iBoard first caught my eye last year at the BETT exhibition. They produce an excellent bank of interactive resources for Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 classes in several subjects, including literacy, numeracy and science.

Since then, iBoard has been purchased by the Times Educational Supplement (TES) and made available free of charge to all teachers, which is an excellent development.

You can access the resources here: http://www.tes.iboard.co.uk/

Thanks to James Hollis for reminding me of this excellent resource!

Filed under: Activity Ideas, Games and interactives, Literacy Resources, Numeracy Resources, Science Resources, Useful Links

Tagged with: , EYFS, interactive, KS1, Literacy Resources, numeracy, Science Resources

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Teaching with Smartboard is an excellent resource for all Smartboard users.

The site hosts regular video podcasts which explores SMARTBoard teaching techniques to maths teachers. Each episode lasts from 10-20 minutes.  Our emphasis and purpose is to create lessons that are engaging for students.

Dave Sladkey is a high school math teacher and Scott Miller is the Instructional Coordinator for the Math Department at Naperville Central High School in Naperville Illinois. They’ve put together an excellent resource! Go take a look now.

Filed under: Hardware, Interactive Whiteboards, Smartboards, Training materials, Tutorials and Guides

Tagged with: , Interactive Whiteboards, podcast, Smartboards, Videos

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One type of software that is really cool on an interactive whiteboard are the various painting packages. Drawing is hard with a mouse, but better with a graphics tablet – and you can’t get a bigger graphics tablet than an Interactive Whiteboard.

If you own a Promethean board then you might be interested to know that Promethean have teamed up with ArtRage to provide a simple way of obtaining a demo version of their very cool painting package.

You can download the Promethean version of Artrage here. (more about this on the Promethean blog). If you don’t own a Promethean board, then you can still download the regular, free version of Artrage from the Artrage website here.

ArtRage Starter Edition gives you 8 painting tools and lets you create, save, and print as many pictures as you like and doesn’t limit their size. The full version contains additional paint tools, the ability to paint on multiple layers, metallic paint, stencils and rulers, and a long list of additional features.

It is called a natural media painting program because it stimulates real things, such as spraycans, crayons, oil paints, rollers and glitter, which all interact with each other on the digital canvas much as they do in real life.

Artrage has just released Artrage Studio and Artrage Studio Pro with a whole pile of new features. If you like the starter edition you can upgrade to a full version of v3 Pro for about £50. If that’s a little steep you can upgrade to the older v2.5 for £13.

If you’ve never used ArtRage, it gives you the feeling that you are painting with real paint, as oppose to pixels. It’s really easy to pick up. It’s fun to use with a mouse, but the addition of an IWB makes for a very different painting experience!

Get the free version of Artrage now, and see what you think.

Filed under: Activity Ideas, Art Resources, Promethean IWB's, Useful Links

Tagged with: , Art Resources, artrage, Promethean IWB's, software

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Here are 10 websites that will prove useful to any teacher of Primary Science looking for things to use on their interactive whiteboard:

The Children’s University of Manchester. Several excellent interactive resources for Primary Science.

NGFL Cymru : Early years, KS1 and KS2 Science resources from the Welsh Grid for Learning.

Simple Science : I love these excellent science song videos. Great for lesson starters or reinforcement of key facts.

IWB.org.uk: KS1 and KS2 interactive science resources (and other subjects)

BBC Bitesize. Always worth a visit, some excellent resources here for Ks2.

BBC Learning Zone - lots of videos to use in Science and other lessons.

Birmingham Grid for Learning – some excellent resources here, and links to other sites.

Crickweb – great flash-based games for KS1 and Ks2 Science.

Fossweb - US site with some interesting interactive science activities.

Primary Resources – Home to some great resources – IWB files, powerpoints, links and more! Also worth checking out is  Teaching Ideas, which is on very similar lines.

