Physics Games

I'm delivering an IWB in Science day in London tomorrow and I have been looking around for any new science websites that I might have missed. So I was really pleased to have stumbled upon Physics Games.net this morning.

Physics Games.net provides nearly 50 different flash-based games, all collected onto the one site. A few of these games, like Magic Pen and Fantastic Contraption, I have seen before on other sites, but it's nice to have one place to bookmark to get them all in the same place. There are quite a few games here I hadn't seen before. Physics teachers should definitely add this site to their favourites.

Most of the games are puzzle-type games that draw on aspect of physics - many would be useful to illustrate forces or gravity.

The site also provides embed codes for the different games so you can embed them into your own school website or VLE. There are some fun games there, and even if you don't end up using them in a lesson, there are some fiendishly addictive puzzle games there. Check it out today.

Awen Media

Bit of a rush of websites to share today. I stumbled upon this one in a teachers magazine while waiting in the staffroom this afternoon for a training session to start. I think I may have bookmarked it before, but don't think I've blogged about it.

Awen Media is a Cardiff-based multimedia publisher specialising in the creation of fun educational interactive programs for children.

Awen's range of software is popular in primary schools and homes with parents, teachers and children alike. The products are designed to assist teachers and parents in the teaching and learning process, while keeping things fun for the children. All of their products are produced in both Welsh and English versions.

As well as the software you can purchase - they also have a number of fun, free activities that you can download and run offline on your own computers. They are simple flash exe files so there's nothing to actually install - as long as you're allowed to run them :)

These include a fun fridge magnet letters and numbers tool, a sudoku generator, a numnber spinner and a bubbles game. There's also a wordsearch generator.

You can access the free resources here.

Finger Friendly Art Sites

There's nothing better than playing with an art program on an interactive whitboard and literally drawing with your finger. And there are some excellent, free, online drawing packages. Some are quite simple, and others really mimic real-world art materials.

Here are five online drawing applications that I really like;

Sketch
This is a new one that I only discovered today. The brush gives a really realistic effect and you can alter lots of different variables if you want - or just paint away!

As an aside - on this site you will also find a scarily realistic animated spider. It's very impressive and rather scary if spiders are not your thing.

Crayola Digi-Colour
Choose from a variety of Crayola products including crayons, pencils and stamps. If you want to do something more off-line then there are colouring pages to print out as well. The Crayola site also has a lot of information for teachers including lesson plans here.

Bomomo
I wrote about this site a few weeks ago. It's brilliant for making abstract drawings. Some of the pens are really fun.

Imagination Cubed
This has been around a while, but it's still really fun. You can even collaborate with friends on a joint drawing.


NGAKids Brushter
This is a fantastic resource It includes more than forty brushes and customizable size, transparency, texture, and stroke options. A rainbow palette, along with a toolbox of special effects that blur, ripple, smudge, blend, and fragment your designs help make BRUSHster a full-feature painting program. There are many other applications on the site too.

BETT 09 Roundup

Here's a quick round up for some of the things that caught my eye at this years BETT exhibition.

For interactive whiteboards, the big two; Smart and Promethean were there, as well as some new kids on the block.

The big news for Promethean whiteboard users is the launch of the new ActivSoftware Inspire edition. This is going to replace ActivPrimary and ActivStudio with a single product which will hopefully be less confusing. The software settings will let you view your work area as either Primary or Studio mode, and let you switch between the two easily if you so wish.

Activsoftware inspire will provide one platform across Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. Apparently the software is a complete rebuild from earlier versions of ActivStudio/ActivPrimary and as such they’ve taken into account the full range of other devices that will connect and communicate with the boards such as voting/response systems and future promethean developments. Multi touch is now incoporated into the software, and a firmware update will allow your promethean board to use two pens at the same time. You can even get a version to run on other whiteboards – very interesting if you’ve bought a cheap board and do not like the software that comes with it.

The preview version of Activsoftware Inspire Edition is available from Promethean Planet until 1st March 2009, after which the trial expires and you will be able to upgrade.

Multi touch systems were on display with the main two being the Smart Table and Microsoft Surface. Both were available for visitors to play with for themselves and see what they can do.

The Smart Table probably had the most useful resources on show for education purposes, whilst the Surface was still very much a “hey wow, look what this can do” blue sky demo at present. Both are very expensive, but the price should fall as they get mass produced. I’m still not totally convinced how useful they will be, especially as you could get 4 or 5 Smartboards for the price of a smart table, but as an emerging technology its pretty interesting.

Smart were showing off version 2 of the Senteo software to use with their senteo response systems. This is much improved from the last version – gone is the little flash window that sat on your page and Senteo now has its own tab on the sidebar of your Smart Notebook software. It gives much easier access to all the quiz control features. Reporting is much better, it will still export to Excel and you can even set up gradebooks and print whole reports on your class. Download v2 now from www.smarttech.com

In terms of alternative IWB platforms, Ebeam and Mimio were both at the exhibition showing off their portable whiteboard solutions. Ebeam have released a new version of their software which you can download from their website for free. Likewise the Mimio software is also available for download. If you use these and haven’t updated for a while, it’s always well worth getting the latest versions.

A new kid on the block was Clasus who are a portugese company producing a tough, hard induction whiteboards similar to the Promethean-type board which you can also write on with regular whiteboard pens if you so wish. It comes with A-migo software which looks like they’ve taken a long look at Smart Notebook and copied the features that make it very easy to use. The firm have yet to get a real foothold in the UK but they may be one to watch.

If you do have a whiteboard, and don’t like the software that comes with it then you might want to check out Word Wall. It’s a paid for piece of software, but it comes with a wide selection of game and puzzle templates that would work really well as lesson starters or plenaries. I wrote about them already after seeing them at the ASE the week before.

Other good things that caught my eye included Task Magic which lets teachers enter a block of text, or a selection of words and then produces up to 21 different interactive games/exercises based on the text that require students to interact with it in different ways. A great tool for making lesson starters and plenaries very quickly. You have to buy it, but it’s not too expensive.

If you have very young students then check out IBoard who provides interactive games for Infants (reception, yr 1, yr2) and also Q&D multimedia who also produce some lovely early years software. There will be an online version of their resources in April at http://www.busythings.co.uk/ so bookmark it and go back in the Spring.

And a final shout to 2 Simple software who have produced yet another brilliant piece of software in 2DIY. This lets you produce very simple flash games which can be exported to use on your IWB or onto the web. It’s aimed at KS1 (K-2) but other teachers may find it an easy way to produce quick resources.

For more information about all the exhibitors at BETT, then check out their website.

Finally, a big thank you to the organisers of the TeachMeet@Bett unconference that took place on the Friday evening of BETT. It was great to see so many great users of IT in on pl.ace sharing what they have been doing. Sorry I couldn't have attended the pizza, but I had to get home.

Jeopardy

A quick post about a free resource that will be of interest to anyone who likes to use quizzes as lesson starters or as a plenary.

Stu's Double Jeopardy is a free piece of software that will run on any computer and can be used with any IWB or even just with a projector. It allows you to build your own versions of the Jeopardy game show based on your own subject to use with your class. The game allows you to customise all the questions, and to have up to 6 teams playing at the same time.

You can use the built-in question editor, or even produce the questions in an Excel template and paste them into the question editor.

A really nice touch with the latest version is that you can even install the software onto a USB stick so you can play it on any computer just by plugging your USB stick into that machine. This is great for those of you teach in many different rooms - you dont have to install it on many different computers (or who have computers that are locked down by the IT technician)

Stu's Double Jeopardy looks like a really useful resource and again, like all my favourite resources it's free (but Stu does accept donations if you like it!)

You can get the latest version, and find out more about the software, here.

http://jeopardygame.wordpress.com/

Right, I'm off to BETT. Hoping to report on some nice new stuff when I get back.

ActivSoftware Inspire edition

Promethean users might be interested to know that from tomorrow (Wed 14th) you can download a preview version of the new ActivSoftware Inspire edition. This will eventually replace both ActivStudio and ActivPrimary and will be available for Mac, Windows and now Linux computers.

Available exclusively to Promethean Planet members, the tailored preview specifically invites feedback, offering you the opportunity to help develop the final version.

Activsoftware Inspire Edition will be offered in two editions - Activsoftware Inspire Personal and Activsoftware Inspire Professional. The personal version will be available for free to everyone, including teachers, students and parents via download from Planet.

Existing users of Promethean’s Activstudio and Activprimary software can upgrade to the Professional edition and download the software from Planet at no extra cost. New customers will be able to purchase this full version for a promotional fee of £99/€99/$99.

Activsoftware Inspire Edition comes loaded with new tools, flipchart page templates and activities, and can be upgraded to support dual pen functionality, allowing two students to use the Activboard at the same time for true, real-time collaboration.

Please note that the preview version automatically expires on March 1, 2009 so you have about 6 weeks to play with it. The commercial release of the software will take place later in March.

You need to be a promethean planet member to access it. To find out more, go here.

Whiteboard Survey

I'm interested to know what brands of boards my readers are using. How many of you use Smart, how many Promethean and how many of you are using other systems. I've set up a quick PollDaddy poll to find this out.

Could you please take a minute to make your selection from the options below.

Sunflower Science

As a science teacher, I am always on the look out for great interactive resources that work well on an IWB. Today I got a newsletter from Sunflower Learning, a firm that I've known about for ages, but don't believe I've mentioned on this blog yet.

I didn't realise that Sunflower have been making one of their interactive tools available for free each month. You can only use it online, and only for the duration of the month, but it does give you a taste of what the full set of resources are like.

This month, the free resource is a demonstration of Enzyme reactions. You can view the reactants and the products and change the temperature and pH and see what happens. It's quite neat. Enzymes is available until 6th February, so you're in luck if you're teaching this topic before then. Click here to view it.

Sunflower Learning will be at the ASE conference this week, and also at BETT next week if you want to go and see more. Alternatively take a look at their website.

ArtRage

If you own a Promethean board then you might be interested to know that Promethean have teamed up with ArtRage to provide a "Promethean" version of the very cool painting package. I'm not totally sure yet how this version differs from the normal version of Artrage that's available already, but I am trying to find out.

You can download the Promethean version of Artrage here. (more on the Promethean blog)

If you don't own a Promethean board, then you can download the regular, free version of Artrage from the Artrage website here.

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, even my 3 year old niece had a ball producing abstract art with it! It's fun to use with a mouse, but the addition of an IWB makes for a very different painting experience!

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. ArtRage 2.5 Full Edition contains four new paint tools, the ability to paint on multiple layers, metallic paint, stencils and rulers, and a long list of additional features. If you like the starter edition you can upgrade to a full version of the software for about $25.

TeacherLED resources

Thanks to Jim over at Teachers Love Smartboards for reminding me about the Teacher LED site.

If you haven't seen it before, there are some great Flash resources on there. Mainly for Numeracy, but also a great little scrollable world map for geography.

There's also a nice Flash version of the Blockbusters game show. Very nice, and more interactive than my static version. You need to read out the questions yourself - but you could just use the glossary from any textbook or a list of subject keywords. The quiz can be adapted for any subject you want and would make a great lesson starter or plenary.

