Monday Morning Message ~ 7-4-2011

This past week we hosted our Summer Series Workshops with a room filled with participants wanting to learn EVEN better ways to use our SMARTBoards interactively.

Our favorite session is our SMARTBoard “Make and Take”.
We show examples, and attendees spin off from those even more ideas and ways to engage and motivate the students. 

A huge resource is the Lesson Activity Toolkit and its templates.
These little flash files are fun for the kids, and we are always amazed at the different ways teachers find to use them to fit their curriculum. 

As I was helping one participant find just the right template, I came across the “Image Select”‘.  

Neither Shannon nor I could remember anyone using this template, and decided it was because nobody really understood how it works, or what it is for. 

After a bit of experimenting and “playing”, we found its use and decided its worth has been either unknown, or under-rated.

I put together a little “YouTube Video” to show how easy it is to use this tool, and we hope you can see a huge value in adapting it to many lessons.

Better yet, let your students design and make lessons to share with their classmates.
As teachers, we already know one of the best ways to learn something is to teach it!

  

Here is the link to the video on our  YouTube Channel if you would like to see it in full-screen. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUrqRXj9dVU  

Remember, we strongly encourage teachers to use “real images” in place of “clip art”, and our favorite source is Microsoft Clip Art. 

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/  

Happy Fourth and have a GREAT week!