We have SmartBoards on every floor of our school. On my floor, the Smartboard isn't used that often so I could have a lot of access to it. I've used it before to do a textbook lesson from the Science book ( another topic altogether). All I really did was "read the textbook" and let some students read from the SmartBoard as well. I'm sure I'm not getting the maximum benefit from it. What am I missing?
You have access to a smartboard!? LUCKY DOG! I haven't seen one since college - my district doesn't have that kind of money. But I remember in college that you could take the special markers and write all over them and then it just magically erased itself. So it wasn't a dry erase marker with the mess. It was cool! Would be awesome for kids. So you could use it as an LCD screen with your computer - and if you had any kind of game or anything up there on the screen - heck even a coloring sheet - the kids could run up there and draw all over it. I'm sure they do tons more stuff than that. Man... what I wouldn't do to have one of those fun toys in my room... *dreamy sigh*
What makes an interactive whiteboard special is the interactivity with the students. I'd suggest you download the notebook software (free from the Smartboard website) and explore the Lesson Activity Toolkit. There are already some great templates made.
every room in our buildings have one (elem, middle and high school). we LOVE them. i use mine for powerpoints, movies, interactive games, "clickers," etc. (clickers is a smartboard tool. each kid gets a clicker to answer a question and it give immediate feedback on who got it and who didnt...so you know what to teach). there are endless possiblities.
You can also move around the objects on the screen. So if you are counting coins, you can put the coins in order by value. Then count on and write the amount underneath. We learned about living and nonliving things. I put pictures of many things, living and nonliving (from the software with the board) and the kids came up and moved the pictures to the correct column. There are many free activities available on the internet.
Last year I used ours to pump up our morning messages by adding tons of animated graphics. I even made a choose your own adventure story. Depending on what they clicked, they were led to different slides. I've put graphs on there for them to color in. We played matching games, interactive computer games, enjoyed websites like www.starfall.com, etc. If you turn the lights out and you have a black screen (end of power point slideshow), the smartboard becomes a neon glow toy used to encourage writing. We scanned some of their work for them to do peer editing. There are tons of things you can do.
We don't have whiteboards in every room, but we do have smartboards in every room! I've installed/downloaded the notebook software on my computer and I create my lessons at home and store them on a flash drive that I carry around to my classes (I teach in four different rooms). It's fantastic - I use it as a powerpoint presentation times 10! I have several slides that keeps me on-task and sure that I teach the exact same thing to each class and know exactly which examples to use. I have the kids do problems on the board and they think it's fun to write on. If I need to stop a lesson and explain something, I just write on a new slide that I can save and refer to later in the lesson. One of the best things I've used the smartboard for is that I can save each classes lesson - exactly as it's been written on - and change it into a .pdf file and post it on my website. That way the kids can go download the exact lesson if they need additional help at home. Saving each day's lesson has also been helpful if/when I can have students tell me that I didn't tell them something. Right there in class, I can pull up yesterdays lesson and show them that I did indeed inform them of whatever they are complaining about. Occasionally, I'll pull up interactive websites, like the game Rush Hour, and because it's a touch screen - the kids have a blast playing. Smartboards are cool.
One of the best things I like about the smartboard is that I can display the kids' math journal page and we can go over how to do it together and even fill in the answers afterwards. It's so much easier to use than a projector. The kids love it too!
Don't forget that you can save those revisions and keep the original and revisions in their portfolio.
I am having trouble finding the time to get all the lesson plans onto the computer to use on the whiteboard...it seems to be taking up WAY too much time to use for what it does...can anyone comment on this?
I love my SmartBoard. It has taken the place of my whiteboard, overhead projector, and scan-converter. I love being able to put everything up on the board and manipulate it. I use video clips, computer applications, and just about everything else I can get to project. Plus, it's hooked to my television, so I can play anything from TV or a DVD, and I also use my document camera to project on the SmartBoard. There are a lot of things that you can do with a SmartBoard, but to get the full benefit of it you really need to have one all the time. Those of us who have one in the classroom use it daily for everything, and it's no extra effort to prepare lessons using it. Now, at first it did take longer to convert items to use on the SmartBoard, but now we just prepare that way. It's no extra work at wll. I have a SmartClassroom . . . SmartBoard, AirLiner slate, audio enhancement system, document camera, and student responders.
