Annonate Over Screen and Other Thoughts

A co-worker asked today about scanning documents to project onto the Promethean instead of using the ELMO. Apparently there is software that allows you to annotate over the screen while using the Promethean with the ELMO, but we have not been able to get it to work in anyone's classroom yet. However, yes, you can scan documents as PDF's (or other files) and use the "Annotate Over Screen" feature. If you didn't know you could do this, trust me, your life is about to change.

There are two options for you.

1. Open file. Open ActivInspire. Click the "annotate over screen" icon. The file will appear along with the ActivInspire toolbar. Click on the pen, arrow, highlighter, or any other tool and use it over the file you are viewing.

2. Open ActivInspire. In the "Dashboard" or under "File", choose "Import from PDF". Choose your file. It will appear in your flipchart. You can choose to place it at the beginning or end and even incorporate it into any part of your flipchart as a single page.

I use this feature daily. Using the math textbook online, as a class we check our homework and work out the Problem of the Day. This feature allows students to show how they worked out problems and to underline the important words in our math problems. We also use it to highlight reading comprehension passages and sometimes over websites.

I have had some issues with the way the feature works though. The previous mentioned co-worker ran into the same issue and reminded me of it today. Whatever you write on the screen, stays right there on the screen until you erase it. If you are viewing a file, you usually view it close up so the text is big enough for students to read. This means the whole document is not viewable all at the same time. You have to scroll down or move it around the screen. The text you highlighted or wrote over moves, but the annotations do not. Annoying. Especially when highlighting reading passages.

The other issue is that if I import the file into my flipchart, the program automatically resizes it to fit the screen. This means that usually the text is small. I have to zoom in and move the file around the screen to view the different parts of it. I find that annoying too. It would be awesome if I could break up parts of it to go over a few flipchart pages instead of having it only fit into one. This is a problem mostly with the fact that it is a PDF file though. I've just found it annoying.

I'm glad this teacher brought this to my attention though. I'm sure she's not the only one who didn't know about this feature. I hope now you all do!

In other thoughts:

If you are still learning the basics or learning how to use ActivInspire as opposed to ActivStudio, Promethean Planet offers free webinars. You can learn more at: http://www.prometheanplanet.com/server.php?show=nav.19094

I will also put in another plug for the free online courses. The tutorials showed me basics I now understand how to use better.

How have students benefited?

In math I use the Promethean daily to go through the introduction of my lesson before splitting up into groups. We go over the Problem of the Day and homework through the math website and then I open the flipchart for the day's lesson. Almost every student who comes to work on the board as we go through our lesson knows how to interact with the board. They know how to write, how to erase, how to change colors, and how to change from writing to other tools. Often times I'll say, ok, how about we use "such and such" and as I go through the tools menu to switch to that mode, the students like to try to direct me as if I don't know where to go. I'm glad to see how comfortable they are with the technology. Even the two new students who have joined our class in the last 6 weeks walked in, took a look at it, and seemingly just knew how to use it. I think with a combination of working with the board over the last two and a half months as well as watching me work with it has made them as Promethean-savvy as I feel I have become. I think that's a plus. The more you are willing and able to fiddle around with a new technology the more comfortable you become with it and the more confident you feel about this and other technologies.

As a kid I learned so much of what I know about technology because I was able to fiddle on the computer and my dad could come down and save me whenever I messed something up. And the plus side, operating systems are so user friendly these days that it doesn't take a rocket scientist to learn the basics of most technologies. All it takes is the confidence to "fiddle" with it until you learn how to use it right. So, that being said, the more confidence students gain in using the Promethean, the more confidence they can transfer to other technologies. Of course, the confidence to interact with the Promethean is the biggest bonus here because now students will come up and use it, getting the most out of the lesson. This also fits in well with the North Carolina Standard Course of Study Technology Goals, such as Competency Goal 3: The learner will use a variety of technologies to access, analyze, interpret, synthesize, apply, and communicate information.

I have certainly captured their attention as well. Most students are eager and falling-out-of-their-seat willing to come up to play whatever game or move whatever object or share whatever thought they have if it means touching the magic board.

I'm gathering my other thoughts still on other student benefits and will share soon.

Promethean and Change

Promethean technology is only as good as the person using it will make it. If you simply use it as another white board with annotating capabilities,that is all it will be. If you simply import slideshows from Power Point and show them in ActivInspire, then all you've done is shown another slideshow. One of the downfalls of the technology I have found is that there is a learning curve in implementing it into the classroom. If you make it a point to focus on how to use it and do the research, the more useful it will become. It also is so easily implemented into existing classroom routines and often serves as a more advanced replacement for a white board. I know I often use the Promethean to show worksheets, word problems, and pages from the math textbook online and annotate over them. I use a blank flipchart to write out charts as students share during language arts or word study. I love that I don't have to erase a messy white board. I love that it only takes a click of the pen to clear the screen. I also know that often times I am the only one interacting with the board. And since you can import from Power Point or a PDF, it is so easy to take what I used to do with a laptop and projector and just make it run smoother and more organized.

