My First Look at the Lumens DC190

Finally I have recently gotten to really sit down and take a look at the new (well almost new) Lumens DC 190 document camera(doc cam) that has recently replaced the DC 166 that hit is EOL cycle.We have been using the DC 166 model for a couple of years in our school district and will now be transitioning over to the newer design model.

At first glance you do not see anything different in the look and design of the doc cam, it is their termed "Ladibug" design series.  Upon further inspection there are two noticeable items that are different in this design over earlier versions.  One is that there is a USB plug-in  instead of the SanDisk port of the earlier 166 model.  The other difference is that there is a microphone built in the front of the base now so that you can include sound with your video recordings in the camera only(presenter) mode.

Another big change in the DC 190 over its predecessors is the redesign of the remote control.  Now you still have the standard buttons on the base of the doc cam; Capture, Playback, Zoom +/-, Power and Menu.  However there is a new look to the remote.  They have gone back to the basic black color design, which is great for those who are color blind (like me) because it makes the buttons and names stand out.  There are a couple of changes on the remote control that need to be mentioned so that you know where to look now versus earlier models.  The Source button is now located below the Power button, a big departure from having it in the top left which is now the Freeze button.  The Menu button flips over to the opposite side of its current row.  The Book button has now been replaced by Pan, which is a more appropriate name to describe the action that is associated with the buttons actions.  It still works the same way, you press it once to get into the Pan mode and then again to exit.  A huge step ahead of it previous version is what use to be the PBP button which is now PIP.  Yes it should sound familiar because it is Picture in Picture.  You have the live image in the background and then the static image in the bottom corner that you can choose from by using the selector (arrow) buttons to view the available images.  There is a new edition to the remote and that is the Mask button which similar to how you placed a piece of paper over your old overheads.  About 3/4 of the screen is darkened out on the first click, the second then puts a veil over the whole page except for a square in the middle of the screen.  You can then use the arrow keys to move the square around on the screen similar to a spotlight feature or move to reveal.

Another nice feature of the DC 190 is that there is now an LED light that is under the Head unit.  Now depending on the ambient room light you only had the option to either have the light source on or off.  Now you can select the LED light so that you still have an additional light source that is not as bright as the normal lamp light that has been on the Ladibug design for years.  The LED light source is just below the lens unit when you raise the head up at straight.  You can toggle between the modes using the Lamp option button in the Ladibug software.

Stay tuned for part 2 of my look at the Lumens DC 190 where I will go into the Software changes and then give you a break down of the good and bad that I have seen in the new design.

A New Take on History

If you are a fourth grade teacher and have not been to the North Carolina History Project web page you might just be missing out on some new and interesting facts about North Carolina.  You might be asking how can this site benefit me?  Here is how they describe it. "... an edited, evolving, and free online encyclopedia of North Carolina that also includes commentaries, lesson plans, and a community calendar."

To me the site offers a lot about North Carolina that has been broken down into multiple categories and listing so that it makes it easier on the researcher to locate topics for discussion, reports, conversations an other information.

The site homepage is laid out well to offer the visitor a quick glance at what is available but to also provide the most amount of searching power in a few short clicks.  On the website you have scrolling image set of people, places and things inherent to North Carolina that you can click on and read more information about.  Across the top of the page you have an alphabetical list so you can perform a broad topic search just like an Encyclopedia by just clicking on the letter you want.  There is a Featured entry of the day section in the bottom middle of the page that offers you a one click link to read more information about the topic.  You can also browse through the Category dropdown menu on the right side of the page to filter information about specific topics.  Categories like Colonial North Carolina, Places, Document, etc.  Then in the bottom right corner of the page lists out the latest information that has been added to the site.  So far in just a few days of researching the site I have been able to find lots of information quickly and easily through the different search options available on the site

The North Carolina History Project site is funded by the John Locke Foundation and they are currently offering a Citizens' Constitutional Workshop from the link on the left banner.  This link takes you off of the site to the John Locke Foundation website for further information.

There is a separate Educators Corner on the site that offers some research and lesson plan information that has been shared with the site through user created content.  Currently there are not many user lesson plans available but there is a call to share on the site where if you create lesson plans from the content on the site you can share it with them and they will review and post the information for others to use.

If you are teaching North Carolina History whether in Elementary or Middle School this is a site that you just might want to add to your resource list not only for your use but for your students as well.

Fun with Learning

This week while I was researching some resources for one of my schools I came across a neat little game to help young students learn the Alphabet without having to sing it.

