SMART Boards - Getting it into the Hands of our Students

An observation was made in our district recently that our IWBs were being utilized as a projection device. The challenge is how can we get this technology into the hands of our students to allow them to interact with the content.

So this got me thinking: What ideas can I offer to make this happen? The left brain part of me thought immediately to organize some ideas into categories. Here are the results:

Classroom Management:

Attendance: Start the day off by having students check in using the SB. As they enter the classroom, part of the routine could be to walk by the board and move their avatar (or name) to indicate they have arrived at school. This page can be as simple or elaborate as you want to make it. 

Lunch Count: Many elementary schools require teachers to send in lunch count for each student. Students could move their avatar or name to indicate their lunch choice. Since students are indicating their lunch choice, you can also see at a glance any students that are absent for the day. 

Morning Information and Activity: Elementary students are always curious about what the day may hold. Satisfy that curiosity with an information bite embedded on a page with a bell ringer activity. Incorporate the wonderful website http://wonderopolis.org/wonders/ by putting the Wonder of the day on the page as well. Be sure to include an opportunity for the students to manipulate the material on the page. In the example pictured here, students would correct the sentence.

Teaching Resource:

By all means, put that board to use as a center in your classroom! While you are working with a small group of students, you can easily see the activity going on at the board. There are lots of ways to incorporate it as a center.

1. Take advantage of the flash templates available in the Lesson Activity Toolkit of Notebook software and create instant center activities to reinforce what you are teaching.
2. Use the page recorder to allow students to record their words their way word sorts or different ways to solve the math problem. You will have an instant item that you could add to an electronic portfolio.
3. I know every teacher is aware of the variety of online "games" that can be used to practice content as well and most all will work beautifully on the SMART Board.
4. Use it as a part of Daily 5 as a Listen to someone read center. Our county has provided many online books that can be utilized in this manner. Allow the students to use the pens, highlighter, or even transparency mode to make the listening activity more interactive. In addition, to Book Flix, Tru-Flix, and Big Universe, you can take advantage of National Geographic for read alouds as well as ncwiseowl.org.
5. Let students use the SMART Board's connected computer to actually create a SMART Board activity to share with a lower grade on concepts they are learning or even share with each other in class.
6. Allow the students to listen to a story from your MP3 player, and draw what they are visualizing on the SMART Board. You never know you may have the next Monet in your class.
7. An idea that I love, is to use the video recorder in SMART. Let the students create a digital story using the features in Notebook and then use the video recorder to record a movie of it. All you will need beside the SMART Board, is a computer microphone to pick up the student's voice. Their creativity will take care of the rest.


So how do you manage the board as a center? Well...
I love this teacher's idea of how to manage the kids in the SMART Board center. She uses a baseball theme, with Who's On, Who's on Deck (for the next person), and Who's in the Hole for those waiting their turn.

Other management ideas can be found in the Lesson Activity Toolkit. Use the random number generator or the random word chooser and that student (or the number representing that student) get's a turn when their name (or number) is up.

Please share your ideas for getting this technology into the hands of the students.

Notebook lesson ideas found on SMART Exchange.