Using interactive whiteboards without whiteboard software
This is my contribution to an Ed Tech Blog Carnival, you can find out more by going here.
While I wandering around the BETT show the other week, there were many interactive whiteboards on show that did not come with what I’d recognise as Notebook/Flipchart software. This was especially true of some of the cheap chinese boards who seemed to purely be demonstrating that you could use their board to to use Google Earth.
Some brands of board came bundled with third party software such as Easiteach or Wizteach, while some had very cut down software that was not fit for purpose. Others came with no software at all, apart from a hardware driver, in which case they’re just selling a giant mouse/tablet and leaving it up to the teacher to find the content.
This got me thinking. I’m primarily a SMART and Promethean user. For me the Notebook and ActivInspire software is the heart of your interactive whiteboard – allowing teachers to pre-prepare lesson resources which they can display in class, and to capture and record any notes written on the whiteboard for use later on.
But I guess the question is, do you need software like smart notebook/activinspire/easiteach to get the most use of your board? Can you get by with a mixture of PowerPoint and interactive resources found online?
There are certainly a lot of good quality, free resources that can be used by teachers in their lessons. I’ve shared links to enough of them over the years on this blog. There are even more available if your school subscribes to a managed resource such as Espresso or BrainPop. And the benefit of these resources is that they don’t need any investment in teacher time to create them. You can also access resources such as Triptico for free which provides a bank of free resources and templates.
So what are the options if you have a cheap interactive whiteboard, an interactive projector, or just a projector/interactive slate combo without any useful notebook software bundled with it?
1. Buy a licence for IWB software
You can buy standalone licences for software such as ActivInspire/Easiteach/Wizteach. Prices vary from about £80 to £200 per licence, which needs to be factored in to the savings your school is making by buying the cheaper boards in the first place. Currently it’s not possible to buy SMART software at present, but I’ve heard rumours that may change in the future.
Buying into this software does give you access to additional resources as well, in particular Promethean Planet’s large library of ready-made flipcharts.
2. Use Powerpoint
It’s often seen as the work of the devil, but used correctly you can still make good use of PowerPoint. Don’t load the slides with too much text, use plenty of images. You can even draw and write on slides using the pen tool (look to the bottom corner of the slides when in slideshow mode). Maybe one day PowerPoint will add a whiteboard mode as a half-way mode between full slideshow and design mode. But not yet.
It is possible to buy into ready-made resources such as those by BoardWorks which do have some level of interactivity with embedded Flash files. But this can be expensive.
3. Open source alternatives
I don’t know of many open source alternatives to the IWB software apart from Open Sankore but features-wise it is nowhere near ready to be used in a classroom. If you know of any others, post them in the comments.
4. Online alternatives
One of the best tools I’ve seen recently is a collaborative whiteboard tool called Desmos, but sadle it’s not yet out of bet. You might also be able to use online pages such as Dabbleboard or similar. You could possibly use some of the various online noticeboard tools, but these are limited and most do not allow for handwritten notes..
So what do you use?
If you are a teacher who doesn’t have access to what I would class as “proper” notebook software (ActivInspire/Easiteach/Smart Notebook) – what do you use on your interactive whiteboard? Have you moved away from a whiteboard completely and just use a wireless slate to control third party resources on your computer? Can you get by on just online resources? Is it essential to be able to write and annotate in a dedicated piece of flipchart software?
As an extra thought – I know some teachers are looking at a combination of an iPad 2 and Apple TV hooked up to a projector, allowing you to project the iPad screen onto the wall. I only have an iPad 1 so haven’t been able to try this yet. While you can show any iPad app, you do limit yourself from being able to use all the Flash resources that are on the internet. Only a fraction use HTML5 right now.
Please share your solutions in the comments below. I’d be interested to hear what you do.
Photo Credit : Evaluation Scale by BillsoPHOTO
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BETT Show 2012 Roundup Part 2
Here’s the second part of my BETT 2012 roundup, taking a look at the things that caught my eye in addition to the Interactive Whiteboards which I talked about in Part 1.
Here’s a quick summary of some of the things I saw:
BrainPop UK : BrainPop were showing their excellent range of videos which are perfect for the classroom. Moby was there for photo opportunities as always. They were also demonstrating the various new ways to access the BrainPop resources, including on a Playstation 3 and iPad – even more ways to make the BrainPop resources accessible at home. Also check out their free BrainPop Featured movie iPhone and iPad apps. Now you don’t need to have a PC at home to be able to use BrainPop.
2Simple – Purple Mash : 2Simple were there in force again this year showcasing their superb software range. The highlight of course was their Purple Mash online package which has an amazing selection of tools. If you teach in a primary school and haven’t seen what Purple Mash can do, then you must take a look!