It's a great little resource, and well worth a visit: http://www.teacherled.com/

New IWB Presentation

I've been writing a new powerpoint presentation to use on my Interactive Whiteboard training days. I've previously used an IWB file but I wanted something that had less text and a better use of images. Having it in powerpoint format also means I can share it via SlideShare which is handy.

I used the Flickr Creative Commons search tool to find images to use. I've credited those images at the end of the presentation.

This new presentation gets its first airing at my training day in Glasgow on Monday. If you are interested in coming along to any of my sessions, I've now added a Google calendar to the sidebar of my blog so you can see when they are.

Interactive Whiteboards Introduction

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: interactive whiteboard)

Primary Science Lesson Starts

Just wanted to point you in the direction of a very nice video that's available on the Teacher's TV Website

It's aimed at Primary Science teachers, and gives 7 different lesson starters to use on your Interactive Whiteboard.

All the starters are in one file, so I would suggest making a note of the time that each clip starts (or download the timings file from the downloads page) so when you use it with your class you can jump to the required clip using the video player slider.

You can view the video here: http://www.teachers.tv/video/28260

There are also some associated documents to go with the video in the Downloads page.

There is also a similar video for Primary Maths, which you can find here: http://www.teachers.tv/video/25557 as well as some Primary Literacy Story Starts here: http://www.teachers.tv/video/23316

More halloween links

On the subject of halloween resources - a quick plug for two great posts by Jim Hollis over at Teachers Love Smartboards;

The Halloween Search

Smartboard Halloween Activities

Enjoy!

Halloween update

As a follow-on from the Halloween post, I got a comment from a chap from TeqSmart promoting their halloween word bucket for Smartboards. It's a flash game similar to the Lesson Toolkit which if you open it will put itself straight into your My Content area.

Taking a look around the rest of the site, there are some useful resources for Smart Notebook users to download. It's well worth taking a look at the site; http://community.teqsmart.org/download.php

Oh and nothing to do with whiteboards, although personally I think it's a nice scary thing for halloween, check out http://www.palinaspresident.us/ :)

Halloween Resources

If you are looking for some Halloween resources to use on your Promethean board, then take a look at the Promethean Planet website.

They have a Halloween resource pack that contains spooky backgrounds and images. It also contains some game template pages for adding a halloween theme to some lesson plenary activities such as Pictionary, Hot Seat and Tic Tac Toe.

Smartboard users might like to check out this nice Halloween Ghost Countdown made by Jim over at Teachers Love Smartboards.

It's at this time of year that I like to promote my Halloween Memory Game that some students may like to play on the IWB. You can find it here.

And not IWB related, but check out this amazing Cylon Jack-o-Lantern :) Amazing stuff.



Have a good Halloween!

ActivStudio 3 Toolbars

Here's a very quick helpsheet I have written for a training day that covers the main buttons from the ActivStudio 3 toolbar.

Activstudio 3 Toolbars - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: Activstudio 3 Toolbars

This is the first time I've used Scribd to distribute a document, but it looks quite useful. If you also need it, I've uploaded my Smart 10 toolbar sheet there too.

Elearnr

Just a very quick blog post to direct people to a new blog that offers some good advice on using ICT in the classroom, which already has some great tips on Whiteboards. It's called Elearnr, and you can find it here: http://elearnr.edublogs.org/

If it's not already on your list of blogs in your RSS reader, then I suggest you add it immediately :)

As a reminder - I've linked to quite a few good blogs in my sidebar to the right of this blog. I heartily recommend all of them in the list.

Smartboard Tutorial - Themes

Here's another video about a new feature of Smart Notebook 10 - Themes.

With themes, it is possible to set up page templates - with the font size and style that you want, along with any colour schemes, images and watermarks.

Themes could be useful for title pages, Lesson objectives and suchlike.


Whiteboard Tutorial - Themes from Danny Nicholson on Vimeo.

It is worthwhile also thinking about what pages you use a lot - and adding those pages to the My Content area of the gallery. I have done this with graph axes, experimental results grids, lesson objectives. To do this, from the page sorter, select a page and click on the little grey box with the arrow in it - and choose Add page to gallery. You can do a similar thing with Promethean software too.

Smart Notebook 10 Activation

I know that people are still having issues upgrading to Smart Notebook 10, so here's a quick post to explain how to do it.

For those of you who want to upgrade to Smart Notebook 10, the download process is a little more complicated than it used to be. You can't just download the Smart software and promise them that you are a valid Smart user anymore. You need to prove it by having a Smart product serial number.

Annoyingly you can't just use that serial number to activate the Smart software. You need to go to a website, use the serial number to have them send you a product key. Then you can use the product key to activate the Smart Notebook software.

In a nutshell you install a 30 day trial, then you need to activate it so it becomes a full version. If you don't activate it, then it stops working after 30 days.

You can read more about the process here: http://www2.smarttech.com/kbdoc/124761

The Process

First you should get yourself a product Key. So go to this page:

http://smarttech.com/nb10productkey/

On this page you need to know your Smart product serial number. This will be on the side or on the bottom of the smart board or on the back of your Airliner tablet. There's a guide to finding it here

http://smarttech.com/nb10productkey/FindYourSerial.aspx

For those of us on our summer break, you may not be able to do this until you get back to school. Don't panic, you can still install the software and activate it at the end of the 30 day trial.

Once you have entered your serial number, Smart will email you with a product key that you can use. You can use this product key on your classroom computer, but also on your home computer if you want to prepare resources away from the Smartboard.

Next you need to download the smart 10 software go to the software download page

http://www2.smarttech.com/st/en-US/Support/Downloads/SBS/NBSv10WinEval.htm

Download the "trial version" - this version is OK to use, once you have the product key we can activate it and make it work permanently and then install the file that you downloaded

If you did not type the product key during the installation, you can activate Notebook software after the installation.

1. Press the SMART Board icon in the notification area, and then select Welcome to Notebook.

2. Press the Help/Support tab.

3. Press Activate Software and the Software Activation dialog box appears.

4. Follow the on-screen instructions - this is when you will enter your product key that Smart emailed you.

Hope that helps!

Whiteboard Challenge 2

Here's my second whiteboard challenge. Both Smart and Promethean software lets you alter the transparency of images, and also to make parts of an image completely transparent, which is useful for getting rid of white space around an image.


Whiteboard Challenge- Transparency from Danny Nicholson on Vimeo.

Try some of these out, and use one of them with your class;

Use a slighly transparent image as a watermarked background for a piece of creative writing, then write over the top of it. Maybe a beach scene or an image of a landmark

Overlay one image on top of another - maybe a new and old photograph of a building or a place. Or a Google map overlaid on top of the satellite image. Then fade one out to reveal the other.

In art use a photograph of a landscape - or a portrait photograph - and trace over the top. Then fade out the image to make the tracing easier to see. You could also use the straight line tool and show all the lines of perspective in an image

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

Again, the challenges won't be going live until August 11, but check out the Challenge site for more info.

Quick IWB tip - The Zip File Trick

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

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

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.

Periodic Table of Videos

A quick post to share another interesting site for Chemistry I picked up from a discussion on the TES forums.

The Periodic Table of Videos has been produced by Nottingham University Chemistry Department. There's a nice 3/4 minute video clip about each element. Some show reactions, others just talk about the elements.

From looking at some of the videos I would guess the most suitable age range for this would be A-level chemists, but some of the clips would be suitable for GCSE too. You may want to check them out before using with your class to see if their going to be suitable.

Other alternatives include Web Elements, and my particular favourite, Theodore Gray's wooden periodic table site, home of the (in)famous Sodium Party where he sourced 3lbs of sodium and proceeded to throw into large buckets of water. If you're ever showing the reaction of Sodium and Water and the students ask you to throw in a bigger bit - then these are the videos to show them!

Another favourite is the Brainiac Alkali Metals video, that apparently has now been debunked as slightly fake. A shame as its very funny. But I'll copy it here anyway because it always raises a chuckle on training sessions.

Crickweb

Here's a great site that all primary/elementary teachers who use interactive whiteboards should have bookmarked.

A former colleague of mine, Dan Bunker, has produced a fantastic library of Flash resources for many curriculum subjects plus some generic fun Flash games. There's over 160 resources on the site available to use.

There are also 16 Promethean flipchart files that ActivPrimary users can download and use on their whiteboard.

There are resources for Early Years classes as well as Key stages 1 and 2.

I thoroughly recommend the Crickweb site, there's certainly a lot of resources there and you should find plenty of things that you could use as lesson starters or as part of a plenary.

Historic Tales

Here's a comic creating site with a difference. The Historic Tale Construction Kit lets you build your own scenes using characters from the famous Bayeux Tapestry.

You can submit them to a gallery, email them to a friend or take a screenshot to put them into Word or whiteboard software. Create several scenes to make a story either based in fact, or tell your own tale. Maybe this time Harold ducks at the right time....

Senteo Software Update

Senteo users might like to know that Service Pack 4 has been released by Smart which fixes a few issues with Senteo and Smart Notebook. It's a large file since it also includes Smart Notebook (rather than a patch)

To quote Michael on the Smart Exchange forum:

Senteo SP4 includes fixes for Notebook 10 that are needed to address problems in the way Notebook 10 interoperates with Senteo.

3 important things to note with this new version of Senteo software:

1. This version will install Notebook Software as well as Senteo Assessment Software

2. The Software will automatically update itself if it can detect a receiver plugged into the computer. No need to type in messy serial numbers, no need to fumble with the "Find License Code" button in the previous activation process.

3. When Senteo software is activated, Notebook Software 10 is activated as well. Kill 2 birds with one stone.

Although slightly more time consuming because of the larger download, it is recommended that you download the complete Senteo SP4 upgrade package.

You can download it here.

PowerPoint

Just a very quick post to point you towards an excellent article by Ewan McIntosh explaining some ways to improve the use of PowerPoint

http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/2008/06/why-would-you-u.html

Some very good points there.

Class Tools

I may have mentioned Classtools.net before, but I've been using it a lot recently so it's worth another mention. There are lots of handy flash tools on this site, but these two are my favourites.

Countdown Timer

This is a cute little tool that allows you to set the class a time limit for a given task, and then count down the time left with some fun background music. There are 10 tunes included, ranging from a 30 second Countdown theme tune, 57 seconds Hawaii Five-0 or a 7 minute piece of Mozart. If you want you can even upload your own mp3 file to use instead.

This was a fun alternative to the built-in Promethean and Smart timers, and would also be very useful for users of other whiteboards who don't have access to a timer in their own software.




Name Picker

There are several different ways you can use the name picker, and they don't all involve names!

This tool lets you input a list of names/text and then go to either a fruit machine or typewriter view. Names are then picked at random.

I've used it when getting students up to speak for a presentation - giving me a random way of choosing the order. I've seen this used by Ewan McIntosh at TeachMeet in the same way. Clicking the "remove" button will take the chosen name out of the list so they do not appear twice.

It could be also used with keywords or a topic heading. In typewriter mode one word at a time will appear letter by letter (and they dont get to see the other words). Students could then have to give a definition of the word, or one student with their back to the board has to guess the word from the descriptions given by other students. There's many ways this tool could be used.

This can be run in full screen mode or embedded into your blog, and you can even save this to your computer to run offline.



