It’s September, which means it’s not only time for the end of baseball and the start of football, but also for a new school year. If you’ve spent the past few months on vacation, you might have missed some of our posts. You can look back through the previous posts to see what we toiled away on all summer. Some of the highlights to check out include the SMART Table in the News, as well as the myriad state tests we uploaded for use with SMART Response.

A great teacher submitted a file last year that we’d like to showcase again this year. Mrs. Kuchera’s back to school file has been updated to include the newest flash balloons that came with Lesson Activity Toolkit 2.0 (the old ones were frustrating!). There’s also a great histogram activity involving learning styles, complete with a checklist for identifying one’s own style.

We’d like to welcome all of our readers back for another year of great posts, comments, and tweets. Happy new school year!

We recently posted some state assessments to the ERC. All of these are intended for use with the SMART Response system. This got us thinking, “Isn’t there an easier way to create a quiz/test/survey than doing it all in Notebook?”

Thanks to some intrepid explorers from the Mexico Academy and Central School, we’ve found that there is indeed.

New York State tests are often formatted so that numbers represent both questions and answer choices. However, both Senteo 2 and Response use the A B C D format for answer choices. Fortunately, Notebook will recognize answer choices formatted as (1) and (2) and change them into A B choices.

What this means is you’ll be able to copy and paste specific questions from tests, and with minimal formatting, turn these into Response assessments. Be sure to check out the linked Word document demonstrate this. It uses questions from the 2008 8th grade science test.

Assessment and evaluation have never been easier. Take a look at the Downloads section of our Educator Resource Center for NYS tests that have been converted to SMART Response! So far we have posted NYS Math tests from 2006 to 2009 for grades 3-8, and NYS ELA tests are in the process of being uploaded!  Keep your eye out for Social Studies and Science tests coming soon.

Here are some quick facts about the exams:

• If you click on the attachment tab in the file you will find a copy of the actual exam as well as the answer key to the exam.
• Each question is tagged with its corresponding standard or performance indicator which will allow you to easily gather and analyze your student, class, and school data.
• For the ELA’s, any written answer questions were inputted as opinion questions for the sake of numerical continuity when giving the test.  Students should enter an answer, but it will not be counted towards their grade.
• The stories for the ELA tests are not included, but you can print them out from the attachment tab.
• Don’t forget, these are Notebook files, so you have all of the Notebook tools to use, such as the interactive protractor, ruler, shape tools, and pen tools to model how to solve problems or to review after you have gathered your class data.

This will save you time, and allow you to collect the data that you need.  Let us know how it goes!

This summer check out some of the new elementary school lessons that have been posted in the Educators Resource Center!

Math

The Shapes Around Us
This lesson for students in grades K-1 teaches about basic shapes and shows their place in the wold.

Graphing: Favorite Fruit
This interactive lesson is designed for first graders. In this lesson students will create pictographs and answer questions about their data.

Venn Diagrams
In this interactive lesson students will sort and describe shapes using Venn Diagrams. Shapes will be sorted based on if they have corners or not and if they are shaded in or not.

English Language Arts

Similes and Metaphors
This interactive poetry lesson for 5th grade students will allow students to investigate the differences between similes and metaphors, create their own similes and metaphors, and apply the two poetic devices to their own poetry. This lesson includes links to interactive websites.

Long A Word Study
This interactive ELA lesson for first grade students is a great review of words that have the long a sound.

Social Studies

Japan
In this lesson students will learn about Japan. Students will learn about why Japan is known as the “Land of the Rising Sun”, listen to its national anthem, learn words and phrases in Japanese and discover the geography of the area.

Science

Wonderful World of Bats
This interactive cross-curricular lesson designed for 2nd graders explores the world of bats and draws together science (bat sounds are included), ELA (word families), and math (create a graph). Songs, sounds, and a link to an online book reading are some of the activities.

The latest version of Google Earth gives users the ability to create tours that include historical imagery, embedded YouTube videos, and audio narration. The process to create these tours is fairly simple and, depending on the complexity, they can be completed in a relatively short time.

Here are some simple steps to create a virtual tour that can be launched from a Notebook lesson.

Creating Tours

Create and play tours of places and content, or create tours that record your exact navigation in the 3D window. You can also add audio.