I am still torn as in the previous post. Interactive White Board is the name given to the technology because it is supposed to be interactive. And the "research" (read "advertising") on the Promethean websites totes it's interactivity and capabilities. But, as a tool in my classroom, why would I not utilize it to make my classroom routines run smoother, to save chart paper, to save time, and annotate over work the students are doing as we work through it? I see these as valuable time saving and organizational uses in the classroom and uses that I hope everyone who recieved a Promethean at my school is taking advantage of.

But I still don't want the endless resources and capabilities of this technology to be lost. With such a high price tag and such little money in our schools, we need to use everything we have. Not to mention the tremendous benefits I think students would recieve by variety, manipulating things on the board, and by reaching the visual and kinesthetic learners. I know, you already know this and believe this. But how interactive are you using it? How much do students use it? What are you doing that is making it a visual learner's dream come true? How has the Promethean promoted Change in your instruction and in student learning? How are you measuring it?

Please, share your ideas. And then visit me Delicious sites. I spent hours finding interactive activities and I'd love for you to tell me what you find useful.

Pedagogical Changes

In an article discussing the integration of Interactive White Boards (IWB) in Australian classrooms, the conclusions drawn indicated that overall teachers did not pedagogically change their instruction. They successfully integrated the IWB into the ways they already taught, but it didn't drastically change anything about the teaching.

I wonder how much we, at Stateside Elementary, are changing our pedagogical practices? I know I have stated before that I had felt that I had really only integrated the Promethean into our regular classroom practices. How am I making a significant postive impact on learning with the Promethean? How have I changed my instruction in a way that impacts students more than when I didn't have it?

I think I fall somewhere in the middle. While I am still figuring out how I am changing my instruction, I still struggle with creating lessons that are truly different. I did already attempt to make lessons that got the kids out of their seat and moving (mostly since they can't stay in their seat already!) and things that could be classified as "interactive". Now I use the Promethean to aid in those activities or to create them. Do I always use it in this way? No. There are times that I am flipping through the slides and charting the student's answers. That can not be classified as interactive, and is something I did occasionally already within Power Point. But how can I say I have changed pedagogically? I'm not sure, but I can say my classroom instruction and routines have changed. I can say that the students get excited to use the board and react to the lessons used on it. I can also say that as I continue to learn and try to incorporate the board in many ways, I learn and change more. So maybe I'll be able to say someday that I have pedagogically changed and be able to show how.

How about you?

Tools and Tricks

Using ActivInspire is so different and so much cooler than using Power Point, but still there are some program similarities. I remember going through college and learning how to make good Power Points. There are specific tricks of the trade and ways to make a Power Point really effective. Now using ActivInspire, there are new tricks of the trade. There are some ways to make a flipchart well paced, interactive, exciting, and effective. I have read through most of this website below:

http://www.dillon2.k12.sc.us/technology/integration/prometheanboards.asp

For beginners, there are some directions. And for everyone new or old to ActivInspire or Promethean software, the "What Makes a Good Flipchart" and "Easy Teacher Tricks" are a must read.

I have also spent hours pouring over the resources available in ActivInspire. There is so much and the more familiar I become with them, the more I can incorporate them into my lessons. Besides the resources already in the resource browser, I can download Resource Packs from Promethean Planet with more resources in it. It is time consuming when there is that much out there to use, but as I sort through it all, the ideas keep flowing and the uses seem endless.

Tonight I found a Potato Head Designer (Resources-->General-->Characters) and made a fun writing activity I am going to try out this week.

I want to learn as much as I can about this technology and I hope you'll share what you learn too.

April 14- Interactive Activities

The whole point of having a Promethean board is to make classroom instruction interactive. It's not just about fancy flipcharts and a place to write things besides another tablet of chart paper. Instruction and learning are not going to be remarkably improved if students are not interacting with the board in some way. Sure, many times I use flipcharts that have information typed in and only a few places to write in new information, but at least the students have to come and input that information. For example, in math this week we practiced using a table for problem solving. The flipchart I created had the word problem and a table. We had to input the numbers and information into the table after underlining the important words in the problem. Not hard or too creative, but still students interacted with the information.(Plus, I could just flip through all the text instead of having it written out on the board. Cleaner, user friendly, and organized. Another plus of the technology. But I digress....) So in my quest to make use of as many interactive activities as possible I did some research this week. Luckily, even though I may be new to Promethean, many others are not. And they share their lessons and activities online.

A few I found the most useful for my classroom:

BBC (I'm always finding good games and activities here. Now with the board, it's even easier and the kids can come up and play instead of telling me what to put in on the computer)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks1bitesize/numeracy/

National Library of Virtual Manipulatives

http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/vlibrary.html


I like these fraction circles I found there.













