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

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:

Your SMART Board is an amazing tool for engaging your students’ many intelligences. Multiple Intelligence Theory suggests that all students posses skills within seven different intelligence areas.

It is in our best interest to use multiple activities in order to involve our students’ most developed intelligence in active learning. By getting students to come to the board and manipulate “information,” we access their “spatial” intelligence as well as “bodily-kinesthetic” intelligence.

But let’s take it up a notch with the kinesthetic movement.

We don’t just want some movement here, we really want to get our students dancing while they are up at the board. So we have to create “buttons” for them to touch that are far apart from each other. For those shorter students, we can get them jumping to reach the “buttons.”

An example that comes to mind is a flash card activity with mathematics. But this could be applied to any question and answer game in any content area. For my activity, I have created a Notebook 10 file. Each page in the file has a math question and two answer buttons that are links to other pages in the file (see images). I would instruct students that they have to start with their feet touching a strip of tape which is about three feet from the wall. The instructions include having to return your feet to the tape after every touch on the board. Making them return serves two purposes. First, it gets them moving, a lot. Second it moves them back from the SMART Board so they can more easily read the question and view the possible answers.

This type of activity can be applied to any subject and Q&A scheme. One thing to keep in mind; make sure you check all the links before having students use the file. Remember, you need to  create a “try again” page for each question. It is all easy enough to do, but a little time consuming.

If you are pressed for that ever-precious resource we call “time” and you teach multiplication, I have found some online math activities that would require some movement and could meet the same purpose as the activity that I have described above. The great part is that they are already created for you. The following site contains some great activities http://www.multiplication.com/interactive_games.htm. My very favorite is “Disco Dino”. The music is funky and smooth! See Disco Dino at http://www.multiplication.com/flashgames/DiscoDino.htm.

How are you going to build the link between your students’ bodily-kinesthetic intelligence and their other developed intelligences? What other intelligences can we activate with the SMART Board? Get Moving!

April 2, 2009 is the second annual World Autism Awareness Day — a day declared by a UN resolution with the goal of bringing the world’s attention to autism. Visit the website for the day’s agenda and take a virtual walk for autism with Nick Jr.’s Wubbzy at his Walk with Wubbzy site.

Help us spread the word about some wonderful resources for students with Autism that you can use on your SMART Board!

• Zac Browser: The first web browser designed specifically for children with autism, PDD, PDD-NOS, and autism spectrum disorder.
• do2Learn: Games, songs, communication, and picture cards for students with special needs.
• Reactive Colours: A great site for visual learners that draws on shapes and images that appeal to children and that simulates elasticity, gravity, and velocity. Children can explore this site on a SMART Board by using their hands to manipulate objects and colors while receiving instant feedback.

Don’t forget to check out Autism Speaks and World Autism Awareness Day for more information.

The Second Annual World Autism Awareness Day is April 2, 2009. 

Some statistics about autism from Autism Speaks:

• In the United States, autism affects 1 in 150 children
• Approximately 60 million people worldwide are affected by autism
• Boys are four times as likely than girls to have autism
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have called autism a national public health crisis whose cause and cure remain unknown

When discussing differentiating instruction, we include students with Autism Spectrum Disorder. We have heard countless stories about meaningful SMART Board use with students with Autism and the message is loud and clear: SMART Boards have helped teachers more fully engage their students with Autism in ways that they have never seen before.

Using the SMART Board as a teaching tool is a wonderful way we can reach our students with Autism, students whom traditional teaching methods may not connect with. The ability to touch the board, manipulate objects, and add auditory components makes the SMART Board technology cannot be overlooked in a differentiated classroom.

If you check out our ERC, you will find lessons that speak to learners with special needs.

Tomorrow we will highlight websites and educational tools that are geared toward students with Autism.