Promethean Planet has an interactive resource to aid students in learning the Alphabet.  It is an interactive puzzle where the students are able to come up to the board and interact by moving the puzzle pieces around so that they fit into their desired location.  When the puzzle piece is in its correct location it will lock in place and is no longer able to move.  If the student does not place the puzzle piece in the correct location the piece can still be moved around on the board.  Each puzzle tile has a Capital and Lower case for each letter of the alphabet along with an image to help reinforce their learning.

As I was touring a school this week I saw a teacher in a Kindergarten classroom that was having her students looking at an alphabet handout that was being displayed using the document camera.  I went into the classroom and talked with the kids to see how they like the new equipment all of them were really excited and were telling me how much they liked getting to go up to the board and touch it.  I asked them if they would like to play a new game to help them learn their alphabet letters.  They all were nodding their heads in agreement.  I loaded up this swf file onto a flipchart and all of the kids were clapping and cheering and all of them had their hands raised to come up to the board first.  It was great to see all of their faces light up as they were working on the board.  I even had them stop for a moment to turn on the Dual User feature so that two students could be at the board at the same time.  You think I had brought in their favorite candy and let them run wild.  They were all engaged and telling each other where the pieces were to go.

If you are a teacher give this a try by clicking the image above and downloading the file to your computer.  Then you will need to open up ActivInspire and click Insert then Media and choose the alphabet.swf file to place it into your flipchart page.  One hint to help you out would be to make sure after you insert the file and re-size it appropriately then save the flipchart so that when you reset the page after the lesson it will move all of the puzzle pieces back out around the edges.

Image provided by Promethean Planet

Re-Opening my Eyes to Instruction

This week I had a great opportunity to be in Alpharetta and Atlanta Georgia.  While in Atlanta I was fortunate enough to be able to go to the Ron Clark Academy and sit in on a class.  This was the first time that I have ever been there and in my normal fashion was late getting to the school.  As we came into the classroom I found a seat on the far side of the room and had walk through the room to sit.  I quickly moved across the room as quietly as I could, while doing so I noticed that non of the students were disrupted by my tardiness and that Ron Clark kept their attention the whole time.

The room was alive with action, Ron Clark was talking, students were responding and interacting to his queues all without giving a second thought to the number of people that were staring at them around the room.  As I looked around the room I thought to myself, wow how can these kids be able to keep focused with almost double their number in adults sitting there watching.  Then Ron turned the tables on us, the adults, he had the students grab an adult to help them work out different math problems he had posted around the room.  So our student led us over to the one of the questions and he was working it out so fast that when it came time to answer it on our ActivExpression we did not even have the unit on and working.  Then we did another activity with the students and we were all engaged in the classroom activity.  Me I was awestruck at how well behaved and comfortable the students were with us in the room.  Almost like it was old hat to them.  I came to find out a short time later that these students had only been in the school for just around 30 days.

At the end of the lesson Ron Clark gave the adults in the room the opportunity to ask questions of the students.  I was amazed again at the students responses.  There were very well spoken and thanked us for asking the questions.  One question that I had my co-worker asked a young girl in the room was how she and the class felt about having all of the adults coming through on a regular basis.  She responded with that is was almost second nature to them and they were happy to have us in the room because were excited to see the students learn and they thrived on the energy.  I heard the question come up about whether or not they were treated differently now that they were at the Academy by their peers.  The answer came out that things had not really changed all that much.

In talking with someone a little bit later who said that these students had come from so many differing situations and felt so proud of what these children had accomplished in just a short amount of time was remarkable.  Me I could not believe it.  Which led me to share on another co-workers blog post It started with a simple question..   what I learned this week and that is, "regardless of a child's situation if they have a goal and are focused on that goal they can overcome and accomplish anything."

Now I am not the type of person that gets overcome by certain things but as we were leaving all of the students in the classroom were shaking our hands and thanking us for coming in and sharing their day with them, but one little girl came up and said I don't shake hands I give hugs and thanked me for being there and sharing in her day.  I could not believe it and was overcome with some emotion that this young child whom had never seen me before was comfortable with hugging a perfect stranger and thanking me for being a part of her class.

Of course we, the adults, all came out into the hallway to go down the slide at the Ron Clark Academy where all of the students from the classroom were at the bottom waiting for us singing and cheering us on as we got to the bottom of the slide.  As we emerged form the slide the children shook our hands and gave us a sticker that said we were "Slide Certified"

This experience has given me a new perspective on my own personal and professional life.  A kind of re-opening of my eyes to certain things and breathing some new life back into this routine which we all get in from time to time.