There are many other tools on the classtools website -including Timelines, Venn Diagrams and Fishbone diagrams. It's well worth taking some time to look at them all and see which ones could be used well in your subject/year group.

Electricity and Circuits Ks2

Here are some handy links for teaching Primary Electricity on an IWB

This is something I haven't seen before. Looks quite fun

The Blobz Guide to Circuits

I used to use a great piece of free software called Crocodile Elementary, from Crocodile Clips. It seemed to have gone but I think I've found it again. It's been rebranded as Yenka Basic Circuits, and you can download it from the Yenka website here.

From the BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/scienceclips/ages/6_7/electricity.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/science/activities/conductors.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/science/activities/changing_circuits.shtml

Other Links

Make an Electric Circuit Online

BBC Learning Zone - Electricity Videos

PhET Circuit Builder

Cleo Circuit World

For a quick 10 minute preview, that explains some aspects of circuits. Go to Furry Elephant, and choose series or parallel circuits. It literally only allows you 10 minutes though.

Link to other Links Pages

E=TC3 6G Changing Circuits Page

E=TC3 4f Circuits and Conductors Page

TopicBox - Electricity

TV on your Whiteboard

There are different ways to get multimedia content onto your IWB. Youtube is pretty good, but it can be something of a lottery. Buying professional CD's and DVD's is another option.

One other way that has interested me for a while, is turning your computer into a Television. This is becoming easier and easier.

A few years back I bought a plug in device that was the size of a paperback book. It was quite awkward to use and the picture quality and recording quality was pretty poor.

I have just bought a new device that has really impressed me. It's called the Pinnacle PCTV Nano stick and it is a hybrid Digital/Analogue TV tuner stick.

First thing to impress me was the price, it was only £35 in PC World. Secondly is the size, its tiny. And the third thing to impress me is the picture quality. Plugged into my normal house aerial the quality was pretty good, and we're not a particularly strong area for television reception.

Using the supplied, portable aerial was less impressive. I was not able to get a signal at home. I am going to look into some kind of digital booster and see if that makes things better. I don't want TV on the move as such, but it would be nice to have a system that I could use if no rooftop aerial connection was possible.




The Stick comes with Pinnacle TVCentre Pro software so that the television picture is shown in a window on your computer screen. This software will also let you use your computer as a hard drive/DVD recorder and it is this aspect that interests me for use on an IWB.

You can save TV programmes as straight MPEG files or DivX format. It will also export for devices such as ipods etc. I could take the DivX file and copy it straight onto my Archos to view on the train for example. File sizes can be large, but recording directly onto DVD would avoid filling your hard drive too quickly.

For a teacher who wants to record snippets of a TV programme to show to a class this is ideal. You could record adverts that use really bad science and then get the class to pick the science apart.

It could also connect to the coax output from a video recorder and let you digitise any of the old video tapes that you have hanging around in your department cupboards that haven't yet been put onto DVD.

Obviously copyright is an issue here, and I would check this with your school first.

There are several other PC/TV Sticks out there. Pinnacle are doing a few, and also check out Happauge for other PC/TV devices.

Whiteboard Day

I'm doing a Whiteboard in Science training day tomorrow, so here's a quick post to use partly as a brain dump and partly so I can point the trainees towards to cover some of things that I will be mentioning during the day.

Firstly - a summary of useful links from the last day can be found here:

http://www.whiteboardblog.co.uk/2008/03/whiteboard-training-day-links.html

My Science IWB Files

http://think-bank.com/iwb/

To Download YouTube Videos:

http://www.converttube.com/
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/04/download-youtube-videos-as-mp4-files.html
http://www.zamzar.com/
http://smartboards.typepad.com/smartboard/2007/12/smartboard-vide.html

Science IWB Links

http://del.icio.us/dannynic/science%2Biwb

Science Whiteboard Blog Posts

http://www.whiteboardblog.co.uk/labels/science.html


And when using powerpoints on an IWB, don't do this:

TeacherLED

Here's a nice site for teachers with lots of Flash resources to use on your Interactive Whiteboard.

They are produced by a classroom teacher, and focus mainly on Primary Maths resources at present. It's well worth a visit.

The address is http://www.teacherled.com/

Promethean Roadshows

Promethean users may be interested to know about the forthcoming Promethean "Love Your Whiteboard" Roadshows that are taking place over the next few months.

A Love Your Whiteboard Roadshow is primarily focussed around one objective; to give you the ideas and confidence to make better use of your whiteboard, regardless of manufacturer.

Here's a short list on the type of things that you will hear about at a Love Your Whiteboard Roadshow:

• Software - find out about our award winning Activprimary & Activstudio
• Did you know? - find out the useful facts & functions to make classroom life easier
• Pedagogy - hear about the latest teaching practices involving whiteboards

Teachers who attend a roadshow will also have the opportunity to win prizes and take away free gifts, such as a '20 Top Tips' DVD, which they can share with their colleagues.

More information can be found here

Promethean have also started blogging. If you want to read the Promethean Blog, you can read it here.

Wiimote Whiteboard Adventures

Inspired by Doug Belshaw's post over here, I was finally inspired to try and build my own wii IWB system.

I'm not the most practical person (I'm still very proud of my D+ in woodwork at school) and I have never soldered anything in my life. But undaunted by this I trecked off my local Maplins electronic store and bought a few bits and pieces, as outlined by Doug.

Namely

An infra red LED
A microswitch
An AAA battery holder
some wire
Soldering iron and wire
A small plastic box

Stupidly I forgot to buy batteries so I had to liberate one from the pile of remote controls under the coffee table.

Putting the kit together wasn't too difficult. I had never soldered before, and an electronics wizard would probably freak at my technique, but the wires are held in place firmly so no problems there. I used a dremel to cut a few holes in a plastic box I was going to use as a holder and with a copious amount of sellotape, fixed everything in place.



The first big problem is that being as how the human eye is not able to pick up infra red, there was no way for me to know if the LED was working. I just had to assume it was.



I downloaded the Wiimote software, connected the wiimote via bluetooth to my laptop and.... well.. nothing happened. I was convinced there might be a bluetooth error (its been playing up in Vista) so I installed the BlueSoleil bluetooth driver... and promptly broke my bluetooth - the only blue I got was a blue screen of death....

I then spent the next few hours trying to get bluesoleil uninstalled and my old bluetooth working again! Once fixed I decided to leave Vista alone and try it on an old XP laptop instead.

This morning I wondered if the fault lay with the LED system. In my haste yesterday I completely forgot that the D in LED stood for Diode, which meant it had to be connected in a specific kind of way (hey look, I'm a biologist, OK?). Checking the connections I found that I had connected it correctly, but more through luck than judgement.

That left the switch. There are three terminals on the switch, and I had soldered the wires to the middle one and took a guess on which end to connect it to. So I cut the switch out of the circuit and just connected the wires together.

It was then I remembered reading somewhere that some digital cameras can detect infra red light. So I tried my N95 camera and pointed it at the LED. And success! You could see that the LED had come on. So the fault lay in the way I'd connected up the switch. I can rectify that later.

I then tried to detect the LED with the wiimote and again it worked more or less OK. The only issues are

1) getting the correct angle and range for the wiimote. I didn't get the exact LED I wanted and I dont know if this is as powerful. Range is pretty limited.
2) The plastic box shields a lot of the IR from the LED... Although I have the LED poking out through a hole in the end of the case it doesn't get picked up by the wiimote too well.

I need to redesign my LED pen a little. I may take a leaf out of Dougs book and get a large drywipe pen and embed the LED in that. I also have another LED on order from Maplin mail order that hopefully will work better.

So at the moment, no cool video of me using my wiimote on the wall. Hopefully I can rig something better up when I get a chance next week and my components arrive from Maplins.

Watch this space.

Update: Another good tutorial on building an IWB wiimote lightpen can be found here: http://www.teacheronlinetraining.com/wiimote/wiimotesteps.html

Vertical Surface

New from those innovative people at Microsoft - a vertical screen, that you touch and interact with. Interesting idea.

Hmm.. haven't we seen something like that before? Or to quote Apple recently - The Wow happened 5 years ago...

Edit - Here it is in action

World Wide Telescope

Microsoft have finally released the public beta of their World Wide Telescope project, and I just had to write about it. It's a must for any Science teacher, or anyone interested in astronomy.

Basically, its Microsoft's version of Google Earth/Sky and if you've used the Google version in the past then you'll pick this up very easily.

The software provides a virtual planetarium and lets you study the night sky with great detail. Some of the images are astounding. You can also switch the view to study planets and moons such as Jupiter and Io.

When looking at the stars, right clicking will bring up a star identifier which tells you the name of the star (if known) and some information about it. You can even link direct to the relevant wikipedia page.

Maybe a quick activity would be to search for their star sign (I looked up Aries) and find the names of the stars in the constellation. Maybe even find out how far away they are from Earth.

You can also point the camera downwards and study the Earth instead just like Google Earth, although not in as high resolution. A nice feature is the Earth at Night view which shows just where all the populated areas are. Interesting to use for Geography perhaps?

This is highly recommended and would be an excellent piece of software for anyone who has to teach about the Earth and space. Download it from here.

IWBs and Interactivity

One thing that a lot of people get wrong is that they believe that the IWB is inherently Interactive. That just by using it, they are making their lessons interactive. This is something I try and get across in my training sessions - that you need to work a little to put the Interactive into Interactive Whiteboard.

From a posting on Classroom2.0 I came across this fantastic presentation that challenges teachers to think about how they are using this great piece of technology. I'm reposting it here, but please go to the original post to show your appreciation.

| View | Upload your own

Senteo

I've recently got my hands on a set of Smart's new Senteo voting kits. They look really nice and I can't wait to try them out with a class soon.

Smart is moving into a quite crowded market, against products like Activote, TurningPoint, Quizdom etc but this is a pretty nice product.

Once the software is installed you get a Senteo option on your Smart Notebook toolbar (and also in Powerpoint, but I've not investigated that yet). Adding questions for the students to answer couldn't be easier and I've made a short video to show how to do it.

Take a look at the video here.

The handsets are quite chunky, and less "nickable" than the TurningPoint ones. They come in a very nice padded bag with a carry strap for ease of transport. The receiver was installed pretty quickly and it was really simple to import a class list into the Senteo Manager. I'll do some more tutorials soon to show how to do this.

First impressions are very positive. I set up a test, logged in some handsets and ran the quiz very quickly. Output to Excel was also simple. I don't know how good the data mining is yet, that's something else I need to investigate.

Will post more on here once I've had more of a play.

Smart 10 and Tables

Smart Notebook 10 now comes with a tool that a lot of Smartboard users have been wanting for a long time - the ability to make tables. It was always such a pain messing about with lines to draw a table, and it never lined up as easily. The new tables tool makes this so much easier!

The "Insert Table" icon is on the toolbar, next to the Select arrow. Click on it and choose the size of table you wish to add. It's no different to adding a table into Word.

What's nice about the tables is that you can drag images into cells - and the images will automatically resize to fit the cell.

You can merge cells by dragging to select them, then clicking the right mouse button and choosing "Merge Cells". You can also right click in a cell and choose Split - to split one cell into more.

