Elementary Technology

Check out the daily weather and date chart from ictgames.com . It is perfect for the SMART Board.  Just touch the red buttons to choose the weather and date.  You can also enter a student’s name by clicking “special person”.  If you want to save the page, just capture the screen and import it into your SMART notebook file. Thank you to Mrs. Coggin at SMARTboardgoodies.com for the link!

Thanks to one of my favorite sites,Teachers Love SMART Boards, you have access to a host of Halloween goodies all in one place.  There is a Halloween Resource page that lists Halloween clip art, games, puzzles, informational activities, create your own activities, Notebook resources and sound files. It is filled with lots activities that are ready to use. Be sure to check it out. http://www.teacherslovesmartboards.com/smartboards-and-halloween-resources.html

Thanks to Teachers Love Smart Boards for the website thisissand.com . It’s the 21st century way to create sand art. Just tap on the SMART Board for a never ending stream of sand. Press the C key to change color, use the arrow keys to move around the board and create your masterpiece! Seems to me, this could be a great way to spend a rainy indoor recess.

Here we are at Groundhog Day and thanks to the site “Teachers Love SMARTBoards“, here are two SMART notebook files about Groundhog Day that can be used as is or revised and customized. This is a great example of how a little searching found something close to what I want but not exactly. Instead of starting from scratch, all I have to do is edit the file and save it for my own use. One of them has a great page on having the students predict whether he will see his shadow or not.

Here they are:

groundhog_activities-1

groundhog-activities-2

Enjoy!

For those of you who are just starting to create new lessons on your SMART Board…here’s a gift. I always advise people to search for lessons that may already be created. They may meet all your needs or may need to be tweaked slightly and then will be just what you’re looking for. Here are two notebook files for your SMART Board, ready to go. One for grades K-2 on counting change and one for grades 3-4 on multiplication practice.

Counting Change notebook file

Multiplication Wheel notebook file

And here’s the site they came from with many, many more.

http://www1.center.k12.mo.us/EDTECH/SB/templates.htm

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?