1. To record a tour, click the “Record a Tour” button in the toolbar or click “View > Tour.”



2. The record tour controls appear in the bottom left corner of the 3D  window. To begin and end recording, click the Record/Stop button (red dot).
3. To add audio to your tour, click the Audio button (microphone). When you are finished recording your tour, it appears in the Places panel.
4. When you finish recording, click the Record/Stop button. The tour then plays. To save the tour, click the Save button in the playback controls that re-appear. Your tour appears in the Places panel.

Playing Tours

• To play a tour, double click the tour in the “Places” panel. To create and play a new tour of items in “My Places,” select the appropriate folder in the “Places” panel and click the “Play Tour” button. To create and play a new tour of a line (path), select the appropriate line in the “Places” panel and click the “Play Tour” button.
• The tour begins playing in the 3D viewer and the tour controls appear in the bottom left corner of the 3D viewer. To pause or resume the tour, click the Pause/Play button. To fast forward or go back on the tour, click the arrow buttons. To replay the again and again tour, click the Repeat button. Use the tour slider to move to any part of the tour.
• And the best part… you can change the view or turn on/off layers while the tour is playing!

Download a free file that will install a tour into your Google Earth. Having students create a Google Earth tour can be a great way to reinforce lessons in several different content areas. Using Google Earth on a SMART Board is already a fantastic interactive experience; the tours add an entirely new aspect that will encourage students to be creative and inventive.

NOTE: You have to have the latest version of Google Earth (5.0) installed to use the tour features.

Check back soon for advanced techniques to customizing tours based on height, angles, etc.

Thanks to the 300-plus people who downloaded out new Input Machine! Today will be the last opportunity to download the free version. We’ll continue to make it available through our online store. Please email us with some feedback on what you think about out learning objects, any ideas for how to improve them, or ideas for new objects!

A huge thank you to everyone who entered! The guesses were all over the scale but, after two days of intense judging (OK, really just a little sunburn from reading entries while sitting around our picnic tables) we have found our winners.

The official weight of the rock is 5,600 lbs

#1: Ms. Rosa Perez-Garcia of Newport News Public Schools submitted on Wednesday @ 11:42PM: “Hello, I am going to guess the rock’s weight in kilograms. I would say it is 2427 kilograms or about 5339 pounds.”

#2: Ms. Sue Palmberg of E.O. Smith High School in Connecticut submitted Wednesday @ 8:13PM: “I think the rock weighs 5320 pounds.”

#3: Ms. JoAnne Disken of Nassau BOCES Model Schools submitted on Tuesday @ 5:47AM: “I guess 2.4 tons or 5291.1.”

Congratulations to our winners and one last shoutout to the TeqSmart rock!

Now, using Notebook 10, teachers have the ability to create captivating effects for their lessons. Watch as we demonstrate how to combine “Object Animation” and the use of color to create fun and motivating reveals. Enjoy!

If you have trouble viewing this video, you can view it on YouTube.

We at Tequipment have had one particular question asked, “Is it possible to have a Jeopardy-like game board and Senteo working together?” And after many attempts of trial and error, the answer is, “YES!”

The 6×5 Jeopardy Template that many have enjoyed has been updated as a new 6×5 Jeopardy-Senteo quiz.  There are some changes to the original 6×5 Jeopardy template–such as a Double Jeopardy option; no more “question” pages and of course Senteo integration. This new template here for you to use and modify is a sample 30-question Senteo quiz.

Attached to the download is a Word document that explains how to modify the template.

Check back soon for other great tips and techniques for integration Senteo into your lessons and activities

So, here is the deal. To say thank you, and to celebrate the growth of our community, we are giving away one SMART Document Camera, a Senteo 32-pack, or an AirLiner to three ERC members.

The rules of the contest are simple. All you have to do is guess how much the Tequipment rock weighs. We will award one of the following SMART products to the person who guesses the weight of the Tequipment rock without going over. Click on the image of the Tequipment Rock to view it in all its glory. We have added a SMART document camera, an AirLiner, and a Senteo clicker to help provide perspective.

Good luck everyone!

ALL ENTRIES MUST BE SUBMITTED VIA E-MAIL TO contest@teqsmart.org. All ENTRIES MUST BE RECEIVED BY FRIDAY APRIL, 24 BY 5:00PM! WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED HERE ON MONDAY APRIL, 27TH!!