Don’t forget, if your school subscribes to Espresso, there are some excellent resources for EYFS, KS1 and KS2 in there. (OK, so that makes 11, but Espresso is well worth a look)

Image Credit : Kevin Dooley

Filed under: Interactive Whiteboards, Science Resources

Tagged with: , interactive, Resources, Science Resources

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One of the benefits of using videos on an IWB in Science lessons is for those moments when you want to demonstrate something that is just too dangerous to do in the classroom.

This is particularly true when demostrating the reaction of Alkali Metals with water. You can demonstrate small pieces, but it’s a little dull. And when the kids ask “go on Sir, throw in a bigger bit” you still can’t use too big a bit for obvious safety reasons.

Which is why it’s good to then turn to a good video to demonstrate the reaction.

An old favourite of mine was from the TV show “Brainiac”:

But sadly this is actually a fake experiment. If you look carefully you can even see a wire going into one of the bathtubs which sets off the regular explosive.

Last night I watched a Mythbusters episode that I must have missed previously where they test out the scenario in the Brainiac video and prove that it didn’t happen the way it was show. It’s a nice way of demonstrating how to actually test something you see on screen to see if it is actually real.

Their take on Alkali metals in water is in two parts. Here’s part one:

and here’s part 2:

Awesome stuff. I think I now have a new favourite Alkali Metal explosion video to show.

An alternative is to check out the Sodium Party videos from Theodore Gray. Big lumps of sodium in a lake.

And remember – don’t try this at home….

Filed under: Science Resources, Videos, YouTube Resources

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YouTube is an excellent resource to use in schools but the biggest problem is quite often some of the offensive comments that invariably get left below popular clips. When showing clips on your interactive whiteboard, you don’t really want to be showing those comments to your class.

YouTube XL is one way to get around that. Basically YouTube XL is a skinned version of YouTube designed to use on large-screen televisions. The interface makes it simpler to use by cutting out a lot of the clutter on the page. In fact, it makes YouTube a whole lot easier to use on an IWB. The advantage of losing the clutter means that there are no comments on view – you just have the videos. Try it out now : http://www.youtube.com/xl

As an alternative – another way to safely view YouTube videos is to use http://www.safeshare.tv/ and also there’s http://quietube.com/

Filed under: Interactive Whiteboards, Videos, YouTube Resources

Tagged with: , safety, Videos, YouTube Resources

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Here’s a fun little website for a Sunday morning. Incredibox allows you to create music using what is best described as a virtual human beatbox. You have to really try it to get the idea. Very simple to use, just drag the different sound icons onto each person to play each loop. Easy to use on an Interactive Whiteboard.

Thanks to Keisa Williams for sharing the link on Twitter.

Filed under: Activity Ideas, Resources, Useful Links

Tagged with: , beatbox, music, sound

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Smart Notebook users should be aware of a new update that came out last week. Version 10.6 has a couple of very neat new features.

The most obvious feature is a new icon on your toolbar that gives you access to Measurement Tools. This is basically a ruler, protractor, compass and set square that may look familiar if you’ve ever used Promethean software All of these tools should prove very useful to maths teachers.

Clicking the ruler icon places an interactive ruler onto the page. You can make it bigger and smaller just like any other object. Grab it in just the right spot and you can rotate it around. A number in the corner shows the angle of rotation. If you use the pen very close to the edge of the ruler, it will let you draw a perfectly straight line, however wobbly your hand is! Useful for lines of best fit on graphs perhaps? The set square works in the same way but you can draw on all three sides.

Working in a similar way is the protractor tool. Use the pen near the edge to draw a perfect arc. You can toggle between 180 and 360 degree versions by clicking the blue circle near the base of the protractor. Dragging the green circle (and the grey circle) will let you move two lines. When you click the green arrow it will inject those lines onto the page, with the angle between them clearly marked. 

The compass tool should also be familiar to Promethean users. Click and drag at the top of the pencil to move it in and out. Drag the green circle to move the compass around without drawing – and click on the point of the pencil to draw the circle.

