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

We can take advantage of Word 2007’s drawing tools to easily add pizazz to your Notebook lessons.

In Word ‘07 click on “Insert” from the menu bar and click on “Shapes.” Choose any shape. After inserting a shape, Word ‘07 opens up the “Format” option on the menu bar. Choose “Shape Style” to change the color of your shape. Use the “Shadow Effects” tool to control the shadow of your image. Use “3-D Effects” to control the 3-dimensional view of your shape. The 3-D effects button is only active when you have initially created a basic 2-dimensional shape. This is a quick way to create shapes with shadows and 3-D effects.

These shapes can then be easily copied and pasted into Notebook. You can add text and group the text with the shape to create 3-D banners and buttons. You can also save the shapes to your “My Content” folder for use in future lessons.

Have fun creating and being creative.

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.”

Animated Gifs work within the pages of SMART Notebook!  The video below shows how you can add color and motion to your Notebook pages using a variety gifs illustrating concepts in Math, Science, and just about every other subject you can imagine.  You can even add the Star Wars Trilogy in gif form!  Mac users may also enjoy creating their own custom animated gifs from still images, using the application Giffun.  The video explains how.

To download Giffun for free visit:

http://www.stone.com/NewDownload.html. (Third row from the top, right column)

Does anyone know of other ways to create animated gifs?  Ways to create animated gifs on a PC?  Please let us know what you’re using!

In the “My Content” section of the Gallery, teachers have the  ability to create, and even publish, their own Gallery Collection Files.  When individuals or districts make their galleries available for download, it can be a tremendous resource for the rest of us.  Below we’ve linked to two collections of interactive math content which are available for easy download.  One is from the Lancashire Grid for Learning in England, and the other is from Thomas Vizza’s website MathVizza.com.

For a preview of the content, which will automatically be added to the “My Content” folder of your Gallery, download the following guide from LGLE:  Guide to the Interactive Teaching Programs

Here’s the link which will place those 32 Interactive Teaching Programs in your Gallery:  Math ITP Collection File

Here’s Thomas Vizza’s downloads page: SMART Board Galleries Index from MathVizza.com.

If you know of any other downloadable Gallery Collections, please let us know.

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 כ”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.

Welcome back everyone. We hope you had a happy Thanksgiving!

It’s been about three months since we uploaded a bunch of NYS tests to our SMART Response section on the ERC, and there’ve been over two thousand downloads of the various files. We recently were reviewing a PowerPoint document, and realized, “Hey, where’d the SMART Response/Senteo interface go?”

After hunting around the program, we realized that it takes a bit of tinkering to get the Response menu to pop up. Fortunately, the great folks on the SMART Exchange posted a quick fix. Rather than try and take credit for what they’ve already posted, we’re just going to give you the link.

In other news, we just received our Response LE packs. They’re currently up on FAMIS, and will be shipping before New Years. If you’re not familiar with the LE concept, check out the product page. Response LE is a student response system designed for early-childhood education.  There are five buttons, each with a distinct color and unique shape.  Check back here for updates on using the LE software.

Happy Thanksgiving! We hope that everyone has a wonderful holiday!

Here is a great idea (CAUTION SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION AHEAD). Go to: http://teqsmart.org/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=10&products_id=53 and download our free Word Scramble creator. Within seconds you will be making SWEEEEET word searches right on your very own SMART Board. Here is a picture of one we just created.