Another interesting tool is the Cell Shade. Right click on a cell and choose "Add Cell Shade". This will add a mini version of the screen shade that just covers one cell. Click on the shade to remove it. This would be good for hiding answers or additional help. You can see the cell shade on a few cells in the image below:



I have produced a quick video about the Smart 10 tables tool. You can view the video here.

Doctor Who Trailer Maker

Doctor Who has been a part of my life since I was a kid, hiding behind the sofa when the Daleks came on the screen. The "new" series is now on Season 4 and I've been really enjoying it so far, even if it does have that awful Tate lady (TATL) as an assistant.

The BBC have embraced a lot of the interactive features of the Internet, and their Doctor Who website is no exception.

The Comic Maker was pretty cool but I really like their Trailer Maker.

It allows you to make a 30 second trailer using clips, music and sound effects and then save your effort to share with others. It's great fun and has great potential for using with a class.

You can see my quick effort here. It's not much, but gives you an idea of what you can do with it.

I have a feeling the site won't be accessible outside the UK I'm afraid. But for UK teachers - get your class creating!

Magic Pen Game

No, not related to my earlier post about the Smart Magic Pen, but more related to my post about Phun the other week.

Thanks to Science Punk for linking to another fun little Real Physics application called Magic Pen.

Magic Pen is like Phun in that you use a crayon to draw objects that then behave on the screen as if they were real. Balls roll, oblongs topple down under gravity etc. This time, there's an actual objective. You need to get the little ball to the flag. You might need to just roll a ball into it to make it move, or you could build a more complex solution.

It's very neat, and would be great on an IWB as a lesson starter activity.

Play Magic Pen here: http://magic.pen.fizzlebot.com/

The Magic Pen

One of the small niggles I had with Smart 9 was that there was no spotlight tool on the toolbar in Smart Notebook. I know you could get it via the floating toolbar, but it annoyed me that I couldn't get it quickly in Notebook without having to use workarounds.

So I was really happy when I was first shown a beta of Smart Notebook 10 with the tool called the Magic Pen.

The Magic Pen is brilliant.

If you write with the Magic Pen it stays on the screen for a few seconds and then fades away. This is great for adding quick annotations that you don't want to last - underlining an area on the screen, circling a key point etc.

If you draw a circle on the screen with the Magic Pen then it automatically turns into a Spotlight tool! This is my favourite!

If you draw a rectangle on the screen it will turn into a magnifyer - making an area of the screen larger. Good for making text larger such as web addresses etc.

Here's a quick video that shows how to use the Magic Pen. I made this with the beta but couldn't show them due to the NDA, which is why it talks about being the second video... I can't find part 1!!

http://www.screencast.com/t/WBCypM5Pcn0

The IWB Challenge

I just wanted to direct you to the blog of Jess McCulloch who has decided that April is Interactive Whiteboard month and has been writing about her use of the IWB to teach Modern Foreign Languages. Read part 3 here, which has links to the previous posts.

As well as Jess, three other teachers at My Languages, The Langwitch Chronicles and Sans Problemes have also taken up the IWB challenge and written about their experiences. I'm looking forward to seeing more as they continue the challenge.

This has also been linked to the Passion Quilt meme, where teachers blog about what they are most passionate about in education. Again, well worth a look.

There is a growing network of inspirational teachers sharing their ideas on the Internet for others to use to develop their own teaching. I always love stumbling across a new one, there are some truly inspirational ones out there.

Smart Notebook 10 Toolbar

I've always found it useful when doing IWB training to give teachers a sheet with all the icons on the toolbar and what they do. Many teachers like to print this off and stick it on the wall next to their IWB.

Here is my new guide to the Smart Notebook 10 toolbar. If you want, you can download it as a pdf file here.



In the future I'll do a post that explains what each of these buttons actually does.

YAYTD

or.. Yet Another You Tube Downloader

ConvertTube is yet another website that will let you download YouTube videos and save them as different file formats to use offline. Again, handy for teachers that can't get YouTube at school.

http://www.converttube.com/

Thanks to Lisa Thumann for the link.

IWB Research

I'm using this post as a bit of a brain-dump to collate some research articles. I haven't read any of them yet, but am linking them here to remind me to start going through them.

The ICT Impact Report: A Review of Studies of ICT Impact on Schools in Europe.
http://insight.eun.org/shared/data/pdf/impact_study.pdf

MILLER, D. J. (2006). The magic box – enhancing interactivity, Mathematics Teaching, 197, pp. 28-31. http://www.atm.org.uk/mt/archive/mt197files/ATM-MT197-28-31.pdf

MILLER, D.J., GLOVER, D., AVERIS, D., & DOOR, V. (2005). From technology to professional development: How can the use of an interactive whiteboard in initial teacher education change the nature of teaching and learning in secondary mathematics and modern languages? Training and Development agency, London. Report made to the Teacher Training Agency.
http://www.ttrb.ac.uk/attachments/0d65acf3-488a-4fca-8536-918d6dafd694.pdf

MILLER, D.J., GLOVER, D., & AVERIS D. (2005). Developing Pedagogic Skills for the Use of the Interactive Whiteboard in Mathematics, British Educational Research Association, Glamorgan
http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/ed/iaw/docs/BERA%20Paper%20Sep%202005.pdf

MILLER, D.J., GLOVER, D., & AVERIS D. (2005). Presentation and pedagogy: the effective use of interactive whiteboards in mathematics lessons. In Hewitt, D. & Noyes, A., Proceedings of the sixth British Congress of Mathematics Education, BSRLM proceedings, vol. 25 (1), pp. 105-112. London: British Society for Research into Learning Mathematics.
http://www.bsrlm.org.uk/IPs/ip25-1/BSRLM-IP-25-1-14.pdf

GLOVER, D., MILLER, D.J & AVERIS D. (2004) Panacea or prop: the role of the interactive whiteboard in improving teaching effectiveness, the Tenth International Congress of Mathematics Education, Copenhagen
http://www.icme-organisers.dk/tsg15/Glover_et_al.pdf

Interactive Whiteboards and Learning: A Review of Classroom Case Studies and Research Literature
http://dewey.uab.es/pmarques/pdigital/es/docs/Research%20White%20Paper.pdf
(SMART Technologies Inc. , Apr 2004)

MILLER, D.J & GLOVER, D. (2001) Missioners, Tentatives and Luddites: leadership challenges for school and classroom posed by the introduction of interactive whiteboards into schools in the United Kingdom, part of the Symposium: New Technologies and Educational Leadership at the British Educational Management and Administration Society Conference, Newport Pagnell, UK.
http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/ed/iaw/Missioners.pdf

Delivering E-Learning Using Interactive Whiteboards
http://www.e-learningcentre.co.uk/eclipse/Resources/whiteboards.htm
(E-Learning Centre, United Kingdom, 2004)

List of resources on interactive whiteboards and how to use them.

What the Research Says About Interactive Whiteboards.
http://web.archive.org/web/20061208064641
(British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA)ICT Research, Coventry, U.K., 2003)

How is the Interactive Whiteboard Being Used in the Primary School and How Does This Affect Teachers and Teaching
http://www.virtuallearning.org.uk/whiteboards/IFS_Interactive_whiteboards_in_the_primary_school.pdf
Cogill, Julie. (Virtual Learning, 2002)

Interactive Whiteboards.
http://www.peterli.com/spm/resources/articles/archive.php?article_id=1705
Kollie, Ellen
Explains features of interactive whiteboards, illustrated with cases where they have helped students who are mildly learning disabled, autistic, or have low test scores.
School Planning and Management; v47 n1 , p88-90 ; Jan 2008

Whiteboards Inc. Interactive Features Fuel Demand for Modern Chalkboards.
http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2007/09/12/02board.h01.html
Davis, Michelle R.
Digital Directions; Sep 12, 2007

The Case for Interactive White Boards in the Classroom
http://www.scholarsearchassoc.com/MICRA020503.htm
DeCraene, Tom
Scholar Search Associates; 2006

How Can You Use Research Evidence to Enhance your Mathematics Teaching?
NCETM 2007
http://www.ncetm.org.uk/files/140592/NCETM+Evidence+Bulletin.pdf

Embedding ICT in the Literacy and Numeracy Stages.
Higgins et al. Newcastle University (2005)
http://partners.becta.org.uk/page_documents/research/univ_newcastle_evaluation_whiteboards.pdf

Articles taken from here and here. Others are included on this list that I haven't linked to, but may be useful. When I get round to it, I'll try and draw some of these together.

Why IWB

I stupidly got into an argument on the TES forum yesterday with two guys who are not in favour of IWB's and have made their feelings clear on several threads. They wanted to be convinced as to what the IWB could offer over and above just presenting using a laptop and data projector.

I thought it might be useful to add my thoughts here as well.

Here is my response;

I have no doubt that you can do a lot with a PC and a data-projector - even more so if you couple that with a wireless mouse/keyboard and wireless slate which could be passed around the class.

And for showing video clips, powerpoint presentations etc, this is fine. If you want the students to sit and watch something.

The Review Project, when they looked into the use of IWBs said this

*****************************
Anecdotally, teachers who have taught firstly with a data projector and then with the addition of a whiteboard all say that they would feel very awkward having to return to their computer each time they want to do something on screen. One remarked that he didn’t feel part of the class when working on his computer. The students are looking at the screen while the teacher is talking somewhere else in the class. With a IWB the focal point is both the teacher and the screen.
*****************************

With just projector and laptop the lesson is disjointed. Kids are focussing on one area of the classroom while the teacher is in another. An IWB puts the teacher at the focal point alongside the materials

With a laptop and projector there is more chance of the teacher just "presenting" and pupils being spectators. The boards allow better interaction with the materials - annotating over the top.

Unfortunately, due to the lack of training, teachers still use the IWB to present and there is little interactivity.

Like I said, I agree there is other tech out there too - a tablet PC and projector could do a lot of what is done on an IWB in terms of annotation, interaction, but again you still have the disjointed classroom.

And I say again, It's not about the clipart - you're taking a point I made out of context. But for some teachers, having a ready made resource bank that they can quickly access really helps speed up the creation of lesson materials. The Smart Lesson Activity Toolkit with its interactive flash games, or some of the Promethean flash materials and see how they could be used for lesson starters and plenaries. Yes you can find these online if you know where to look, but many teachers don't have the time to do this

A lot of boards are being used badly, by teachers who haven't been trained on how to get the most out of them, or who just want to "present" to a class rather than interact with them. This needs to be addressed with CPD.

Take a look at the blogs that are appearing from young teachers who have embraced this tech and are doing some amazing things with it to enhance the teaching and learning of whatever subject they are delivering. All agree that there is something that the board adds that makes it more than just a projector

for example Joe Dale's blog: http://snipurl.com/251qt

More research articles (for and against) can be found here;
http://www.schoolfacilities.net/rl/interactive_whiteboards.cfm


If anyone else can post "a defence of the IWB" then it may be worth adding to the thread.

Smart Lesson Toolkit

A while back I wrote about the beta version of the Smart Lesson Activity Toolkit, which was a fantastic way of adding interactive elements to your Smart Notebook page.

Well, with the release of Smart Notebook 10, the full version of the Lesson Activity Toolkit has been released.