Another very innovative feature is the totally transparent notebook. In the past you’ve been able to use pen tools over the live desktop, but it’s been a little fiddly. By clicking the Transparent Background icon your notebook page vanishes, leaving a small strip of icons that lets you annotate and use the measuring tools over any application, while at the same time still being able to click and manipulate the applications.

For example – here is a ruler and some annotations on top of a working version of Google Earth. I can move the ruler around and compare lengths, add a protractor and look at angles and at any time move the view in Google Earth and look at another part of the city.

Use the camera icon to take snapshots from here and put them back in your main notebook page

Both of these new features offer some very different ways that you could use Smart Notebook that you couldn’t do before. The transparent background is a very simple idea that is actually very powerful.

A minor change includes adding some new shapes to the shape tool : perfect circle, perfect square, isosceles triangle, equilateral triangle, scalene triangle, regular polygons, half-circle and rounded square.

In addition there is now a link to the Smart Exchange in the Gallery. Smart Learning Marketplace is also still there.

The other change with Notebook 10.6 is support for Windows 7. But annoyingly they are still not supporting 64-bit versions.. so I still can’t use my new laptop with Smart Response. Seems to work OK with the actual Smartboard though.

You can download Smart Notebook 10.6 from the Smart Downloads page as before. If you do use Smart Response, then you should download this version instead, which has Notebook 10.6 bundled with the latest Smart Response drivers and add-ins.

Smart Notebook 10.6 also comes with a 30 day trial of Smart Notebook Maths Tools, which has been in beta for a while and should hopefully be available for purchase soon.

On the whole, the new tools are a great addition to what is already a great piece of software. Nice one Smart!

Filed under: Guidance, Smartboards, Tutorials and Guides, software

Tagged with: , 10.6, measuring, notebook, Numeracy Resources, Smart IWB's, tools

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Thanks in part to an Open Letter to Prezi by UK teacher Mark Clarkson, the fantastic online presentation tool, Prezi, has announced a free educational license for teachers and students. Students and teachers can now create private prezis for free. Upon verification of student/teacher identity, Prezi EDUEnjoy is free and Prezi EDUPro comes with a special educational discount.

And also they’ve simplified the Prezi editor so that it has half the menus of its predecessor, but having more features. They’ve made text editing easier  and introduced YouTube integration.

If you haven’t played with Prezi before – do check it out. It allows for presentations with much more impact than bullet-point-covered PowerPoints. And well done again to Mark Clarkson for getting them to agree to the educational license pack!

Filed under: Interactive Whiteboards, Presentations, Useful Links

Tagged with: , education, Presentations, prezi

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With languages set to become a statutory requirement from 2011, Orangery Education Ltd has produced a bank of resources for the whole of  the Primary QCA MFL schemes of work. Key features include all vocabulary recorded by native speakers, video clips of French children speaking and singing songs, and all the authentic photographs you need, in an engaging, user-friendly interactive whiteboard package.

Orangery Education realised that the QCA schemes of work often lack the resources which are  referred to in the ‘possible teaching activities’ section. The first unit alone refers to a number of interactive whiteboard activities and multimedia resources including a recording of the song Sur le pont d’Avignon and video clips of children introducing themselves – and states that such resources may be available on the Internet. They weren’t.. so Orangery went out to produce their own resources instead.

Each unit is supplied in either Smart Notebook 10 or Promethean ActivInspire/ActivPrimary format, and features the full set of lesson activities, along with the word bank and suggested teacher target language phrases built in to the interactive pages. I’ve had a sneak peak at some of the units, and they are excellent quality, and should be an essential purchase for any primary language teacher.

You can find out more about their resources by watching this YouTube video, which demonstrates one of their units.

Free animations for Les Quatre Amis (KS2 Unit 5) and Jacques et le haricot magique (KS2 Unit 6) are now on the Orangery Education YouTube channel.

The first pack of Units 1-6 is now available for just £40. Other packs will be available later this year. More details of the units here.

Filed under: Interactive Whiteboards, Resources, Useful Links, software

Tagged with: , french, language, mfl, orangery

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