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!

(Video courtesy of ABC News)

The SMART Table is the latest product to be introduced to PS101 and, as you can see in this video, the staff and students enjoy using this new device.

We’d like to thank Gregg Korrol and his staff, especially Joyce Li and Helene Lau, who are featured in the report, for working the latest technology into their classroom.

For anyone not familiar with the SMART Table, it is a multi-touch, multi-user, collaborative learning center. It allows up to 8 students to interact with it simultaneously.  The SMART Table currently has 8 applications which allow teachers to create custom content within the scope of the application.  We will be showcasing each of these applications in the coming weeks.

In addition to creating you own content, SMART is providing content packs for download.  Each content pack has an accompanying SMART Notebook lesson and SMART Response question set.  You can see what content is available on SMART’s website.

Good news for existing SMART Table Users, PS101 allowed us to make one of their SMART Table content files available to our blog readers. Download the Table content file here.

In a nutshell, the SMART Table is a multi-touch, multi-user collaborative learning center that we see as a phenomenal addition to any SMART Board-equipped K – 3 classroom. You can see the table in this YouTube video.

We will be providing more in-depth reports in the coming weeks, but to get started here are three of our favorite things about the SMART Table:

1) Student’s Love it! – The biggest thing that we’ve seen so far with the SMART Table is the immediate student engagement. Students can’t wait to start using the SMART Table, it really does make learning fun (cheesy I know)! The intuitive multi-touch interface requires minimal instruction for the students — they can simply focus on learning the content.

2) Easy to create new content – The SMART Table comes with 6 themes that you can use straight of the box. These themes include Shapes, Colors and the Human Body. In addition, the Table comes with a Table Toolkit which the teacher can use to modify existing content and create their own custom content. We are impressed with the simple to use toolkit which makes creating the content and transferring it to the table incredibly easy.

Creating content is easy with the SMART Table Toolkit.

3) Its so simple, even a baby can use it! – We brought the SMART Table to the Teaching and Learning Celebration this weekend where it had a great response. However, the biggest fan was 19-month old Emma, who had a great time with the Paint application, creating her own masterpiece!