Tequipment: Blogging About SMART Boards, Resources, Lessons, Training, Games

With the beginning of the school year just around the corner, why not revamp some of your old morning meeting routines by using you SMART Board to facilitate circle time. Here are some lessons created by our Teq-Certified users to get your started!

Morning Routine Templates
In this group of templates, you will find all of the regular things you do every morning with your students in the lower grades. Templates include weather routines, days of the week, attendance and hot lunch, and more!

Back to School
by Jennifer Milio
This lesson is designed to introduce students to the SMART Board, introduce them to morning routines, and to assess students’ skills from kindergarten.

Back to School Routine
by Mrs. Kuchera
Welcome students back to the new school year with fun interactive activities. This file contains features that are new in SMART Notebook 10.

One of the most requested features that teachers want in SMART Notebook is the ability to play sound automatically when a page is entered.

Only MP3 sounds can play within Notebook when embedded onto an object.  MP3′s can only play/pause and restart when you leave and re-enter a page. If  a teacher wanted the sound to play again, he or she would have to either wait for the sound to end or leave the page and return, then click on the object again.

Flash files (either FLV or SWF) are the only type of files that play when a page is entered.  So, if you want sound to play automatically when entering page, what kind of audio file would you like?

You guessed it, an FLV or SWF file.  The subtle difference between the two is that the FLV version has a controller bar to stop/play/rewind/fast-forward, and to drag the timer to any part of the file and the SWF does not have the controller bar. Another bonus to using Flash here is that MP3 sounds cannot be controlled, only paused.

But there are free audio converters out there that will allow you to create FLV and SWF files,  such as  Sofonica, and Format Factory.

In the two videos below, we use Format Factory to convert a sound into an FLV file and a SWF file.

Converting to an FLV

Converting to an SWF

With the beautiful weather we have been having, everyone is out and about. Spending all this time outside puts me in a great mood, and I realize I have Mother Nature to thank for that! There is no better day to appreciate our world than on Earth Day — which is coming up on April 22nd. This will be the 40th celebration of Earth Day. So why don’t you celebrate with your class by using some of these notebook files.

	Earth Day! By Jennifer Larrea Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle with this great lesson for elementary students. Each page is filled with colorful interactive activities for students to explore. This lesson was created by a TeqSmart-certified user.
	Earth Day By (our own) Lany Burnett This is a Notebook file with interactive activities to help celebrate Earth Day.
	Plants and the Environment By Anna Capuozzo This lesson emphasizes how recycling can help Earth’s environment. There are multiple activities related to both plants and conservation. This lesson was created by a TeqSmart certified user.
	Earth Day Exploration By Katina Lundenberg This interactive science lesson for elementary level students will investigate recycling and how students can celebrate Earth Day. A KWL chart and vocabulary practice are included. This lesson was created by a TeqSmart certified user.
	Diversity of Living Things By Aimee Burns Students will be able to: describe the difference between living and non-living things, identify what plants need to grow, and identify the parts of a plant.

Enjoy the Lessons!

So if you are reading this blog, look up to the top section of this page.  You may see a little button that says “Forum.”  Believe it or not, Teq has had a forum for educators to check out for quite a long time.  This forum is an area for folks to share questions, comments, ideas and advice with other educators.

There are four sections of the Forum.  In the “Learning Objects” sections, teachers can share ideas and comments regarding the Teq learning objects offered in the Teq Online Store.  The “Bragging Rights” section is a great place to share success stories with others.  We love to hear about all the great things teachers are doing with their SMART Boards!

If you find that you have some general questions or comments about SMART Board or Notebook Software use, check out the “Classroom Use” section.  In the “Tech Support” section, you will find questions, comments and ideas regarding hardware.

Check out the forum! It’s really a great resource to find and share ideas!

There’s a brand new “Pi Day” lesson in the downloads section of our Educator Resource Center. The file features Teq Learning Objects, songs, videos, and a variety of New York State Assessment questions. For a preview, watch the video below.

Download the lesson here (remember to log-in).

Now you can get our blog posts, a list of the latest ERC lessons, and our Twitter feed right on your iPhone. Go to the iPhone App Store and search for “Teq.”

It is that time of year again, and those of us here at Tequipment are in the spirit of giving! If you’re looking for holiday activities to use in your classroom, check out The Polar Express lesson. This file was created to be used in conjunction with the popular book by Chris Van Allsburg. Within this file there are many interactive activities that will help your students practice their researching skills, increase their vocabulary, track narrative elements, and explore cross-curriculum concepts.

Visit the Downloads section in the Educator Resource Center (ERC) to download the Polar Express lesson and customize it to fit your classroom’s needs. Don’t forget to click on the attachments tab for a Word document describing how to use and edit the file. Happy Holidays!

We have created an interactive Chanukah lesson to help teach some important ideas to our young students.  This lesson contains some excerpts from the קצור שולחן ערוך and the portion of the גמרא מסכת שבת דף ×›”א עמוד ב.  Use these pages to help teach the difference between the Menorah of the בית המקדש and the 8 branch menorah that we use on Chanukah.

You can download this file from our Educator Resource Center.

Continued success with all of your students.

We’ve created a file on our Educator Resource Center for the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. Download it here.

Google boasts that it has the most ‘hits’ of any website on the Internet, with billions of hits per day. While everyone is familiar with the deceptively simple search engine giant, there are many of us who don’t use its full capabilities.

In almost every search database there is a way to clarify and simplify a search in order to find precisely what a person is looking for. Additionally, since we as educators have to be more and more careful about what we expose our students to, it becomes much more important to censor out all the ‘bad stuff’ and focus in on what we need.

Below is a collection of Google words that, when used in the Google search bar at www.google.com, can narrow the search to only include information that is pertinent.

Word usage and their use in Google searches:

Source: www.googleguide.com