If you don't yet want to upgrade to version 10, but want the new Lesson Toolkit, then you can download it separately via this page. Installation instructions can be found there too as well as some videos on how to get the most out of it.

Smart Notebook 10 Released

Quick blog post as it's late as I've just been watching the season openers for Battlestar Galactica, my favourite show! But I wanted to get the following onto my blog, and will write more another time.

Anyway, The final release version of Smart Notebook 10 is now available for download!

You can download the software and any new drivers here.

Please note that the version on this page is a 30 day trial version, it looks like Smart are taking steps to stop people buying lesser whiteboards and running Smart Notebook on them. Be aware of this before upgrading version 9.7

To activate and get hold of the full version, you will need to know the serial number of your Smartboard (or other Smart product such as an Airliner slate) and visit the registration page. One serial number will do multiple installations - so you can still activate your classroom version and your home version for preparation purposes.

More information about Smart Notebook 10 when I get a chance tomorrow.

Update: Some more information, and a few new demos to watch on the new Smarttech Notebook page at: http://www.smarttech.com/notebook

Download YouTube Video

I've given a few links before to sites that allow you to download YouTube videos.

Well now I have another one to add to the list. This Script can be added to the toolbar of the Firefox web browser. When you see a video you want to save, click the button and then the page changes to allow you to save the file as an .mp4 video file.

All the instructions are on the page and it seems relatively straightforward. The thing to remember is to change the filename from .htm to .mp4 when you save it.

Obviously it goes without saying that you need to be aware that you may be infringing copyright by storing these clips - but this does provide a good workaround for those teachers who want to show a YouTube clip in a lesson where the school have blocked YouTube access.

Smart Seminars

If you are a school in the UK you may be interested to hear about a series of seminars that Steljes/Smart are running at venues around the UK. Or you can have the session come to you!

The sessions will focus on getting the most out of your Smart board as well as a demonstration of Smart Notebook 10 and Senteo, their new voting system. You can view a course agenda here.

These sessions are taking place during April/May in 5 locations around the UK. For more information on the locations, and to register a place then click here.

If the dates don't suit you, Steljes can also arrange to have an approved Smart trainer (like me!) come into your own school to run a twilight 60-90 minute session with your staff. Even better, if you arrange this as part of a cluster of 5 schools then they'll pay your school £100 as a hosting fee.

If you are based in the South-East of England, then there's a chance it will be me delivering this session. If that interests you, then get in touch with me and i can explain more. Otherwise get in touch with Steljes on 08450 724800 and they can explain more about this and organise a more local trainer for you.

If you have Smartboards in your school, and you feel you haven't been making the most effective use of them, or you feel you'd like to see what's new or maybe get a look at the Senteo voting kits, then its well worth getting in touch with Smart and having a free training session.

Video Screenshots

One of the really useful features of most IWB software is the ability to be able to take screenshots from videos and use them in your presentations. Both Smart Notebook and ActivStudio have a camera tool that allows quick screenshots to be made.

This can also be done using the Print Screen button on any computer and then pasting the resulting image into Word or Powerpoint.

One issue I often come across when demonstrating this to teachers is that instead of a picture from the video they get a black box instead. This mainly happens with avi or mpg files that open in Windows Media Player. Quicktime videos seem to work OK all the time.

There is a setting in Windows Media Player that you need to change to be able to take screen grabs. It's pretty straightforward, and once done should not need to be done again.

Firstly - open up a video file and right click on the icon in the bottom left corner of the window (It may look like a small thumbnail of the video):

From the menu that appears, choose Tools > Options

From the tabs at the top of the window, click on Performance and then the Advanced button.

From the window that appears, find the option for Use Video Mixing Renderer and click in the box next to Use Overlays to remove the tick.

Then click on OK a few times. When it asks you if you want to continue with the change click on Yes.

The video should now be able to be captured using either the Camera tool in the IWB software you are using, or with the Print Screen button (and then paste into whatever application you are using)

I have also created a Video Tutorial to show you how to do this. Apologies if the sound is a little quiet.



Hope this helps!

Effective Presentations

Here is my first attempt at using SlideShare to share a PowerPoint presentation I have used in the past.

The presentation covers some of the advice I give to teachers when using PowerPoint or Interactive Whiteboard software such as Smart Notebook or ActivStudio.

It's amazing how many teachers never check the IWB resources they make to see if they can actually be read from the back of their classroom. Often the text is too small, the background too busy and the colour combinations very bad.

This quick guide should help

| View | Upload your own

Next Generation Interfaces

Becta have just released the latest edition of their report into Emerging technologies for learning.

'Emerging technologies for learning' aims to help readers consider how emerging technologies may impact on education in the medium term. The publications are not intended to be a comprehensive review of educational technologies, but offer some highlights across the broad spectrum of developments and trends.

It should open readers up to some of the possibilities that are developing and the potential for technology to transform our ways of working, learning and interacting over the next three to five years.

You can access all the articles here, plus the previous editions.

One article of particular interest to this blog is the chapter entitled: Interactive displays and next generation interfaces by Michael Haller, Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences. This is an interesting look at the history of the Interactive Whiteboard as we know it, and a look at some of the new technologies that may well replace or enhance it in the near future such as Interactive Tables, Interactive Paper and Digital Pens.

Download the pdf file here

Biology on the IWB: 10 Quick Ideas

Here are some quick ideas for using an IWB for Biology teaching.

1. Sequence the stages in Mitosis or Meiosis using images or statements

2. Drag and Drop animals and arrows to create Food Chains and Webs

3. Label diagrams of the various body systems using images captured from the Internet or from the gallery.

4. Investigate genetic crossing using drag and drop punnet squares. In Smart you could use the Infinite Cloner on the B and b, or just stack several letters on top of each other so when you drag one down, the rest remain.

5. Use the camera to capture pictures from the internet to illustrate a lesson on the dangers of alcohol and smoking. Or use the Inside Body powerpoint presentations from the ASE site as a source of images.

6. Sort foods into 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' foods, then use as basis for a discussion about whether there is actually any such thing as an unhealthy food.

7. Simulate how to use a quadrat before going out into the field using random dots and a square annotation, or the square spotlight tool.

8. Combine the IWB with a digital microscope to demonstrate and label slides as a whole class.

9. Keyword Plenary – pupils choose keywords from a selection, drag them into the middle of the screen and use them to explain one thing they’ve learned from the lesson.

10. Use a visualiser (Document camera) when carrying out dissections of the heart or flowers to make it easier for the whole class to see what is going on. Use the camera tool to capture images during the various stages of the dissection and add labels to the images. A cheaper alternative would be to use a webcam clamped to a retort stand

Smartboard Browser

I just found this post on the Smart Exchange forum by Quentin D'Souza of teachinghacks.com. He has written a fab little flash tool that you can add to a Smart Notebook page which will let you browse the internet within Notebook itself.

You can add it to the My Content area of your Gallery, and drag it onto a page whenever you want to use it. It's PC only for now, see the note from JoeS about it not working properly on Macs.

The instructions to use it are as follows:

a) To Bring Into Notebook

1. Right-Click on http://www.teachinghacks.com/files/Browser.swf and select 'Save Target As" and place on your desktop
2. Open up Smart Notebook
3. In Notebook - Select from Insert Menu "Flash File" and then locate the "Browser.swf" on your desktop
4. Drag the SWF in your Notebook file to your Gallery.

b) To Use:

1. Click on the Browser to Activate it
2. Enter the url and select enter.
3. Default Web Browser Opens to the Web Page You Entered.

Thanks Quentin for sharing this!

Whiteboards - a beginners guide #3

There are many different ways of interacting with the IWB to support teaching and provide learning opportunities.

Introduction: – Lesson starters, giving the lesson aims and objectives, “Awe and Wonder” introductions

Main body: Explaining practical work/tasks or illustrating main concepts. Using software/ simulations or other software.

Plenary: collecting in results, analysing data as a group, summarising the lesson aims (can easily call them back up from the screen used at the start of the lesson)

The following techniques can all play a role in each of these sections of the lesson.

1. Drag and Drop: This allows the user to move items – either text or pictures around the screen. This is ideal for matching activities, ordering items or labelling diagrams.

There are a range of uses for this simple technique:

• Sequencing – putting events into the correct order, eg steps in an experiment, phases of the moon, stages of digestion, timelines,
  


• Ranking – putting things in order of importance or magnitude eg electromagnetic spectrum in order of wavelength


• Matching – matching words to their definitions, putting matching halves of sentences together, characters and moods, sums and answers
  


• Sorting – eg renewable and non renewable energy sources, healthy and unhealthy foods


• Labelling – eg Putting labels onto diagrams


• Word Walls – drag words to fill in the gaps in cloze procedures.

2. Rub out to Reveal:this involves placing a layer of colour over the top of a word or picture in order to hide it. Use the eraser to reveal the hidden item. If you want to, you can cover the item in the same colour as the background – this makes the item invisible but you do need to remember what you have hidden underneath. Use this for hiding labels on diagrams, or words in sentences.

3. Annotating over Windows: Being able to write over the top of any other software (for example a CD ROM, an internet page or a Microsoft Office document) is very useful. Adding comments, highlighting items, writing additional notes, drawing arrows – all things that can be done by the teacher or by the pupils to discuss and analyse what’s on the board. For example adding annotations over a graph in Excel show how to read data from the graph or pausing a video of different levers and adding arrows to show the direction of different forces.

4. Screenshots: Bringing in resources from other software and the internet can be done easily by using a screenshot. This can be a whole screen, but it is often more useful to take an area screen shot. Google images can be a very useful source of pictures for all subjects. Please note that there are copyright implications and the pictures should only be used in teaching and not sold or widely distributed without the consent of the website owner.

5. Spotlight and reveal: Some whiteboard software allows you to place a spotlight over the area of the board where you want to focus the pupils’ attention. You can also use a reveal technique to show a bit of the board at a time.

6. Using simulation software: Using a combination of data projector and interactive whiteboard it is possible to interact with simulation software such as Crocodile Physics or Focus Science Investigations. The whole class can observe the experiment and suggest changes etc.

Nearly all the features discussed above are available whichever interactive board software you are using. What you need to do is take time to think about the interactivity of each page you create or each task you set.

Whiteboards - a beginners guide #2

There are many ways an IWB can benefits your teaching. Some of them are summarised here:

Motivation: Pupils say that they find it motivating because it is big, bright, and colourful and they can get more involved with the lesson. Teachers find it motivating because it opens up a wealth of resources from which they can select their teaching materials.

Use of images and colour: The IWB/Projector provides a much better quality of image over a traditional overhead projector acetate. This can make diagrams easier to understand. Photographs have more impact. Colour can be used on concept charts/brainstorms to link related ideas.

Use of multimedia: Watching a video has been possible in lessons using a video/dvd player and television but now including short bursts of multimedia is much easier with an interactive whiteboard. These can provide excellent lesson starters or form part of a plenary.

Items can be moved on screen: Text and pictures can be ‘dragged and dropped’ on screen. This can help with a variety of tasks (see below). Using traditional methods, this could only have been achieved through using cut-out pictures or words and blu-tac which was time-consuming for the teacher and may not have been as visually clear for the pupils.

