Promethean: Annotate Over Desktop

There are many ways to use your Super Awesome Promethean Board. You know, that big thing taking up all that space in your room? You don't have to be a pro at using Activinspire to get a lot of use out of your board. We've talked about getting resources and we've talked about importing things into the software. But, you probably want to get more uses out of the board while you learn. Ok, so maybe you are overloaded with interim reports, benchmarking, and just actually inspiring the kids to listen to you. But at some point, deep down inside, you know you want to learn how to be an Activinspire pro. And that might be overwhelming too, especially if you aren't as tech savvy as you'd like to be. That is ok. We'll take a little bit at a time. That big thing taking up all that space in front of the room needs some love though. So this week I'll tell you how to get more mileage out of board and out of your lessons.

When you turn the board on, the pen acts as a mouse. You can use the pen on the board without even having Activinspire open. This is great because that means you don't have to have a fancy flipchart to get kids to the board. You can pull up any games or websites and the kids can play by using the pen as the mouse.

(I'm in the process of organizing my bookmarks in a place that everyone can search and access them, for now you can check out the few I have here: http://delicious.com/hilarythomas)

You can display this on the board and allow students to come up and move things around.

Or how about StudyJams? or demonstrating how to get to the quiz in Classcape? You can even transition from one subject to the next without having to go back to your laptop. Again, just use the pen as your mouse. Close out the web browser and open PowerPoint or Envisions.

This works great for math. You can open Envisions from the web (http://www.pearsonsuccessnet.com/) or from your CD Roms. This displays on your Promethean board just like any old projector would. But now you can control it from the board with the pen. You can flip pages, and zoom in or out.

This means students can do this from the board too. Get them up out of their seats. Plus, they'll pay really good attention hoping their turn will be next.

You can also open the student edition of the textbook and access a video at the beginning of each topic. Just go to the topic opener page. Close the contents tab. In the top right corner will be an icon that opens the video.

You can access this with your class coming to meet you at the board, all without returning to your desk or table to open it on your laptop. The students pick up on this really quick too, so you could even have a helper get it open for you while you get materials or help a another student. 

Now let's say you want to show students what to write, show the answers to the questions, or mark some notes over the pages. You don't have to save anything or import anything like with the PDFs. You will need to open Activinspire though. 

There's this handy-dandy button on the toolbar in Activinspire. It's called "Annotate Over Desktop" and it's pretty much life changing. 

When you click on the Annotate Over Desktop button, it will switch screens to your desktop, but keep the toolbar on top. You can switch back and forth. Open up other webpages or programs, but all with the toolbar on top. (You'll just need to be on the arrow to do all that.) Now you can choose the pen or highlight tools and write over the screen. You can now write on the Envisions textbook on your screen, or use it with other websites like this one:

Anything you can do in a flipchart, you can do on your other screens with the toolbar.  

To make it go away, just hit Annotate Over Desktop again and it will switch back to your Activinspire screen. It saves everything you've done until you erase it.

So turn on those boards and get some use out of them. Practice a bit and get comfortable with it. I promise it will add some oomph to your lessons and some excitement in your classroom.