Forsyth County Schools (Georgia)

http://www.forsythcountyschools.org/its/kadkins/activ/pb.htm

Topmarks Educational Search Engine

http://www.topmarks.co.uk/EducationalGames.aspx?cat=12


NGFL-CYMRU

http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/eng/index-new.htm

This site has tons of interactive activities that you can use online or save to your computer and pull up anytime. And it's free!

Here is an example of what you may find:

(For this video, I actually made the lesson online a full screen, and opened ActivInspire to record the screen. If I used this in my classroom, I could then upload the video to my school website for students to review at home. Neat!)

You can check out all the things I bookmark at my delicious bookmarks site (Link on the right side of the screen.) Anything for Promethean is tagged under "Promethean" or "technology".

Now I've got to decide which things to use in my lesson plans next week. I really just want to spend a day with the kids playing with all of it!

Inserting Video in Another Way

You may remember that I put a video in a recent flipchart on summarizing. I inserted it so that it would begin playing as soon as I flipped to that slide. Well, I figured out how to insert video that begins playing in another way. I had downloaded a flipchart a while ago that had me click on text to begin playing a video. As I paged through the resources online, other flipcharts had me clicking on objects to play a video. Always this video popped up on screen in a new window. I wanted to be able to flip to the slide I wanted to play the video, but not have it begin playing until I was ready. Well, I figured it out. (It's so uncomplicated)

First, I chose the video, downloaded it, and saved it to my computer. Then, I inserted the object I wanted to click on for the video in my flipchart. In this instance I am making a flipchart on plants and have chosen a video titled "How Plants Grow" from http://www.discoveryeducation.com/. Then, I right-clicked on the object (a picture of seeds) and chose "Insert Link to File". It then prompted me to choose my file, and then hit "open". Another screen pops up about inserting the file. It says things like "choose file path", "store as", and "multimedia". They are all set on default settings, which will work fine. However, I suggest choosing under "store as", the second option: "store file in flipchart". I believe this will allow me to send the flipchart to my team and they will be able to play the video in the flipchart without having the video downloaded to their computers first. Hit "Ok" and you are ready to roll.

When you do show the video, the screen that pops up can be resized if you think it's too small. (I do.)

Very cool. And easy. I figured it out myself. My motto: When in doubt, right-click.

21st Century Goals

April is Financial Literacy Month and a great time to think about gearing lessons towards 21st Century Goals. Not every state has adopted them, but North Carolina has. You can see just an overview of the 21st Century Framework here:

http://www.p21.org/documents/P21_Framework.pdf

Students are to be taught skills in "Financial, Economic, Business and Entrepreneurial Literacy".

Check out:

http://community.prometheanplanet.com/en/classroom_practice/secondary/b/weblog/archive/2010/04/01/resources-for-financial-literacy-month.aspx

for some resources you can use in your classroom to teach financial literacy. You can incorporate this into your economics unit in social studies, or maybe a money unit in math.

Be sure to check out the other goals too. The more you familiarize yourself with the goals, the more you can be sure to incorporate them into your classroom routine. You probably already do teach some of them without knowing it. Now you'll know you teach them and can gather evidences for your portfolio that you are a 21st Century Teacher.

The one that stood out to me today as I glanced through them was under "Produce Results": "Demonstrate additional attributes associated with producing high quality products including the abilities to:

• Work positively and ethically
• Manage time and projects effectively
• Multi-task"

(http://www.p21.org/route21/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11&Itemid=11 for a closer look at the skills)

We just finished biography projects in third grade and while I know the students practiced some of this, next time I can be sure to teach this aspect of it and even grade them on time management by having them turn in certain parts by specific dates. Just an idea.

What are yours?

March 31-It can do what?

Ok, I'm going to have to backdate some of my posts because my internet at home was down and it was a crazy week.


On Wednesday, I went to Deborah and Gretchen for some help. I wanted to know how I could upload my lessons onto my school website. I found out two things.


1. If I export my flipchart as a PowerPoint, then I can upload the file under the "files" section. Awesome. I have been creating flipcharts in math that could be viewed from home if a student missed a lesson or wanted to review what we had done at school. They could even do the activity we did at school that day at home if they had all the materials (ie. rulers, paper, etc...) So now I know how I can get them up on my website and share them. The kids may or may not be excited about it, but I am.


2. Did you know you could record what you are writing and then view it in Windows Media Player? Yup.


Say you are demonstrating subtraction with regrouping. You can:

Go to the main menu tab -->tools-->more tools--> screen recorder --> full screen record

Then a recording box will pop up. When you are ready, click record and the "Save" box will pop up. You can name and save your file. When you click "Save", the screen will be ready and will start recording. There is a pause feature if you need to pause in the middle of the recording. When you are done, click stop.

To view your recording, hit play (or view it later by opening the file you saved). It will play in Windows Media Player as a .wmv file. This can also be uploaded to the school website.

Like this:



Does anyone have any other ideas to incorporate this into lessons?