Posts made in July 31st, 2008

Quick IWB tip – The Zip File Trick

Posted on Jul 31, 2008 in Interactive Whiteboards, Promethean, SMARTboards | 3 comments

Here’s a quick tip that I was reminded of after a question on Twitter today.

Let’s say you have a Smart Notebook file or Promethean flipchart which has lots of images in it, and maybe even some embedded flash files. How do you get those resources out to use elsewhere?

Well, if you select the file in your regular file management window you should be able to rename it. Change the bit after the dot of the filename that says .xbk, .nbk, .notebook or .flp and change it to a .zip instead. If you can’t see the extension on the end of the filename you may need to change your folder properties since Windows can hide these by default.

Once you have changed the extension to .zip, your computer now thinks it is a zip file. So now open it up inside WinZip or whatever software you use to open zip files with.

You will see a listing of all the assets inside the flipchart/notebook file listed as if this was just another zip file. You may even see an Images folder with all the picture files inside. All you need to do now is select out the images/flash files you want and copy/paste them to another folder.

And that’s it. You might want to make a copy of the notebook file before you do this in case you wreck it But it’s pretty straightforward.

Whiteboard Challenge 1

Posted on Jul 31, 2008 in Interactive Whiteboards, SMARTboards | 2 comments

Jess McCulloch asked me to develop some whiteboard challenges for project she is working on. The whole challenge site will be launching on August 11th – so if you want to take part visit the Whiteboard Challenge Wiki and see what you need to do.

This is the first of my Whiteboard Challenges. The infinite cloner is a Smartboard feature, but you can clone objects in Promethean software, or stack a pile of shapes over each other. You can read more about the challenge on its wiki page.

Whiteboard Challenge – Cloning from Danny Nicholson on Vimeo.

The challenge is to investigate how you could use cloning in a lesson resource, and then try it out with a class

How can you use this? Try some of these out.

• dragging symbols onto weather maps / regular maps
• Shapes and tessellations – have a square and a triangle – how many different shapes can you make?
• Dragging labels onto diagrams
• Fridge Magnet Poetry – clone an array of connecting words
• counters on board games

There are other uses too, see if you can think of any

Smartboard Video – Lesson Toolkit

Posted on Jul 31, 2008 in Interactive Whiteboards, SMARTboards, Tutorials and Guides | 1 comment

Yesterday was my last day of training for the Summer. I’m off until September 1st. I’ll still be doing stuff for the blog and suchlike through much of August.

The last thing I needed to do this term was to film a session with myself and a Smartboard for my Smart Notebook 10 accreditation. A local school let me set up my camcorder and a colleague and myself filmed the necessary footage for Smart.

While I was there, I filmed some extra stuff for this blog, and also for a whiteboard challenge Jess McCulloch is developing (more on that in the future I hope). I’ll upload some of these videos over the next few days.

The first video is just a quick demonstration of the Lesson Activity Toolkit which is new to Smart Notebook 10.

IWB Tutorial – Lesson Activity Toolkit from Danny Nicholson on Vimeo.