SmartBoard Troubleshooting

Woohoo! The SmartBoard technician showed me how to rid ourselves of that pesky yellow notepad that pops up when you're trying to use the SB on a website. If you're using your mac, here's what to do:
1. Go to the little Apple icon at the top left part of your Desktop screen
2. On the Dropdown Menu, click on System Preferences
3. Go to the Ink icon and click on that
4. On the Ink settings, make sure that the box that says "Allow me to ink in any application" is UNCHECKED.

Hopefully, this will fix the problem. :)

"Geek It Up" with Your Own Blog!

For those of you who are interested in creating a blog through Google's Blogger website, Melanie Holtsman, the Instructional Technology Coach at Chets Creek, created a wonderful resource for us. It's called Geek It Up with Google and it gives specific and visual directions for creating a blog. Please let me know what you think by responding to this post in a comment. :) I look forward to adding your blog on our school's website!

Reading Series Resources

There is a school district in California (Santa-Maria Bonita School District) that uses the same Reading series we do. They have compiled a fantastic list of resources that you can find here. If you look on the left side of the page, you'll see all the grade levels - "Kindergarten Teacher Idea Sharing", "First Grade Teacher Idea Sharing," etc. Check it out!

Smartboard Online Course

I subscribe to a blog called Teachers Love SMART Boards in my Google Reader. (This is a central place where all of my blogs are gathered to allow for easy reading). You can find out more about Google Reader here.

Well, there was a post on the Teachers Love SMART Boards blog about an online course available for free. I decided to participate in the course through a website called Teacher Online Training. This is a place where teachers can participate in online "courses" or tutorials for various Smartboard functions and applications. All you have to do is create an account for free and you're set to go! The course I completed is called: Introduction to Tables in SMART Notebook 10. It was free with an "Enrollment Key" that the facilitator provided. Otherwise, the course would've cost $4.95. I highly recommend completing this online course. It only took me 30-45 minutes.

This course is focused on "introducing the teacher to the table object in Smart Notebook Version 10. Participants will create an animal identification application that can be used inside the classroom. The techniques learned in this course will allow participants to utilize the table object efficiently and effectively in other Notebook applications. Participants will learn how to add and move tables, how to add text objects to table cells, how to add images to table cells, how to insert rows and columns, how to merge and delete cells, how to lock tables, and how to add cell shades to table cells."


I am working on getting an Enrollment Key for another course entitled: Notebook Application: Interactive Review Game. The site says that "This course will guide the participant through the process of creating an interactive vocabulary review game using any list of words." and "Participants will learn how to apply special page backgrounds, use flash-based resources from the Gallery, use a table to simplify tasks, and set default shape properties. In addition, participants will learn how to use and apply the infinite clone feature and apply a basic animation to objects to create stimulating user interaction."

I hope you get a chance to participate in the Introduction to Tables course. For those who aren't comfortable with that yet, there's also a course called Introduction to SMART Boards. If you do participate, please write a comment on this post to share your experiences. :)

Create Your Own Blog

Our last BYOL session was focused on creating your own class blog. Unfortunately, due to server problems, we didn't get very far. I wanted to remind everyone of the directions for creating a blog. Check them out here!
We will continue to work with blogs for this week's BYOL, which will be on Thursday, Jan. 15 @ 7:50.

Social Bookmarking 101

Have you ever bookmarked something as a "Favorite" on your home computer and then wanted to access it on your computer at school? Well, that used to happen to me all the time. (I just used to email myself links) Now, through the use of social bookmarking sites, you can store all your "favorites" in one location - online!

Plus, social bookmarking sites allow you to "tag" your links with multiple keywords for easy searching. For example, this game I found online could be tagged with: Spending Spree, money, smartboard, math. This way, I can find the same website under all 4 of these keywords. Cool, huh?

Plus, you can share your bookmarks with your friends, view others' bookmarks, as well as create groups for even more sharing.

Ok, check out this video explaining (way better than I have!!) the basics of Social Bookmarking. You can also find it on the right side of this blog, under "Videos".

I've used two sites for my bookmarking. I used to have Delicious and have now switched to Diigo. They're both excellent sites! But, I just decided to try something new. Here's info on the difference between Delicious and Diigo. Check out my diigo page. Alright, get your bookmarking site set up and let's share! :)