to make each of the moves. They were also able to change roles from being the Trapper to the Escaper.

Of course with every step forward there seems to be another in another direction. Even though the electrician is wanting to come back to tidy up all the cables etc, the solution on the tech front has been harder to achieve. It seems that the projectors we have purchased can only send out signal. This is different to some other models that can apparently loop the signal. This means that trying to connect two alternate computers to the projector will not be a simple matter of looping them on a shared cable. Instead a switching device will be needed. Sourcing this of course is taking more time so the cables still hang around. As well in another surf around the Smarttech site I have found there is a need to purchase specific extension cables for extending the cable to the board and projector. Ah well another week of children being careful around cables........

In the mean time it has been a lot of fun inviting other classes into the room when my class are off at art etc and showing them and their teachers some of the capability of the board. We usually do the name on board, convert text to type, a Flash animation story or two, an interactive or game and maybe something associated with what they are doing in their classroom at the time. All, (teachers and children), have been quite excited and have really enjoyed interacting with the board.

Maths Games are Fun

2005-04-27T18:26:00.000+10:00

Over night I had a brainwave. Often we play maths strategy games. To teach these games we usually have the children in a circle on the floor watching as I play a game on an A4 sheet against one other of the children. Thankfully most children are reasonably engaged though often there is a little pushing and movement as they try to see what is going on. More often than not however when they move off to play against each other there are many variations on the understandings of the rules. As a result I decided to see if the board would help.

Using the notebook again I fiddled until I was able to make gameboard for our next game, "Trapper and Escaper". Thank goodness for the "Copy/Paste" and quite useful "Clone" function of the notebook. Next it was up to making the counters. Making them movable without having the board also move was a problem until I remembered the "Lock in Place" attribute via the right mouse click. Pretty soon I had a functioning game.

Have We Been Sold a Pup?

2005-04-26T18:33:00.000+10:00

Interesting how you start to explore things. Today after school I went wandering around the SMART technologies site and discovered the SMART Notebook software we were provided with was already out of date. A quick????? 1.1Mb download later and some more waiting till I installed it I realised that I had indeed been lucky to have ferreted around as this latest version was vastly improved on the supplied version.

Branching Out

2005-04-22T18:15:00.000+10:00

So far the board has been quite useful as a replacement for the normal board and the text to type function has been well used though it is time to break out a bit. For lots of other tasks it has been easier, or more convenient to use the normal whiteboard, (am I still being paranoid about the globe and yes I have the batteries and the remote works fine except when you turn it off and then realize that you really wanted it on again but you have to wait until the lamp cool down is complete and the projector is ready to start up again.

Today we tried a Thinking Skills activity called TWINK or "Things I know" "Things I Want to Know" and "Things I Know now". I had a template prepared though again it would have been easier to prepare the template in Word. SMART Notebook doesn't have customizable tables in the gallery and drawing them with the Autoshapes is possible but just that little more clumsy that I could do in Word. Still after a little experimenting I was able to get up a quite attractive template for the children and I to work with. Modelling how to use the TWINK template via the board however was great and most effective.

We Live in a Fish Bowl

2005-04-21T18:07:00.000+10:00

Interesting isn't it how most things new attract attention. As our class is next to the library and the computer lab, all other classes in the school go past our room at least twice a week. It seems that at the moment they go past our door just that little more slowly than usual, especially when the whiteboard is operating. Most teacher also just want to say "Hi" or pass some comment about our grade being the "smarties then". We don't mind, we'll take the good with the rest......lol.

Even when I'm on yard duty siblings of my class children come up and identify themselves as having someone in the smart class.

It's my intention that when I have time release or when we are out of the room that other classes will use our room and the board.

At the moment I am still a bit paranoid about having the projector globe running when not needed and as I haven't yet gotten batteries for the remote this means climbing on tables a bit, (I'll get the batteries tomorrow). Also we found out that the laptop hibernates quite often when not plugged in.

The Kids are Back

2005-04-18T17:40:00.000+10:00

"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.

Installing the 1st Board

2005-04-16T16:35:00.000+10:00

As I was the "guru" for all of this it was decided that my room should be the guinea pig room. In that way we could iron out any problems regarding the installation so that when installing the system into the next three rooms we could basically duplicate the system. One of our parents volunteered to assist in the installation which was carried out over the term break.

