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

We have developed a new learning object for our neighbor to the West – New Jersey. As you can see in the video below, this interactive New Jersey map can give the New Jersey educator a good resource for different aspects of New Jersey Social Studies Standards: 6.1.B (Geography, People and the Environment); and 6.1.D (History, Culture, and Perspectives).

We’re offering the New Jersey learning object free for a limited time! Download it now from our online store.

Episode 3: Watch this TeqCast tutorial on how to easily take text from anywhere to place in SMART Notebook software. While adding text to SMART Notebook from a website or Microsoft Word document can be tedious we share simple and quick ways to make it a snap. In this TeqCast learn to alter text font, size, color and more.

Episode 2: Accustomed to using Microsoft PowerPoint but need to learn more about SMART Notebook software? Now you can Import your PowerPoint presentations directly into SMART Notebook with very little if any changes needed. Watch our TeqCast tutorial as we guide you through the steps and some troubleshooting to help you get up and running integrating your old PowerPoint files with the new SMART Notebook software.

Episode 1: Notebook 10.6 has many new features including the Transparent Background. With the Transparent Background you are able to look at websites, Microsoft Word documents or Google Earth and all from within SMART Notebook software. Watch Teq experts, in our inaugural TeqCast, to learn how Transparent Background can change the way you use your SMART Board.

Shape Division is a new feature within SMART Notebook Math Tools. When you divide a rectangle once, each new piece can then be divided again. This video shows a brave attempt to divide a rectangle more times, and into more pieces, than any rectangle has ever been divided before (in SMART Notebook Math).

If you’ve divided a rectangle more than 11 times (and kept the fraction clear) please let us know about it!

An Age-Appropriate Lesson for the Gulf Spill

Seeing a bird covered in oil is sad. The video below shows how your SMART Board can be used to teach young kids about the work being done by Audobon Volunteers (and others) to save oiled birds.

Seeing oil gushing uncontrolled into the Ocean is scary.  When early elementary-age students ask about the spill, The National Wildlife Fund has suggestions on how to discuss the issue so they will continue to  feel safe, and connected to the natural world. Their website also links to lesson plans on Wetlands and the Gulf Oil Spill.

Here are two examples of kids making a difference for the Gulf Coast Recovery effort.

Turning Lemonade into Help for the Gulf Spill

Fifth-grader Olivia Bouler’s artwork raises $125,000 for Gulf birds

We’ve added two new subject-specific SMART Board sessions to our Summer Academy: SMART Boards for Elementary Math, 9am on August 9 in NYC and SMART Boards for Elementary ELA, 1pm on August 9 in NYC. Learn how to effectively integrate your SMART Board into your daily instruction while exploring new, innovative, and engaging lesson ideas. In these courses you will quickly acquire new SMART Board skills to engage your students—focusing attention on the lesson, not the technology!

We’ve added a new course to our Summer SMART Board Academy: An Introduction to the SMART Table, August 12, 1 – 4pm! Learn the basic operation of the SMART Table for immediate classroom use. You will explore all the SMART Table applications, and familiarize yourself with the teacher mode of the table.

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.