Saving and retrieving materials: All teachers have banks of resources which they use from year to year. However, having them stored as computer files on a laptop or USB stick means that a teacher has all their resources with them all the time. Recapping at the beginning of lessons is proving to be very useful (reload last weeks notes) and saving completed lessons provides a record of work done. The sheer volume of material that can be accessed from a networked computer leaves a well-prepared teacher with a huge bank of resources to draw on. This would be almost impossible in a classroom with no computer.

Hard Copy: It is possible to print a copy of the notes that have been written onto the screen. This means that the teacher can have evidence of work carried out or a group could each be given the results of some collaborative work such as a brain storm task. The screens can be printed for revision purposes too.

Why not just use a Data Projector?

One question often raised is “Why have an interactive whiteboard?” Many teachers have already experienced the benefits of linking a computer to a projector but why not just work at the computer – what difference does it make working at the board?”

Research has provided two answers here:

1) being able to write on the board, either on a blank screen OR over the top of other software is very useful- you couldn’t write with a mouse – you would have to type and this isn’t as spontaneous.

2) working at the board: many pupils enjoy being able to come and work at the board. They perceive the position at the front of the class as being important and enjoy having the opportunity to make their point before their peers.

There is something almost theatrical about working at the board. The fact that a teacher can pick something up and move it in front of an audience and the fact that other events can be triggered by pressing on certain buttons. This could be done on a computer at the side of the board, but the visual impact is not as great and this creates a certain effect on the observer.

Anecdotally, teachers who have taught firstly with a data projector and then with the addition of a whiteboard all say that they would feel very awkward having to return to their computer each time they want to do something on screen. One remarked that he didn’t feel part of the class when working on his computer. The students are looking at the screen while the teacher is talking somewhere else in the class. With a IWB the focal point is both the teacher and the screen.

(source - The Review Project)

Whiteboards - a beginners guide #1

It might be useful to start at the beginning and explain a few basics for those readers who are coming here to find out about Interactive Whiteboards from the point of view of a complete beginner.

What is an interactive Whiteboard?

Wikipedia defines an Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) as

An interactive whiteboard is a large interactive display that connects to a computer and projector. A projector projects the computer’s desktop onto the board’s surface, where users control the computer using a pen, finger or other device. The board is typically mounted to a wall or on a floor stand.

Basically, an interactive whiteboard is a type of touch-sensitive computer screen. They are used in a variety of settings such as in classrooms of all levels of education, in corporate board rooms and work groups, in training rooms for professional sports coaching, broadcasting studios and more.

The basic kit consists of three parts

• The Whiteboard - touch sensitive
• A data projector
• A laptop or PC

The computer projects an image of the computer screen onto the Whiteboard. The user can then interact with the whiteboard screen and move the mouse pointer from the board, rather than having to use a mouse.

Some newer versions involve adding touch capabilities onto a very large LCD monitor. As the price comes down I can see this eventually replacing the need for the data-projector.

Most whiteboards do not have built-in speakers. But often they are bought as part of a kit that includes a speaker and amplifier to enhance the multimedia experience. A decent set of speakers is highly recommended when installing a whiteboard system in your classroom.

There are three main types of board:

1. Membrane / Resistive Boards

This uses several thin layers of material that are stretched across the front of the board. When the surface layer is touched it makes contact with other layers and causes the board to respond. The main type of board that uses this technology is the Smart Board.

Advantages: anything can be used to write on the board, different coloured pens and an eraser can be picked up without having to click on floating tool bars, generally cheaper than solid-state boards of a comparable size. Many children like the fact that they can move things on the board just using their finger. Very nice with SEN pupils.

Disadvantages: board is activated if touched by mistake (you can't lean on it), the surface could be more easily damaged than solid-state boards. If two children are working at the board they need to take turns to touch it as touching it at the same time will confuse the system.

2. Electromagnetic Boards

These boards have a durable hard surface that covers the mesh of electrical wires buried in the board. A special pen containing a magnet is used to interact with these sensors and activate the board. Some of these pens work on their own, others need batteries or to be recharged. Some boards come with a small writing tablet that can be passed round the class, and is used to enter information onto the main board. The main example of this type of board is the Promethean ActivBoard. Cambridge / Hitachi boards also work in this way.

Advantages: Durable surface, higher resolution, faster tracking speeds. Pupils near the board cannot interact accidentally unless they have the pen. Newer boards allow two pens to work at the same time.

Disadvantages: Will only operate with supplied pen (replacement pens can be expensive), changing pen colour or to erase mode requires clicking on floating tool bars. Pens can be prone to cracking or breaking. Buttons can stick and give odd effects.

3. Infrared / Ultrasound

these devices clip on to a conventional non-interactive whiteboard and give it some of the functionality of a 'true' interactive board. They consist of a receiver unit attached to the edge or the corner of the board or flipchart and a set of large pens that transmit a signal to the receiver unit when pressure is applied to the tip. Examples of this kind of system include Mimio and EBeam.

Advantages: Very cheap (about a fifth of the cost of dedicated boards), very portable, comes with several different coloured pens and eraser.

Disadvantages: Pens are big and bulky and use batteries or need charging. The system is more fiddly to set-up and does not respond as quickly or accurately as other technologies. Often the software supplied is quite lacking in features when compared to that supplied with "proper" interactive whiteboards.

Software

The whiteboard is simply an input device that gives the user control of the computer where their finger/pen becomes the mouse. Any computer software can be used on an interactive whiteboard in exactly the same way if you were sitting at the computer.

Most boards will come bundled with their own software which allows the board to be used like a regular whiteboard - but the notes you write can be saved, stored, manipulated, printed. They allow multiple pages, banks of clipart, different page backgrounds such as graph paper and desktop capture.

Not all software works the same way and allows the user a simple interactive experience. If you are buying a board - please test the software out first. Usually you are tied to the software provided. The cheapest boards often come with very user-unfriendly software. This can be a false economy if your teachers then do not use the board because they cannot do the things they want to do easily.

Also be aware of the TDS ActivBoard. TDS is the parent company to Promethean and they sell a board which is almost identical to a Promethean ActivBoard - and does come a lot cheaper. Unfortunately, what is not usually explained is that it does not come with ActivStudio/ActivPrimary software and that this software will not run on the boards. Again you are saving money but getting the useful software that will make using the board a much better experience. I have been in so many schools that have bought these boards thinking they are Promethean boards.

Smart and Promethean do generally have the best software, and are the two boards I would recommend. It then becomes an issue of whether you want to use your pen or your finger and this can be a personal preference.

Science Notebook Files

Two years ago I produced a pack of Smart Notebook files for Steljes, the distributors of Smartboards over here in the UK. They formed part of a teachers pack that was distributed to schools around the UK.

The files were also available via the Steljes Software site. For now, that site is no longer up, and the files are no longer available online.

I have copied the files onto my Think Bank website so that Smartboard users can still access them. Each file has a corresponding teachers' guide in pdf format.

The six lesson packs cover the following topics:

• The Blast Furnace (KS4)
• Cells (KS3)
• Forces (KS3)
• Metals (Ks3)
• Muscles and Joints (KS4)
• Reflection and Refraction (KS4)

To download the files, and the corresponding teachers guide, click here.

Smartboard Spotlight

James Hollis over at Teachers Love Smartboards has posted a link to a great video about how to use the Spotlight tool in Smart Notebook.

I love the Smartboard tool, its a very fun tool for focusing attention on one part of the screen and removing any distractions.

I commented on James' post about how you can access the spotlight without being attached to the board, but I thought it was worth posting it here too.

Basically on your computer go to the C:/ drive and Program Files.. look for a folder called Smart Technologies Inc, open it and then open a folder called Smart Board Software... in here will be a file called Spotlight.exe.

Copy this file to your desktop, or make a shortcut to it and put that on your desktop. Then all you need to do is run this file/shortcut to run the spotlight on your desktop.

Cool eh?

It's a shame that the spotlight tool isn't on the toolbar of Smart Notebook. You can access it via the Floating Toolbar though (if you customise it a little). I can't wait for version 10 to come out which, if you've seen the videos Smart released, has a Magic Pen tool that will create a spotlight wherever you draw a circle... which is just fantastic (OK, I am easily pleased!)

Google Sky

Previously only available via Google Earth, which you had to download and run locally, Google have now made Google Sky available online to access anywhere with an internet connection.

Now you can browse the night sky and zoom in on any interesting galaxies or star clusters that you like.

Google Sky via kwout

If you haven't tried them, also check out Google Mars and Google Moon for surface maps based on information from various Moon and Mars missions.

Remember you can use the camera function in your interactive whiteboard software to make any screengrabs from any part of the map and bring it into your IWB software to annotate over the top. You can also put these images into your resource library/gallery for later use.

Whiteboard training day - links

A big thanks to those who came to London today for the Lighthouse IWB training day. It was good to meet you all. I hope some of you are now checking out this blog.

I'll put in this post some of the links that cropped up on the day.

How to save YouTube videos
A good guide on how to do it from Teachers Love Smartboards
Video Downloader for FireFox
ZamZar.com

Saving Flash Animations
SWF catcher for Firefox
Flash Saver for Firefox
Flash Saver for Internet Explorer

Smartboard Training Materials
Printable Materials and Two Minute Tutorials here.

Promethean Training Materials
Training Manuals from Promethean
Top tips on using Promethean boards

Getting Smart Notebook 9.7
Smart Download Page

Getting ActivStudio 3
Guide on how to get it

Health and Safety Guidance
Links to Becta and HSE

IWB Links
My del.icio.us links for whiteboards

Thanks again for attending the day. And please get in touch if you have any other questions about your boards that you think of in the weeks to come.

Full Screen Please

A quick plea to the makers of Flash-based games and widgets for use on Interactive Whiteboards. So many I have played with have been quite small and when displayed on the board they can be quite hard to see, especially from the back of the classroom. Most of them have no way of resizing the activity, which is a shame.

It would be quite nice to see a "full screen" button as standard on these activities. The BBC Science Clips do this, and it is a very nice feature to have.

I can understand why older resources may have been written with 800x600 monitor resolutions in mind - but since Flash is Vector-based, the whole point is that it should be able to stretch and rescale quite easily with no loss of quality. (which reminds me, I need to add a full-screen button to a lot of the Flash stuff I wrote as well......)

I posted the other week about the Yenka resources for Science. The one drawback for me was that the resources could not be resized. Well now they have rectified that, and they now open full-screen, which is fantastic. They've also added a whole load more resources so it's definitely worth adding to your favourites list now!

So to makers of interactive resources - can we have a full-screen button please?

Blank Canvas

Back from holiday. Had a great time skiing. Photos are up on Flickr if you fancy a look.

I was clearing some of the photos from my mobile phone and I thought I'd share this photo from an IWB session I did a few weeks back.

Once I have gone through the basic tools of Smart Notebook with a group of teachers, I give them 10 mins or so to have a play with the software on a blank page to see what they can create.

Most of the time we get some excellent drawings. Other times, however.....

Friday Links Fun

A couple of quick links for a Friday.

Firstly - if you haven't already gone there, check out Teachers Love Smartboards. James has some great posts about using Smartboards in the classroom. He also posts links to some excellent websites that can be used on any board, not just Smartboards. One of my favourites from his recent posts has been this link to a great animation tool called Kerpoof! It's well worth a visit.