ActivEngage: A BYOD Solution?

I recently had the opportunity to take a look at the new ActivEngage from Promethean Planet and have to say that I am very impressed.

You may be asking yourself what is ActivEngage, in my own words it is an interactive way to deliver and receive content to and from students over multiple types of devices.  The full description from Promethean is: "...a virtual learner response system that enables students to contribute in the classroom by responding to questions from their laptops, tablets or mobile handheld devices..."  So what does it do?   ActivEngage allows the teacher to deliver Learner Response questions to students without the need of either an ActiVote or EctivExpression, yes, I said without the need.

How does it work?  ActivEngage is a software package from Promethean Planet that you download to your computer, ie a teacher workstation.  Once installed you will have an additional option in your voting Browser that will allow you to deliver questions through a Virtual Hub to any wireless device in range.  With the install there is a Server install which is what is setup on the Teachers computer along with a Client install which will then need to be installed onto any laptops, or other computer workstation in the classroom.  Along with this any student that had their own handheld device, ie. iOS or Android product they can install the ActivEngage App from the respective store onto their own device and interact with the Teacher workstation.

The question then comes to So What?  So what  do you do with it now that you have it.  It looks like it could be an answer to the question of how do we deliver assessments to students.  There are a lot of discussions starting now and some implementation of school systems going totally paperless.  That is everything provided to and handled by students would be delivered electronically.  Testing being one of the discussion topics.  This could be a great opportunity by school systems to take advantage of what is already available to them that they normally will take away if seen in a classroom.

That is why I say lets take a look at the BYOD option, not implement it outright, just take a look at it.  Yes it is going to be a very large undertaking for many school districts across the country and world.  You are looking at fundamentally changing the infrastructure of your local in house LAN/WAN.  There are lots of precautions that have to be taken into account first.  Many regulations put in place to protect the students, teachers and schools.  But now is the time to start the conversation if you have not done so yet.  Normally we have students put away their devices in the classroom or even in some cases we take them away.  Let's take a look at possibly embracing the technology and using it to both advantages.

I know that there are many other products out there that can offer up similar results based on student devices and teacher delivered content.  I hope that some will share their options as well.  ActivEngage was something that I saw that really looked like it could solve a growing problem positively.

Exploring New Territory

While working in a school this week with different grade levels a Tech Facilitator told me about one of their Kindergarten teachers who was going to make their first Skype call with another school. Now I was thinking that they were going to make a Skype call here locally within the school district or maybe at the most here in North Carolina. I was surprised, and a bit excited, to hear that they would be talking with a classroom in Hawaii. When I talked with the teacher involved she said that they were going to be talking with the school and then she had also setup a Twitter account so that her students could tweet out their feelings about the call. I could tell that the teacher was a little nervous about making the first call, but that is normal since you really do not know what to expect the first time.

Their first call was this week and everything went really well when we talked about it and the students had already began to post their tweets on Twitter. The only thing that the teacher remarked about was that she was going to look into getting a different microphone so that the participating class would be able to hear the students better during the call.

This Kindergarten teacher has taken a big step and seems to have gone outside of her comfort zone. I have to commend her for taking things to the next level and exploring new territory. I hope that this quick blog will help to inspire you as well to explore new territory and to step outside of your comfort zone.

ActivInspire Export Options

In talking with someone recently about being able to export a flipchart to a pdf on a PC I decided to write up a quick blog about it and include that you can also export individual pages as image files as well.

To export a flipchart as a pdf file you will, of course, need to make sure that the file is open inside of ActivInspire first. Once that is done you will need to just click on the File button in the top left of the window or click the Menu button and then File from the Toolbox. Now comes the strange part you will need to click the Print button or you could also press the CTRL + P kwik key option. Yes I did say the Print option, because you will be printing the page to a pdf. After you click print then select the Export to PDF button. Now you have the Save in Location box that pops up and all that is left to do is to name the file and click Save.


You can also export a flipchart page as an image file. In order to do this you have two options to start. First is to just Right click on the flipchart page you wish to convert or from the Page Browser click on the Menu icon in the upper right corner of the page to convert. Click the Export Page button and the Save in Location box pops up. Name the file and then choose from one of the four file types listed, the default file type is bitmap. Then click the Save.


I hope that this provides you with some new insight into some of the additional features that you may not have noticed within the ActivInspire software.