SMARTboards

NOTE: There are several companies that produce interactive whiteboards, and each has its advantages and disadvantages. We chose SMARTboards due to our district’s specific needs and they may not be the best match for your district, but much of what is written below applies to other interactive whiteboards as well. These thoughts came out of our most recent round of SMARTboard training for our elementary school teachers.



The interactive whiteboard is certainly a technology tool that has reached critical mass. Over the last year we have added over a dozen boards, and during this year’s budget proposals, each building principal asked for several more boards for his or her teachers.

SMARTboards are used with two primary software applications: SMART Notebook and Essentials for Educators. Both of these programs can be downloaded for free from the SMART Technologies web site so that teachers can create lessons at home, and both offer some value to the classroom even without the SMARTboard.

Anything you can do on a computer, you can do via the SMARTboard; in fact, you can think of the SMARTboard as an overgrown touchscreen monitor. This makes the board a great tool when you have more students than computers, as they can share a single computer via the large SMARTboard screen.

When you pick up a pen from the SMARTboard tray, a floating toolbar that gives you access to SMARTboard features will automatically appear. You can then use the pen to highlight areas of the screen and write notes, just as you would if you were writing on a transparency, and you can use the SMARTboard eraser to erase specific areas or simply touch the screen to erase everything. However, unlike a transparency, everything you write or put on the SMARTboard is an object that can be moved around the screen. This offers some great opportunities in the classroom, such as having students arrange words into a grammatically correct sentence or numbers into a correct mathematical equation.

The SMART Notebook software works very much like the Microsoft Office programs, so if you are familiar with PowerPoint it isn’t difficult to use the presentation creator component of SMART Notebook. The icons are also intuitive to use; you click the icon of the disk to save, delete text by highlighting it and clicking the red “X” to delete it, and so on.

After using the SMARTboard for a classroom presentation, you can select FILE – SAVE AS to save the presentation with all annotations that you can then print, post to a web site, or e-mail to a student who was absent that day. Note: If you are concerned that students may modify your notes, you can do a FILE – EXPORT – PDF to create a PDF file of your presentation. You can also export to other common formats, such as PowerPoint.


Writing on the Board

Simply pick up one of the colored “pens” from the tray to write in that color. If you have a student who has trouble gripping the pen, you can write with anything (a finger, a tennis ball). Just touch the pen icon at the top of the screen, then use the object as the writing instrument. You can also change the “ink trail” to anything from dotted lines to a line composed of smiley faces. There is even a handwriting recognition feature that is surprisingly accurate – it can even read my handwriting.

If you are one of the 3 people on the planet who has handwriting worse than mine, you can activate an onscreen keyboard and then using your finger or pen to “type” the text.


Using the Screen Shade Feature

Touching the icon on the top toolbar that looks like an old fashioned window shade allows you to selectively cover parts of the screen. A good use might be when you are leading a class discussion about an event or procedural sequence. Before class, you could create a sequence in order from top to bottom, then activate the shade and pull it up from the bottom of the screen. In class you could prompt, “What comes next,” and reveal the next step when a student provides the correct response.


Using the Capture Feature

Teachers can easily add impact to their classes by including graphics, web pages, sections of web pages, and more in SMARTboard lessons by using the capture feature, which is activated by clicking the various camera icons.

1. Bring up the capture toolbar with the camera icons.

2. Bring up the Web page or other screen you would like to “photograph.” The camera icon toolbar will follow you to that page.

3. Touch the leftmost camera icon to snap the photo, and then use your finger to drag a box around what you want to copy.

4. You can now use the graphic as part of a page, write on it, and so on.

5. Cool feature! If you want to use an Internet video in your class, after capturing the start picture you can use the down arrow and choose Link – Import to create a link to that video. Then when you touch the picture, it launches the video.


Note that the different “cameras” have different functions. The first takes a snapshot of a generally rectangular area that you define, the second captures the entire main content screen of a web site. The third captures the entire screen (particularly useful if you want to capture an entire web page, including the title bar), and you can tap the fourth icon to use your finger to draw outlines around irregularly shaped areas. If you have just captured something you want to save for use in other lessons, you can save it to your “gallery” so it is available to you later.


Using Microsoft Files with SMARTboard

If you are in a Microsoft application such as Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, you can save the document for SMARTboard use by “printing” it with FILE – PRINT – SMART Notebook print capture. This will convert the file to one that can be read by the SMARTboard software to let you easily use Word, Excel, PDF, and other files with your SMARTboard. Each Word page, Excel worksheet page, PowerPoint slide, and PDF page are captured as separate slides in the SMART Notebook software.

OR, in SMART Notebook, choose FILE – OPEN and select a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file, and it will be automatically converted for SMART Notebook use.

When moving through a PowerPoint, tap left, then right and you move forward to the next slide. To reverse, tap right then left.


Random Notes of Particular Interest to Elementary Teachers

Elementary teachers working on sentence construction can write words on the SMARTboard, and students can touch and drag the words to create grammatically correct sentences. However, since the SMART Notebook software is designed to recognize words written left to write as a sentence and will automatically group them. To keep the words separate, you should write them in a column on the board. Math teachers may want to enter 5 6 7 8 9 10 30 = X , and ask the students to touch and drag elements to create the correct formula of 6 X 5 = 30.

The Keyboard option contains text and number keypads.

Lined paper is available from the Gallery for use when students are doing on-board writing projects. The gallery is a very important tool to learn, as there are many backgrounds, graph paper, and pre-made interactive lessons that are aligned to subject and grade level standards. Going through the Gallery and selecting Online Options will allow you to search even more pre-made lessons available via the Internet, which is a great way to start using your SMARTboard without having to reinvent the wheel.

Click on the downward pointing triangle on a page in the page sorter area, and choose clone to make a duplicate of that page (so you get the same background, etc.)

You can “right click” the board by touching it for 3 seconds, and then make selections from the popup menu.

When using the pen, you can write a word, tap it, use the down arrow at the top right of the selection, and select GROUPING - UNGROUP to “ungroup” the letters in the word so they can be moved independently for an onscreen spelling lesson. You can also select the letters, and choose GROUPING – GROUP to group them again.

VIEW – ZOOM – DUAL PAGE to see two pages at once. VIEW – ZOOM – SINGLE PAGE to go back to a single page view.

There is a fantastic interactive protractor in the Essentials for Educators software, under Shapes – Angles. Choose the “Flash” protractor (identified by the FLASH icon), and you can use the interactive protractor to measure or demonstrate fractions.


…and when the inevitable happens…

If you inadvertently write on the SMARTboard with a dry erase or permanent marker, you can clean the board with EXPO cleaner, but that can leave a film on the board so it is better to not get into the habit of pointing with markers other than the ones included with the board – or that tennis ball.



For More:

http://education.smarttech.com/ste/en-us/

http://www.scholastic.com/interactivewhiteboards/

http://www.computerlab.kids.new.net

http://eduscapes.com/sessions/smartboard/

http://itmc.cesa5.k12.wi.us/digitaltools/Smartboard.htm

http://itmc.cesa5.k12.wi.us/digitaltools/Smartboard.htm

http://technology.usd259.org/resources/whiteboards/smartlessons.htm
http://www.theteachersguide.com/SmartBoards.htm