I Am Learning : I Am Learning is a games-based revision and homework system which encourages learners both in and out of school. Students take park in games and quizzes with their scores tracked and stored for teacher assessment. I’ll be taking a look at this in more detail in a later blogpost but I liked what I saw, and it could prove to be a very useful resource for teachers.
Play Brighter : This is another website that allows teachers to set up games for their students. On PlayBrighter, you set your students ‘missions’. The games are designed so that success (which might be releasing a Number One single, or becoming a millionaire) is a clear goal that really means something to the student, not just a score that has to reached. It’s free, and looks like quite a fun tool. Like I Am Learning I think I’ll need to come back to this in a later blog post and have a proper play with the resources.
PoraOra: Pora Ora is a FREE 3D world designed to make learning fun, where primary school children are rewarded for completing educational tasks that are linked to the national curriculum. The educational content is embedded in games and quests throughout the world, so children really are learning while playing. Pora Ora is also a safe and supervised social networking site where children can learn how to interact safely online with parents gradually relaxing security settings as they get older. Looks interesting.
Primary Games : Mark Cogan at the Interactive Resources website has always produced some superb interactive games for maths, and other subjects. The online version allows teachers to subscribe and make the resources available across the school and the wider community. This year he was also showing off the new range of Primary Games apps for the iPhone and iPad which look great.
Zu3d - The Zu3D animation software was on show with a new version and animation kit. Owners of the older version can upgrade for a small fee. It’s a fun easy-to-use piece of software for making stop-motion animation and I highly recommend it. In a similar vein, also check out I Can Animate from Kudlian.
Skoog Music : I loved the look of this. A Skoog is an exciting new musical instrument designed to empower those unable to play traditional instruments. The Skoog is a soft, squeezable object that simply plugs straight into your computer or laptop’s USB port. By touching, pressing, squashing, twisting or tapping the Skoog you can play a wide range of instruments, intuitively. Designed for people with any degree or combination of physical, mental or behavioral difficulties. Looks like fun, especially for the musically-challenged such as myself.
Turning Point : The Turning Point range of response ware/voting systems has been expanded with the ResponseCard NXT which has a larger screen and a mobile phone style texting keyboard to respond to questions with full text or numerical answers. There was also the Presenter Card which is a radio device that allows teachers to physically move around a classroom while controlling their TurningPoint session. Teachers can start/stop polling as well as move forwards and back in a presentation, letting them ove away from the IWB.
I was also able to attend the launch of a book written by my good friend and colleague Angie McGlashon. Her book “Brilliant Ideas for Using ICT in the Inclusive Classroom” is an excellent guide to using ICT in the SEN classroom,but has lots of ideas for teachers in mainstream schools tool. You can buy a copy on Amazon, and I highly recommend you do!
And briefly: Word Wall were demonstrating their advanced student response system, which had quite a rugged feel to it, with a screen in the middle. Looked interesting. I also liked the look of AVerMedia’s wireless visualiser which has great potential in freeing up the visualiser so that it doesn’t have to be right next to the computer. Will make using it in science practical demonstrations much easier. Twig Science were proudly showing off their BETT award for their excellent science video collection – well worth a look. Oddizi also won an award for their primary digital content for geography.
So that’s it for BETT 2012. Next year it will be leaving Olympia and heading for the Excel centre in Docklands – for me this is a good move as it’s much easier to get to but it will be interesting to see how being at the new venue shakes up the exhibition. BETT 2013 is also a few weeks later in the year, giving me more time to recover from the ASE conference which is usually the week before.
See you next year!
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UK Students invited to compete in Robotics Championships
Here’s a competition that may be of interest to teachers of ICT and Design/Technology:
Young robotics enthusiasts from throughout Great Britain are invited to compete at the first ever VEX UK National Championship during The Big Bang: UK Young Scientists and Engineers Fair, held at the Birmingham National Exhibition Centre on 15 and 16 March 2012. Interested students are encouraged to sign up as soon as possible, as competition slots are expected to fill up quickly.
Debuting in the United States in 2005, VEX competitions have quickly become the fastest growing and largest high school robotics competitions in the world, with 10,000 students from 16 countries taking part in the World Championships at Walt Disney World Florida this year. This Championship, which is the only World Championship qualifying event in the UK, will see battle commence as secondary school teams from around the country go head to head with their own robotic creations in hopes of impressing celebrity host and judge Robert Llewellyn, widely known for his role as mechanoid Kryten in the iconic sitcom Red Dwarf and as presenter of popular engineering show Scrapheap Challenge, in order to qualify for the 2012 VEX World Championships in California.