Installation necessitated the modifying of the existing blackboard and removal of some cupboards below it. The mounting of the board was quite easily done though the builder had originally set it higher than I wanted it. Luckily I was able to check in and help recify this. Mounting the projector was also a problem as we had not taken into account the need to pitch the projector at a quite sharp angle. Again modifications were needed to the projector mount. A fan was removed to mount the projector and this was then used as the power source.

After a few hours things were sort of set up though the need to run the cord from the computer to the board meant going up over the top of the board and down its side. (Why didn't they put this computer/board cable connection at the top of the board?) Connecting the projector to the computer meant a cable dangling down onto a trolley in the centre of the room plus power and network cables also running from the corner along the ceiling and dangling down. Albeit temporary and a little problematic regarding Health and Safety issues at least we had the board functional.

The only other minor problem was that the batteries to to projector remote control were flat which meant to turn it on and off I had to stand on a table, (more grist for the OHS people :)

Showing off to Colleagues

2005-04-13T17:33:00.000+10:00

As it was the hols, it was an opportune time to get some practice in with a couple of the other teachers who will have a board installed in their room. A time to meet had been arranged and we spent a good couple of hours just fiddling with the NoteBook which is quite neat as well as trying to make some sense of how to get the SMART Ideas software running like we wanted to. Overall it was good PD and time well spent.

I also spoke at length to the technicians who work on the network in the school about how we could set the board up so that we could operate it off of a desktop or my laptop with some sort of switching device in the middle. Thus if needed we could run the board without my laptop if required. The techo seemed to think this would not be a problem, (famous last words). He also said he would look to see how speakers could also be configured so that we could listen into the animation/interactives.

It was also time to clean up all of the shavings/plaster etc left over from the installation, (and they say all we do is teach......)

First Time For The Kids

2005-04-05T16:01:00.000+10:00

Taking the class down to the old office where the board was set up and boy were they excited, (though this was no doubt tempered because they had already seen one in the "Life Ed" van. Ours is quite a lot bigger so there was still quite a "Wow" factor. The first experience for them was to write their names on the board with pens and then convert this to type.

Most found this easy though there was a tendency to stand in front of where they want to write thus throwing a shadow, (as the projector was at the same level as the board and not elevated this meant that the shadow was even greater than might have been). Some children also were a little timid. It is important to write firmly on the board. Others wanted to go back and "correct" errors. Unfortunately the "text to type" recognition doesn't like this and as a result threw up some curious translations. Generally it proved better to write large letters quickly and do any alterations later.

Synchronicity

2005-04-03T16:57:00.000+10:00

Interesting how when you think that you have discovered something new how other things fill in around you. The week after setting up one board, a "Life Ed" van arrived to visit our school. In the van amongst other things the teacher had was an interactive whiteboard. As a result most of the children got to use that board before they had a chance to use ours............. :)

Getting set up

2005-03-28T16:42:00.000+10:00

Having taken receipt of the four boards and associated data projectors because we also had to teach and fulfill a range of other tasks, it was quite a few weeks before we could find time to actually open them. (This is a bit of a continuing theme and needs to be taken account of when undertaking any new major initiative, especially where ICT is involved.)

Finally it was only by going up to school on the Easter weekend that I could find time to "play" with the board. The initial setup was quite simple, the board itself being quite light and easy to rest against a bookshelf. Installing the software was also quite easy. The biggest problem was getting the projector to work. The instructions were uncharacteristically lacking in information. Finally with a mix of Function keys and other mix and match we had projection.

The resultant playtime was huge fun as we realised that the possibilities for using the board were far greater than what we had originally envisaged. Just about anything you can do on the computer can also be viewed an and operated from the board.

The proprietary software included with the SMART Board is also very interesting and quite intuitive. We loved the character recognition aspect and changing text to type. We also loved the Smart Ideas software that operates just like Inspiration software only in some cases even more creatively.

Preamble

2005-03-26T19:01:00.000+11:00

Isn't hindsight a marvellous thing and doesn't it often provide the most illuminating moments. It was about two weeks ago that I realised that I should have started this blog about three months back, (or for that matter even earlier). I have backdated this and some of the following posts so that the reader might get some flavour of our journey as it unfolded.

You see it was towards the end of last year that we at Bellaire begun seriously talking about investigating the use of interactive whiteboards within the school. At the time we were compiling a submission for funding, (that of course we missed out on). Came the end of the year however we received an email that advertised a special 2 for 1 offer on the purchase of Interactive Whiteboards. It seemed a good deal so we ordered four.