I've mentioned the DSBN (District School Board of Niagara) in my blog before, namely here after spending some time leading SMART Board workshops with their wonderful educators.  Recently, a link was shared with me to a YouTube video showing just how committed this school board is to implementing engaging technologies within their classrooms.  I figured that this was worth a bit of a shout out to their school board, as well as some air-time with their video below.

 

 

For those keeping track, the gentleman in the suit demonstrating the newest SMART Table is none other than Ron Boyer (one of our Sharp's Audio Visual employees in Toronto).  Way to go, Ron! :)  Near the end of the video, our President and CEO Jeff Faber is shown behind the podium and putting his official signature on the documentation. Yay, Jeff!

I loved the short time that I got to spend working with the DSBN's teachers and think that they have some great leaders working towards integrating technology into their classrooms.  This video clearly shows their commitment to technology in education!

Vanessa

 

Today's SMART Notebook Gallery Tool Tip #4 is designed to save teachers time (who knew that teachers need more time in their lives?)  Yes, I primarily deal with increasing student interactivity with your SMART Board and yes, I'm a big advocate of re-shaping your classroom to put technology tools in the hands of students, but sometimes you just want to make things in your classroom run a bit more efficiently.

Enter the spinner.

 

I'm sure you're all very much aware that the spinner exists, but did you know you can actually customize some of the properties of it? Simply click on the double arrow (reminiscent of a rewind button) and voila! You get some options to change the spinner to suit your needs. 

     From this view, you can:

  - change the amount of segments (up to 12)

 - modify the colours of each segment (I personally am not that fond of the neon green default)

 - add text to each piece (?!?!) I wish I'd known that 4 years ago

 - customize the text properties

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh how my type-A, organizational freak side LOVES this! Suddenly you can design a quick review activity, assign groups, randomly select a student, randomly assign project topics, generate multiple numbers for a Math activity, assign roles in a play -- the possibilities are endless!

If you have a different idea for how you use this spinner in your classroom, I'd love to hear it :)

Vanessa

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before I begin today's Fresh Look Fridays review, I need to take a minute to thank all those at both the Central Alberta Regional Consortium and Red Deer Catholic School Division for the great day yesterday.  I got the chance to share some ideas and resources for using a SMART Board with an advanced group of educators - whoo hoo! They were fun, clearly knowledgable and patient as I fumbled through my brain for some inkling of the Calculus/Algebra/Trigonometry knowledge that I once possessed. It's been years since I heard the word "hyperbole" tossed around so frequently!

 

The best part? I got to hang out with some of my "tweeps" and meet new ones too! A quick shout out to @bmacdonald47 @patrickbohnet @Scorgo and @mathgeekess -- great members of my PLN.

Today's Fresh Look Fridays website comes directly as a recommendation from one of the participants in the workshop -- Kathy Dombroski [there, you're famous now! lol]  Lego's Creative Builder is a great little collaborative game that is colourful, fun and perfect for use on your SMART Board. 

Students can 'freestyle' build with virtual lego blocks or try to mimic a picture that is shown.  Perfect for the little ones to teach problem solving, size and proportion and definitely collaboration within a small group.

Thanks again Kathy!

Have a great weekend everyone!

 

Ok, ok...I get it.  I haven't posted my usual trend of 3 - 4 blog posts per week in recent memory.  No, your RSS feed isn't broken (at least I hope not!).  No, there aren't any glitches in the blogosphere or with my connection to the Internet or with Joomla to blame my recent lack of postings. And yes I'm aware of the sad fact that many of you probably haven't even noticed this shift in behaviour because, let's face it, you're most likely a teacher with less than 5 weeks until the end of the school year.  [For those non-educator readers of my blog, that translates into the need for at least 39 hours each day to make up for the lack of sleep, continuous assemblies, final exam prep, extra pile of marking, endless field trips and lost instructional hours due to the sudden interest in the sun outside that students tend to gravitate towards in May/June.]

I'm just happy that you've taken 5 minutes to make your way over to my neck of the virtual woods.

So while I have you here, I won't take up precious extra minutes today with some rambling excuse about how an increased amount of SMART Board workshop prep, organizing of late-summer workshops, facilitation of Spring professional development, the lure of the May long weekend sunshine and my sudden fascination with gardening in my new, albeit tiny, backyard have all contributed to my drop in blog writing. 

But for those of you keeping track, all of the above excuses are true.

Instead of a long-winded blog entry today, I thought I'd entertain you with a few funny editorial cartoons.  Have I mentioned that I miss being a high school Social Studies teacher when I stumble upon sarcastic, witty and intelligent commentary on Current Events?

Today's theme of cartoons surrounds the ongoing battle/frustration/annoyance/confusion surrounding Facebook's constantly changing privacy settings.

Anyhoo, enjoy.  And rest assured (in case you were losing sleep over it) that I will be starting back into my normal routine of blog posting.  Honestly.  It's my May 27th resolution...

 

 

And, my personal favourite:

Vanessa

 

Today's Fresh Look Fridays website focuses on a great little website for early readers.  Pattern Sentences allows younger students to work with manipulating words to try to replicate a specific pattern.

 

 

What I really like about this website is that when a word is selected to drag around the board, there is an audio component that states that word verbally.  What a great mix of visual and audio elements to help those just entering the world of reading!

 

Happy long weekend!

Vanessa