The VEX UK National Championship marks the launch of the VEX Robotics Design System in the UK, a science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM) focused platform that inspires students across schools and colleges to get involved in co-curricular and extra-curricular robotics courses. The program, already hugely successful in the US, is in its first year in the UK and aims to bring brand new challenges and skills to school children across the nation. The VEX System encourages key teamwork, leadership, and problem solving skills, as well as the opportunity to learn about STEM areas rich in career opportunities.
Teams of 6-8 students aged 11-15 are eligible to compete in the Championship. For those schools interested, subsidised VEX Classroom Lab Kits are available for £550.
Please visit www.vexrobotics.com and www.robotevents.com for more information and registration details.
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Annotate Word Documents with Promethean ActivMarker
This post was inspired by a Promethean ActivInspire training session that I delivered recently. An English teacher wanted to annotate on top of Word documents, but didn’t want to use the transparent flipchart, or capture sections of text with the camera and annotate them within ActivInspire.
It is possible to do this, using a little known tool that comes bundled with ActivInspire called ActivMarker. It’s a slightly hidden feature and many Activ users don’t seem to know about it, which is a shame as it’s a handy feature.
To launch ActivMarker go to the Start menu and click on -> All Programs -> Activ Software -> Activ Inspire -> Activ marker
Once launched, the next time you open Microsoft Word you will notice a new floating tool over on the right hand side of the window, which looks a bit like this:
To start writing, click on the Pen icon, then start drawing over the top of your Word document. Or click on the highlighter to highlight different words. You can change pen size and colour.
The annotations will be added as clip art into your document. This will work with any Microsoft Office application, including PowerPoint and Excel.
When you save the document you can save it with these extra annotations, and call it back in the future. Or quit without saving to keep your document pristine.
Don’t forget if you want to annotate over PDF files you can use the File -> Import feature to import the PDF file into ActivInspire. It will put each page of the PDF onto it’s own page of the flipchart. Use the Page Zoom tool to zoom in and out to display the text larger on the screen if you wish. You (and your students) can then annotate on top of the flipchart – good for group editing tasks, or examination technique using past exam papers.
If you are a SMARTboard user you also have a similar feature to ActivMarker, called InkAware, which runs automatically.
Let me know what you think of ActivMarker in the comments section.
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Wii gaming on an IWB in a French Class
Finally got around to writing about a class I worked with a few weeks ago. This was a year 7 group, French class. The teacher wanted to try something different with her class and use a Nintendo Wii with them.
First we rigged up the Wii. There were sockets next to the whiteboard where we could plug in the red/yellow/white video leads in so that the projector would show the image from the Wii on the SMARTboard. We rested the Wii infra red bar on the SMARTboard and held it in place with a blob of blu-tack. In the settings on the Wii we changed the language to French (we also tried this later in Spanish and Italian).
The game we played was Big Brain Academy as that had plenty of scope for following instructions and basic comprehension (more so than Mario Kart!). We set up 4 players on the game – two generic boy and two generic girl avatars. It was easier than trying to create avatars for the whole class. We then played the game in teams – 2 vs 2 at a time, and later 4 vs 4 as time got tight.
While one group were playing at the board, the rest of the class were working on other tasks – including some of them using French Tutor on Nintendo DS’s.
The class really enjoyed playing the games – and they soon began to work out what the different buttons and instructions meant.
If you have access to a Wii in school, do try it out.
If you have done this with a class – let me know how it went in the comments below!
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Hue Animation Studio
Hue Animation Studio is an all-in-one kit to kick start your animation project.The pack includes a webcam and some animation software plus some modelling clay to get you started. I was sent a trial version of the pack to review
The studio includes Zu3D animation software which I wrote about last week which is a very user friendly piece of software. I found it very simple to create a simple stop motion animation and add sounds and titles. Zu3D lets you do onion skinning – so you can see a ghost of the previous frame overlayed onto the live image so it’s easier to see how far you have moved your character before you take the next picture. A very handy feature.
Also included is a Hue flexible webcam. This webcam includes a microphone and comes with a long flexible neck which will help position the camera at a variety of different heights and angles. The picture quality of the webcam is very good and the manual focusing was quite simple to use.
For info the Hue Animation bundle, which comprises Zu3D plus the webcam costs £59.99 on Amazon. But it is worth knowing that Zu3D itself can be downloaded on a 30 day trial and then activated for £29.99. The Hue webcam can be bought on its own for £29.95 on Amazon. Not included in my pack, but apparently part of the bundle, is a pack of plasticine – I bought a simple pack of 8 colours for £1 in Tesco.
I can see that it’s more convenient to buy the bundle, but you will not really be saving any money compared to buying the components individually, especially if you already own webcams in school.
And while the flexible webcam looks great, you can buy things that look similar for about £10 on Amazon for example this camera which costs about £7. Any webcam will work with the Zu3D software.
