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

As this year’s Teq Summer SMART Board Academy draws to a close, we’d like to say, “Thanks” to everyone who participated. We had an amazing time working with each of you, and we’re deeply grateful that you would choose to spend your summer with us.

This year, we held a total of 76 classes and had the pleasure of working with more than 1100 educators!

We had teachers representing:

• 2 countries (United States and Canada)
• 5 states (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and my home state – Tennessee)
• + 700 schools
• Together we created more then 1,200 activities and close to 100 complete lessons (visit our Educator Resource Center to download lessons, participate in the Teq blog, get support and buy Teq Learning Objects from our online store).

For those of you who were unable to attend one of our summer sessions, check back here or visit our homepage for a list of classes, workshops, and Teq Certification opportunities throughout the 2010-2011 school year.

Thank you again for sharing your creativity and knowledge with us. We always learn so much from each of you. We hope that you will stay in touch with us and each other (keep expanding your PLN). In fact, feel free to contact us if you need a participants name or e-mail. We would be happy to help you make connections.

We look forward to seeing each of you throughout the school year.

Take care,
Joe Dixon Director, Professional Development and Training Service

SMART Response™ 2010 Software and SMART Response VE Beta Available in August SMART Response 2010 assessment software and the SMART Response VE interactive response system beta will be available on the SMART Response software page the second week of August.

SMART Response 2010 software includes the following:

• eInstruction® EXAMVIEW® allows web assessment (HTML) files to be imported

• New functionality in SMART Teacher Tools enables tracking of question-level detail

• Improved export options enable customized export of results to text (CSV) files

• Preview of assessment results in pie chart lets teachers view percentages of responses that are correct, incorrect and unanswered as they are submitted

No-charge upgrade
Current SMART Response system customers can upgrade to SMART Response 2010 at no charge. The upgrade applies to the full SMART Response product line.

SMART Response VE beta included at no charge

Sheppard Software designs educational software and free online games/activities. The goal of the company is to create interactive, visual and auditory activities that stimulate thinking. When you mix the learning tools and games from Sheppard Software with the computer/human interface that is the SMART Board you get students and teachers having fun and learning. Any educator from any grade level and any curricular area is going to find something at http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/.

Sheppard Software seems to be no stranger to differentiated instruction. You’ll find many topics with levels of difficulty starting with easy, for primary students, through to levels that will challenge adults (Think you really know where the states are? Try this game ).

The quick links give you a glimpse of what is available. And the list of popular games hints at what people are finding particularly valuable right now. But don’t take our word for it. Go and explore. You’ll be amazed at what you find. It is good that you have the summer to explore the free learning games on this site because it will take all summer to peruse. View one of my daughter’s favorite activities:

Food based math for the SMART Board.

Math teachers have long enjoyed using food in their lessons.  Whether we use M&M’s to discuss fractions, or pizza to learn about circles,  food can be a fun part of the lesson.  Subway’s recent decision to arrange their isosceles cheese slices in a more “geometrically satisfying pattern,” is the latest opportunity for teachers to integrate food into math lessons.  With the websites below, your SMART Board can be the perfect conduit to make the final connection to the curriculum.

Many of us here remember the Schoolhouse Rocks video for “How a Bill Becomes a Law.” Perhaps you’ve even shown your students. It’s a super catchy tune, although the animation is a bit, well it’s a bit 1970′s.

Jump forward 35 years, and iCivics.com is here to help today’s students learn all about those bills on Capitol Hill. There’s a series of games they can play to learn about each branch of government and rights protected by constitutional amendments. In “Do I Have a Right?” students play a partner in a law firm, analyzing clients cases, and referring them to lawyers who specialize in a particular protection.

The site is the vision of Sandra Day O’Connor, and was built to address the lack of information all students need so that they engage in civic participation.  We posted on a related website in a previous post.

We recently heard back from one of our poetry contest winners, Denise Langley (dowload her accrostic notebook) from Frostburg, MD.

Denise wrote us to say, “I LOVE the SMART Response clickers.  I am still learning, but have had great success with them already–the kids love them too.  Thanks so much–there are not enough words to say thanks!!!”

She was also kind enough to send us a couple of pictures. A funny aside, Denise said she used the Random Name Generator from the Lesson Activity Toolkit (download here) to help her determine which students where chosen for the picture w/ the SMART Board.

We want to say thank you to Denise and her students for the great pictures!

Have you gotten bored using the same fonts with your students? Time in and time out we go to the ones we know. How many times can we use Times New Roman or Comic Sans? It is easy to add new fonts to your computer and new life to your lessons!

First, obtain new fonts. To do this you can pick up a CD at the store or go online and download some. I use, 1001freefonts.com. I typically save them to my desktop. If the file is zipped right click on it and extract all to you desktop. Open the new folder so that you can see the file for the new font. The icon for the font file will most likely be either TT (True Type) or O (Open Font).

After getting the new font I go to my windows start menu, click on the computer option and from there choose my C Drive.

Once in your C Drive, open up the windows folder, click on the font folder and from there it is, easy as pie, just drag and drop the font into the folder.

*Note: if the new font cannot be installed on a school computer, and you want the font in SMART Notebook, it is not at all difficult. Create your lessons, on the computer with the new font. Then make liberal use of the Camera Capture Tool Bar. The text will be come un-editable, but if the Picture of the text is taken on the page, with the background color you will be using, the kids will never know!

Just remember if the font isn’t on the computer you open your Notebook lesson on, and you didn’t use the screen capture, then the font will revert to one on the computer.

How much is 70,000 bbl/day? The video below shows how Google Sketch-up can be used to create a 3D representation of the volume of oil seeping into the Gulf of Mexico each day.  Early this week BP plans to use the “top kill” method to seal the leak.  The video ends with an OE Cake simulation of the coming attempt to seal the well.  Sketch-up and OE Cake are free apps which work great from the SMART Board.

Click here for the Google Sketch-up Download Page

Click Here to download OE Cake for PC

Click Here to download OE Cake for MAC

Below are links to a couple of our favorite online games.  They’re free, addictive, and incredibly fun at a SMART Board.

Circle the Cat -  Trap the cat, without letting it escape the grid.  Start by clicking on the image and then on the light green dots, to try to trap the cat with the dark green dots.  Not easy, it’s a smart cat.  See how quickly your students can develop a strategy to win.

Cursor 10 You are a cursor in a building trying to reach the top floor. Clicking objects will uncover items, while clicking on stairs allows you to move between floors. As you play the game, your cursor dies and you have to start over.  However, on your next life, your previous cursor repeats everything you have did during that life, assisting your current life.

Creating fractions has never been easier than with the new Notebook Math Tools feature, shape division. Now when a teacher puts a square or circle on a page and goes to the drop down menu they will see an option for shape division. When they click on this they select how many equal portions they want the shape divided into. Then vwala, an easy way to teach student’s fractions!