Posts made in March 24th, 2009

Science Clipart

Posted on Mar 24, 2009 in Interactive Whiteboards, Resources, Useful Links | 0 comments

Jane Whitney is a medical and scientific illustrator who contacted me recently for advice on producing images for the SmartBoard.

She’s been developing an image bank of Science clip art for use on your interactive whiteboard (not just the Smart Board). Most images are in jpg format so can be copied and pasted into your IWB software. Others are in SWF format so you can capture using your desktop capture tools. Jane has given permission for these images to be freely used for classroom teaching purposes.

It’s great to see more people producing high quality images and allowing them to be freely used by teachers.

There are only a few images there at the moment, but Jane has said she will be adding to the library of images when she can. It’s well worth bookmarking the site and visiting again in the future to see what’s new.

Visualisers

Posted on Mar 24, 2009 in Hardware, Interactive Whiteboards, Presentations, Visualisers | 0 comments

In advance of a training day I am doing on Friday about Visualisers, I’m putting this short post together to collect together some useful resources to direct teachers towards.

A visualiser, (sometimes called a Document Camera) at its simplest, is a video camera mounted on a stand that connects to a data projector. You can then place objects below the camera and project the image onto your interactive whiteboard.

You can pretty much put anything below the camera and display it to the whole class. It is great for showing 3D objects, sharing books, children’s work, photographs and even demonstrating drawing techniques. Anything where you would usually have students crowded around a front bench to see something being demonstrated could be displayed on a visualiser.

Usually, the visualiser also allows you to record images or video snapshots of whatever it is you are demonstrating. If you run your visualiser via your PC you could also use your interactive whiteboard tools to capture and annotate over the top of whatever you are showing the class.

The Visualiser Forum is a blog that aims to help promote the effective use of visualiser technology in schools. There are some very useful posts and case studies on there, such as this guide to using them in the Primary classroom.

Here is a good case study from Hertfordshire Grid for Learning.

Also check out this video on Teachers TV with the Visualiser Forum’s very own Dave Smith.

Becta have also produced a handy guide to using them. You can read it here.