Our school is lucky enough to have SMART Boards in almost every classroom. Today, we held a training session for beginning SMART Board users. As the instructor showed the teachers the gallery section and all the different ways you can create lessons, I saw that overwhelming look come over their eyes. When do any of us have enough time to create lessons while getting to know our SMART Boards? The trainer had some very effective strategies such as dividing up curriculum areas among teachers in a grade level and sharing newly found or created lessons or taking 10-15 minutes a day to use a new tool or downloading the software and “playing” with the notebook when you are relaxed and in the comfort of your own home where you can experiment and make mistakes privately.
I want to take these strategies one step further and offer what I have learned while creating many, many lessons. I always begin by searching for lessons that may have been created already. I am compiling a list of websites where you can start your searching:
Websites with SMART Board Resources
(thank you Barry Williams, Diigo)
I also discovered that many of our teachers have already created outstanding lessons that can be shared. I am in search of a web based presence where teachers can upload, categorize, tag, search and also rate these notebook files. Any ideas?
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Thank you for organizing these great resources. I am a 4th grade teacher at a school where all classrooms have SMARTBoards (yippee). I am also a technology/SMART Technologies trainer. I love having so many great resources to share with new and experienced users.
In response to your question about where to share/store SMART Notebook files, our school uses a wiki. Although the files appear to be unsupported (because it doesn’t post the Notebook icon next to the file name), it will download properly.
Just wanted to let you know
Kelly Hines
NC
Thanks for the wiki idea, Kelly.
I would agree a wiki is a great place to post SMARTBoard files. Two other good resources would be Box.net and http://drop.io for storing files that could be linked to a web page/blog or wiki.
Please share where you post your SMARTBoard files online so others can download them. I would love to see them. I have over 100 SMARTBoard files posted for K-5 at http://www.rockingham.k12.va.us/resources/elementary/soltechintegration.htm
Obe,
Thanks for the ideas to share notebook files. And also for sharing your great site. I love how you organize all your different types of resources. It makes it very easy to search!