Saturday, December 15, 2007

Exciting New Website for HS Science Teachers

Hi all you Bio and Chem teachers! Here's a great new resource for you to use with your students on your SmartBoards. It's the Howard Hughes Medical Center website.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Word Magnets!

One of the most time-consuming tasks with the SmartBoard used to be creating text boxes with new vocabulary, creating geometric shapes to match, changing the background color of the boxes, rearranging the order of both geometric shape and textbox and THEN grouping them together.

The object of all this effort, of course, was to create vocabulary words or labels that can be moved around the SmartBoard to show comprehension.

Well, now a new resource has come out that eliminates all this effort. It's called "Word Magnets" and comes to us from educators in the UK. Here's the link. Have fun!

http://www.xmleducation.co.uk./magnets.html

Friday, December 7, 2007

Interactive Science for High School Teachers

Attention all you High School Science teachers!

Here's a great new website with links to key content areas that can be immediately used with your SmartBoard. Enjoy!

http://science.nhmccd.edu/biol/animatio.htm

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Great News! A 2006 European research report with results from Great Britain, Norway, Estonia and the Netherlands has just been released that indicates that there is quantitative evidence that interactive whiteboards and other forms of instructional technology have significant impact on learning in the classroom with particular impact on Literacy in the primary grades.  Here are some key points:
- Interactive whiteboards set a "faster pace" in the classroom.
- Teachers' follow-up questions are directed at the whole class, not individual students.
- Teachers' confidence in using other forms of technology is great after using the interactive whiteboard.
- Quantitative results show significant improvement in Literacy in the primary grades (et al) when interactive technology is used in the classroom. 
- There is a "tipping point" when use of interactive technology takes off in the classroom.  During the early period of adoption, results might not seem justified for the investment but then "suddenly everything just takes off and the added value of using ICT (Information and Communication Technology) just takes off."

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Comments from 10/22/07 Workshop Teachers

Welcome new SmartBoarders!

Please take a moment to comment about the SmartBoard workshop you've just completed. Be sure to let us have your thoughts about how we can improve your learning experience. Was the pacing okay? Would you have liked more hands-on time? Can you suggest something that we can add to make it much better for you? Here's the place for your to let us have your thoughts directly. It was great working with you!

Fran and Phyllis

Wednesday, October 17, 2007