Also, via the TES forum I found a link to a great resource for secondary Science called Freezeray. The site has plenty of interactive activities that cover various aspects of Biology, Chemistry and Physics and would be great for some extra reinforcement during a lesson. Again, since they are written in Flash they will work on any IWB.

The BBC have produced a great site to accompany a forthcoming TV show called The Brainbox Challenge. Plenty of interactive Flash games that will work well on any IWB.

For an online Brainstorm tool, check out Bubbl.us this will allow you to create brainstorms/mind maps/concept maps on your IWB. If you register you can save and recall previous diagrams and best of all, its all free!

And finally - for Geography teachers, Oxfam have an education area on their website containing the marvellous Mapping Our World resource. This resource works with maps and globes to transform pupils’ understanding of the world it allows pupils to flatten a globe, turn a map into a globe, and merge different map projections. It's suitable for students age 8-14 (KS2/KS3). Mapping Our World has won several awards, and it's not hard to see why.

A quick starter idea - Countdown Clock

Here's a quick idea for a lesson starter/plenary. The idea is to give the students 5 quickfire questions and a set, short, time limit to answer each one.

The way you can do this will be slightly different whether you have a Smartboard or an ActivBoard

Promethean Version

1. On page 1 write/type your first question.
2. Put another question on page 2, 3, 4 etc
3. Go back to page 1
4. Click on the Clock icon from the ActivStudio toolbar. Select Count Ddown from the list.
5. Set the time you want each question to be shown. In the example below I have chosen 30 seconds.
6. You can set a sound to play at the end of each time limit. Click on the drop down arrow to choose a different sound.
7. In the second drop down, choose "Turn to next page".
8. Make sure the Repeat box is checked. This will make the clock work on every slide rather than just the first one.
9. Then click OK

What will happen is that the first question will be displayed and the clock will start counting down. When it reaches zero, the sound will play and ActivStudio will immediately turn to the second question. This will repeat for all the questions you have written.

SmartBoard version

Smart Notebook does have a countdown timer, but it does not turn the pages automatically.

You can find the timer in the gallery in several places. Check under - Essentials for Educators - Mathematics - General Resources - Tools. Drag the timer from the gallery onto your 5 question pages.

Set each clock to Count Down and set the time to 30 seconds.

Once the clock has counted down, move to the next page. You will have to do this manually.

Quick Tips

Smart Quick Tip #1 - If you use the Timer a lot, it is well worth dragging it into your My Content area of the gallery so you can find it quicker.

Smart Quick Tip #2 - You can search the gallery by keyword. So a quick way to find the timer would be to type the word Timer into the search box at the top of the gallery. All the items that have a keyword of Timer will be returned in the search.

General Tip #1 - If you want to set up the questions during a lesson and you do not want the students to see them before you are ready, You can use the Blank or the Freeze button on the remote control to hide what you are doing until you are ready.

Yenka Science and Maths Resources

Yenka is a new resource from the people who produced Crocodile Clips. It's based on their Absorb range of online teaching materials that originally were released alongside Crocodile Physics and Chemistry.

The whole library is going to be a subscription service, but on release they have produced 700 resources which can be used free-of charge.

These resources cover aspects of science and maths and should work very well on an interactive whiteboard. Well worth a visit.

Yenka via kwout

Promethean software version 3

I do a lot of training in schools using Promethean Activ Boards, and in nearly every case they are still using ActivPrimary 2 or ActivStudio 2. Most of these schools haven't been made aware that version 3 is available - and has been for nearly a year.

Version 3 has some new features and tweaks that make it work a little better than v2.

If you already own version 2 - you can upgrade to version 3 for free. All you need to have is your Serial number, which you can find inside the box that the Activ software came in. You can also find the serial number in the Help > About menu inside the software.

There are two different pages to go to, depending on whether you are in the UK or the US.

UK users should go here.

US users should go here.

You can enter your details at the bottom of the page, and will then be sent a link to download version 3. If this does not work, or the thought of a 600MB download is too much, you can order a CD for a small fee. On the page you will find a link to a pdf file that explains the new features of version 3.

For teachers who want to be able to check out Promethean resources on their computers, but dont want to install the full version of ActivStudio/Primary - there is a Flipchart viewer that you can download. You can get it here

The viewer is also good if you want students to be able to take home copies of the lessons you have produced on your classroom IWB. As an alternative, you can also direct them towards ActivStudio Student Edition. This is freely available for use by any student of a school or institution that owns licensed copies of Promethean Activstudio. Every one of your students may install this software to create their own flipchart presentations or open their teachers’ flipcharts.

Three Quick Links

I'm full of cold and losing my voice here. So just a quick post today.

Three quick links that I should have mentioned earlier, all of which have some good advice and ideas for using the IWB in the classroom.

1. The Smartboard FAQ written by Jim Birney

2. 50 Things to do with an Interactive Whiteboard

3. The Busy Teachers Guide to Interactive Whiteboards

OK, back to bed and dosing myself up with Lemsip and Strepsils....

Health and Safety

When I deliver IWB training sessions I do get asked quite a bit about the health and safety implications of using a whiteboard and projector, especially after a report appeared in the Times Newspaper a few years back.

There are several guidance documents that are worth referring to. Many schools now have this guidance printed out and stuck on the wall next to the IWB.

Health and Safety Exectutive Guidance
Becta Guidance
Teachernet Guidance
National Whiteboard Network Guidance (word document)

Basically, the guidance can be summarised as follows:

• Staring directly into the projector beam should be avoided at all times.
• Standing facing into the beam is minimised. Users, especially pupils and students, should try to keep their backs to the beam as much as possible. In this regard, the use of a stick or laser pointer to avoid the need for the user to enter the beam is recommended.
• Pupils and students are adequately supervised when they are asked to point out something on the screen.
• Employers should also try to ensure that projectors are located out of the sight line from the screen to the audience; this ensures that, when presenters look at the audience, they do not also have to stare at the projector lamp. The best way to achieve this is by ceiling-mounting rather than floor or table-mounting the projector.
• In order to minimise the lamp power needed to project a visible presentation, employers should use room blinds to reduce ambient light levels. The brightness on the projector can then be turned down via its internal settings.
  

In addition to this advice, I would like to add a few comments

1. Make sure that both sides of the board are free from clutter - so that it is possible to stand either side of the board when addressing the class. This minimises the need to stand directly in the beam.

2. Check the remote control of your projector (or a. Find your projector remote control and b. check it!) and see if it has a button that says Blank or No Show, Mute/Pic or Show/Hide or something like that. This button will dim the output of the projector, basically blanking the screen if you do not want to use it for a while. You can now talk to the class without being dazzled by the beam. Obviously this is only handy if you do not want to refer to the board as well. This is better for the projector bulb than turning it off and on all the time using the power button.

(On a side note - most projector remotes also have a Freeze button which lets you freeze the projector on the current image while you sort out the next piece of work.. maybe put up a problem for the pupils to solve while you then find the next part of the presentation or a web game etc. The other use (and one I obviously do not condone!) allows you to check your emails while the pupils are copying something off the IWB!)

3. As I mentioned before, reduce the glare of the board when giving presentations by using a pastel page background instead of a white one.

If you follow this advice, and employ some common sense you should have no problems using your interactive whiteboard safely.

Embedding ICT @ Secondary Guides

Back in 2004, the DFES and BECTA produced an excellent series of guides which covered the use of Interactive Whiteboards in Secondary schools for each of the National Curriculum subjects.

Each document containsed a set of subject specific advice, guidance and examples to support more effective use of ICT in the teaching and learning of science. There is some great case studies in each one. I was pleased to have been able to have some input into the Science one - a colleague of mine wrote it and I provided some of the ideas.

A copy was, I think, sent to each school but when I do training sessions very few teachers have seen these. You can get them online, but they are rather buried in the quagmire that is the teachernet online publications catalogue. Some can still be accessed from the site, but others do not have an obvious download link or are out of print.

I've done some digging around, and here are the direct links to the pdf files for each subject:

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in English

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in Mathematics

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in Science

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in Music

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in Art and Design

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in History

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in Geography

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in Design and Technology

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in MFL

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in PE

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in ICT

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in Citizenship

Use of Interactive Whiteboards in RE

Thanks to Hertfordshire Grid for Learning, who are hosting all of these files on their webspace.

Other good guides from BECTA include:

Getting the Most from your Interactive Whiteboard - A guide for Secondary Schools
Getting the Most from your Interactive Whiteboard - A guide for Primary Schools

If you are interested in getting some ideas for the use of whiteboards in your subject, or you want some materials to give to other teachers in your school to inspire or inform them, then it is well worth your while downloading these guides.

Equation Balancer

I've produced a new Smart Notebook file to help with balancing equations.

The atoms at the top have been infinitely cloned so you can drag down as many as you require to show how many atoms there are on both sides of the equation. The arrow and plus sign can also be cloned.

You can download the file from the Think Bank website here. Look in the chemistry section.

I'll make versions for other boards soon. I did try making a Lynx version to test the software, but it kept crashing every 2 minutes so I gave up in frustration.

Heart Animation

As a former Biology teacher I am always interested in nice animations that can be used to demonstrate biological processes.

Thanks to Science Video Resources for posting this article about a nice heart animation. You can see the animation here.

Looking at the site that hosted this animation, I tracked back to the main teaching resources page. It's worth taking a look at that too since there are links to some other interesting Biology animations and movies such as Mitosis and meiosis.

On a related note, Science Video Resources also posted another link to a resource that shows circulation in different vertebrates, that is also quite interesting.

Tips for using your whiteboard

This list is based on the one originally produced by the Review Project a few years back. Sadly their website is no longer active so I will repost it here since it's a handy list of things to consider.

1. Make sure there is plenty of space both in front and to either side of your whiteboard so that you can move around it and access all parts of the screen easily. It helps to be able to stand to the sides of the board to minimise shadow and to be able to face the class without being dazzled by the projector.

2. If you can, install wall mounted speakers. This means that sound is of better quality and carries better across the classroom.

3. Use a font type and size that can be easily seen at the back of your classroom – Arial, Comic Sans and Sassoon Primary are recommended fonts for schools. Check your presentations are legible: stand at the back of your classroom and see if you can comfortably read it.

4. Try to use background colours other than white – pale pastel colours improve legibility and if you have a problem with glare from windows without blinds, try using black/dark blue and using white or yellow for writing. Avoid distracting backgrounds.

5. When viewing a website, if you press F11 on your keyboard it will remove all the toolbars at the top of the page, displaying your webpage in a much larger screen, making the site more visible. To bring toolbars back, press F11 again.

6. Look into using a wireless keyboard which can be placed near your whiteboard for times when you want to add text. This saves dashing back to your computer each time you need to enter text. A wireless mouse may also be useful when you want pupils to interact with the materials on the board without the disruption of moving them around the room.

7. If you are going to use a website in a lesson, add it to your Favourites / Bookmark it and then you can access it quickly and easily without typing in complex web addresses. Or add it as a hyperlink to a page in your whiteboard presentation.