If you do already own webcams then you can just buy the Zu3D software direct from Zu3D website. And if you want to run this on multiple machines, site licence deals are also available.
Find out more at http://www.hueanimation.com/ and find out more about Zu3D at http://www.zu3d.com/
If you’ve bought the pack – let me know what you think in the comments below!
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Veho Movi Mini Camera
I’ve recently bought myself a Veho Muvi video camera. It’s a tiny pocket sized camera that comes with a handy clip so that you can attach it to your clothes or to anything else that comes to mind! My aim is to finally take a small enough camera skiing with me so that I can record some skiing footage. I was too worried about taking my FlipCam out of my pocket to use it on the move!
The camera comes with a 2GB Micro SD Card, which should be able to record about 90 minutes of footage. It has a built in rechargeable battery which should last for about 2-3 hours. You can recharge it via USB. You can buy it from stores such as Play.com for about £40, which is pretty good value ($60 on Amazon.com). I made the mistake of buying a 16GB card to use, but it can only cope with 8GB maximum. I have bought an 8GB card now and it works fine.
The video quality is not bad, considering the size of the camera, and pretty comparable with my iPhone. Here’s a quick video to show the movie and sound quality. It’s not HD quality, but looks OK at 480p when uploaded to YouTube. Straight from the camera the quality is fine when played full-screen.
Uses in the classroom
Small, ultra portable cameras could have lots of uses in the classroom. Here’s just a few ideas:
- Get a whole new point of view – attach it to a turtles/Bee Bots, model cars, bike handlebars
- Get a student’s eye view of field work, museum trips or a tour of the school / journey to school. Attach to a head strap or clip to a shirt/blazer pocket. Hands-free recording.
- Record practical work/demonstrations from a different viewpoint.
- Get a minibeasts view of the world by getting it down into the undergrowth.
- Keep it handy to make recordings of good examples of pupil work. Its tiny size means it could easily go on a lanyard around your neck.
Can you think of other uses for such a small camera in the classroom? Add them to the comments below!
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Primary Maths Learning Clips
Learning Clips is a growing bank of resources for teaching Primary (Elementary) maths. Some resources are free
Free Learning Clips can be accessed here. You will need to register, but it’s free. Additional resources are available by subscription. The resources are ideal for KS1 and KS2 for use with Interactive Whiteboards and include video, interactive activities and some worksheets. If you just want to take a look, you can access resources without a login on a time-limited basis. If you register, these free resources are not limited.
Many activities come with a flash video alongside which sets the scene, and a further video provides a plenary. The main interactive activity can be made full-screen. You can search for resources by Year and Unit, or via Topic list. More free examples can be found here.
Some resources can be used in conjunction with Promethean ActivExpression voting handsets to allow for polling and assessment.
If you teach primary maths then the site is well worth a look and worth adding to your list of maths bookmarks.
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Skype in the Classroom
Skype in the Classroom is a free community that has been set up to help teachers everywhere use Skype to help their students learn. It’s a place for teachers to connect with each other, find partner classes and share inspiration. It’s free to sign up, just use your regular Skype account – or set up a separate Skype account to use in the classroom.
Skype offers an immediate way to help students discover new cultures, languages and ideas, all without leaving the classroom. It allows for free video conferencing. All you need is a webcam.
You can access it here: http://education.skype.com/
Once registered, teachers create a profile that sets out their interests, specialties and location. They can then create projects, which is a way to find partner classes, partner teachers or guest speakers for a specific learning activity. Teachers can also browse through a members-only directory to find teachers who can offer them help, or whom they might be able to help.
The Skype in the Classroom site also includes a growing library of resources to help teachers share teaching resources, lesson plans, videos, links and tips around using in their classrooms.
Here are just a couple of ideas:
Cultural exchange : Introduce your students to new ways of seeing the world with a cultural exchange between your class and another classroom anywhere in the world. Timezones permitting.
Language skills : Cotnact schools in other countries and have conversations to can practice a new language with a class of native speakers, or help EAL students practice their skills.
Ask an expert : Contact real experts on different subjects related to classwork. Or pupils play the role of experts.
For some more ideas on using Skype – take a look at Sylvia Tolisanos blogposts such as Framing a Skype Learning Experience or Third Graders- Called Upon As Experts.
And also take a look at Jen Deyenbergs blog to see some of the things she’s been doing with Skype.
Happy Skyping!
Photo Credit : Credit Cut in Imperial Telecommunication by Stefan.
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About Me
Danny Nicholson : Educator, Science teacher, ICT Consultant, PGCE lecturer, Author and Web2.0 / SMART Masters/ Interactive Whiteboard Trainer. Contact me for any training requests. 
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