8. Try and create documents where you do not need to scroll up and down – instead of 3 paragraphs on one page, add 1 paragraph to 3 pages. Space your work well to leave room for annotations and comments, which can be retained if you do not need to scroll up and down the document.

9. Get the whiteboard software put onto your home/staffroom computer so that you can prepare pages in advance of the lesson without having to be at the whiteboard. Save the files onto USB stick to bring into school or email to your school account.

Rub and Reveal

Here's a quick idea for using an interactive whiteboard. It could be a lesson starter, or form part of a plenary or could just be used throughout the lesson as a quick check on what the students have learnt so far.

This is something that always goes down well when I demonstrate it in training sessions as it is so quick and easy to do, but can be used in a range of different ways.

Watch the video here.

How do you do this?

1. Use the text tool to type some text on the notebook page
2. Use the pen tool to draw over the top of the text to hide it (you may want to make the pen thick and match the colour to the background)
3. When you are ready to reveal the writing, click on the Eraser tool and rub out the pen to reveal the text hiding behind it.

Another way of hiding the text could be using shapes to hide the text which can then be moved away or deleted when you want to reveal the word.

How might you use this?

This could be used as the example in the video for hiding labels on a diagram, getting the students to label it, and then revealing the correct answer.

It could also be used to hide the answers to questions given to the students on the screen.

A photograph could be completely covered in black pen, and then the eraser used to gradually reveal parts of the photograph, asking the students at different stages what they can see and what they can infer from what they see.

This is also a quick way of producing missing words activities - type or copy/paste in a block of text and instead of having to go through and delete the missing words and add spaces, just cover each word you want to take out with white pen. It's also easier to reveal the correct answer too.

if you want the Smart Notebook file with the above example of labelling David Beckham in French, then click here to download it.

(Footnote: apologies to any readers from across the sea if I keep calling it the rubber tool on the video. I try to call it the eraser, but over here we call it the rubber. I do know that word has different connotations over where, but just put it down to English eccentricity and go with it!)

The Plenary Circle

Here's a simple idea for using an Interactive Whiteboard for an end-of-lesson plenary activity. It's a very simple slide to produce;

1. Draw a circle and fill it in.
2. Lock the circle to the background.
3. Add text boxes with keywords from the lesson around the outside of the circle.

And thats it. At the end of the lesson, get different pupils to come to the board and pull in two words to complete the sentence "I have learned that...." For example "I have learned that body cells contain 46 chromosomes."

Every pupil should have some thinking time first to think of several combinations they could use before calling pupils to the board.

This could be made more involved by "chaining" the words so that one word is left behind for the next pupil to use... but this means more thought has to be put into the words provided by the teacher in the first place.

If the room layout makes it difficult to get the pupils up to the board easily, then it may be worth investing in a wireless mouse that can be quickly passed around and allow them to move the words themselves.

I have produced a quick video about this activity. You can view it here.

The Smart Notebook and Promethean file that includes this activity can be found on this page. Scroll down to the Biology section and download the Mitosis and Meiosis lesson.

Smart 10 Beta released

Looks like they've finally released the Beta version of Smart Notebook 10. The placeholder download page now seems to work and I managed to download something ;)

Haven't installed it yet. As far as I know it won't run alongside Smart 9 so I will have to remove the old version. I may try it out on an older laptop first to avoid messing up my desktop.

Visit the download page here.

The Notebook software 10 beta version is available until February 29, 2008, so you have plenty of time to get hold of a copy and evaluate it. Don't forget to send your feedback to Smart via the feedback forms to help polish the final release.

If you are going to download this, please be careful. This is a beta version and so will still contain bugs and will probably crash and freeze on you. You can't install it on the same computer as your Smart 9.5 install without taking the old version off first. Files made with the new version will probably not be able to be opened with 9.5.

I would suggest you install this on a different computer to your main PC that you usually use on the SmartBoard or use for lesson preparation. Only install if you are keen to play with the new features or want to help with the testing of it. Don't expect it to be release-ready.

Art Attack

The other day James, over at Teachers Love Smart Boards, linked to a great online drawing package called Imagination Cubed. Basically its a drawing program that runs in your browser. This is great as it can be used on any brand of IWB irrespective of the software you use on your board.

I'm a scientist, not an artist but I've always enjoyed using art packages on the IWB. I used to play with packages like Painter and Photoshop. Drawing with a mouse, or even a graphics tablet, is a real pain and it is so much easier to be able to paint with my fingers! After all an IWB is only really a HUGE graphics tablet!

A quick trawl around the web led me to a few other interesting drawing packages. There are a lot of them out there covering a range of painting styles. And the best thing is they are free! I love Photoshop but it is rather pricey!

A really nice one is Brushter, which is an abstract painting package. You can choose from a wide range of brush styles and different paint effects. Autocolour chooses a different colour paint each time, which should sound annoying but actually can give a nice abstract effect. You can even click an Auto button and have Brushter generate an abstract image on its own while you watch! Here's a little something I knocked up:

Another one I quite liked is ArtPad. It's much simpler than Brushter and only gives one style of paintbrush. You can choose colours, size and opacity though. Like Imagination cubed you can replay your painting from start to finish.

Finally, there is the much simpler online Colouring-in pages at TheKidszPage.com. You can choose from a range of different line drawings to then colour in. Again this is not as powerful as the Brushter one, but foundation pupils will love colouring in the pictures with their fingers!

Weather Kit

A quick post from the ASE conference to take advantage of the free internet in my hotel room.

I saw quite a lot of "interactive resources" today, but one resource I really liked was the Interactive Weather Presenting Kit from the Met Office.

It's not online, you need the CD-ROM. But you can apply for your own copy of the CD via the Met Office website.

This highly package is designed to consolidate weather and climate throughout Key Stages 2-4, and provides an ideal opportunity for the use of ICT in Geography. and Science. It uses Microsoft PowerPoint and comes with a range of master slides, four weather symbols sets, an image library and links to current weather data.

Just visit http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/education/resources/interactive_kit.html and fill in the form to get your own copy sent to you.

IWB and Learning Research

Thanks to the NAACE mailing list yesterday I was made aware of some more research into IWB's being undertaken by Cambridgeshire County Council into the use of IWB's in the Primary Classroom.

Only the first phase has been carried out yet, looking at the patterns of interactions when the teacher is leading sections of the lesson using an IWB. There are lesson observations of Literacy, Numeracy and History lessons with reflection on each.

The study is not yet complete, there is a phase 2 yet to come, but it will be interesting to come back later and see what the finished study finds.

You can find the research here.

Clipbank

As well as being an Interactive Whiteboard trainer for Smart/Steljes I also train for other educational companies. One of those is Espresso, which for those that don't know is an excellent library of video clips, news articles and Flash activities for Primary Schools. I have been training for them for about 18months and I love the product. The quality of the videos is very good and Espresso quite deservedly won a BAFTA last month.

So I was very interested to see their secondary product, Clipbank, today at a session designed to get us up to speed with the product to be able to deliver training to schools next year as they buy into it.

Espresso acquired Channel 4 Learning earlier in the year, and Clipbank was one of the products they inherited. They've spent a lot of time tweaking the product to be delivered on a server in-school in the same way as Espresso and the new-look version will be on-show at Bett next month.

Like Espresso you get a very simple user-interface that gives easy access to a wealth of video clips (currently over 2000 clips) for 8 subjects. The quality of the clips is excellent, as you would expect for a company with their media experience.

The potential for using resources like Espresso and Clipbank on the IWB is huge. It means teachers can use short video clips to introduce a lesson or as a way of summarising the main points. Whiteboard tools such as the camera can be used to grab screenshots from the video and bring into the IWB software for annotation. A sequence of screenshots could even be taken and then used as a sequencing activity.

So a great resource, and I look forward to getting stuck in delivering training in Clipbank next year.

The other excitement from the day came from the fact that Espresso headquarters is at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. This is also a working TV studio where the likes of Doctor Who and TFI Friday were filmed. Today they just happened to be filming the Top of the Pops Xmas Special. Apparently the likes of Girls Aloud and the Kaiser Chiefs were in the building. There were huge bouncers on the door and paparazzi hanging around outside. I did see quite a few hairy types carrying guitars and stuff wandering around the canteen but if they were famous I didn't recognise them. It is definitely a sign that I am getting old(er) in that I wouldn't recognise a Kaiser Chief if it came up and kicked me in the backside.... I know their songs but couldn't point one out in a line up.

The Proclaimers were also there apparently, and I'd have much more chance of spotting them, had I managed to see one.

But I didn't. Which was a shame.

Whiteboards on Teachers TV

If you haven't already been there, you can access videos from Teachers TV via the magic of the Internet. I must admit it is somewhere I keep forgetting to access but it has a wealth of ideas for teachers.

If you do a search for Whiteboards you will get a whole host of programmes that have been produced to show good practice for using Interactive Whiteboards in the classroom for a range of subjects.

For example here is a 15 minute video that gives you some Top Tips for using an interactive whiteboard.

Not all of the videos on Teachers TV are available to visitors outside the UK due to copyright issues, but hopefully there is still enough there for overseas visitors to see how we are using IWB's over here.

The Elements Song

Well, if I am going to be posting a blog about Interactive Whiteboards I had better post one of my favourite resources ever.

I show this resource whenever I do a Science IWB training day to teachers. I never get sick of it.

It uses the Tom Lehrer ''Periodic Table'' tune, but has a very cool flash animation too. It's always great to start the session with a song....

To view the Elements Song, click here.

Common Whiteboard Format

It's interesting to see that Becta are trying to revive their drive to get a common whiteboard format. You can see the call for consultation here.

I seem to remember them trying this a few years back with the launch of the National Whiteboard Network, but they couldn't get the 'Big 2' of Smart and Promethean to agree to share. I get the impression that Promethean see their resources as their big selling point and so don't want users of other boards to be able to just load them up. Which is a shame.

I really feel for teachers who work in schools that have bought both boards and have to plan what classroom they are doing their lesson in so that they can make the flipchart or notebook file in the corresponding format. You can see why so many fall back on using powerpoint.

Personally, I am waiting on the day that Microsoft realise that they only need to add a few tweaks to the way PowerPoint actually works to turn it into proper Interactive Whiteboard software. The ability to work on slides while in "presentation" mode with images, capture etc and it would be something to rival ActivStudio and SmartNotebook. But for now it's not there yet.

I'm also interested to see what comes of the Open Source IWB software project although it seems to be very much in the planning stages just yet.

Some generic software would also help those users of boards that, quite frankly, have awful software such as the Hitachi / Cambridge boards. I have had to train on these and the software is very unfriendly, and trying to do anything that you can do really quickly on Smart/Promethean is a real trial. Even just trying to type some text and move it took several trips into the menu system. You have to spend a lot of time customising the toolstrips. Something generic that is written with an actual clue about what users want to do would really benefit the users of these boards.

My only concerns about the common standard is that a) RM is leading it and I don't really think they can be trusted to be impartial. I can just see them trying to level the playing field away from Smart and Promethean and into their favour instead and b) at the end of the day I can't see Smart and Promethean agreeing to work on a joint standard just like last time. Especially since these are worldwide markets and Becta is just a UK agency.

I guess only time will tell as to what happens here.