No more Ink from Overheads on Hand

Are you still using your overhead machine? Tired of dealing with cleaning the marker ink off of your hand after school each day? Since I am left handed I had ink all the way up my arm and had to scrub my arm raw every day to get rid of the ink.

Well there is a ray of light at the end of the tunnel "so to speak." If you have a Document Camera in your classroom along with an Interactive White Board or Tablet you can be ink free very soon.

With either Promethean ActivInspire or SmartBoard software you have a toolbar option that allows you to import the image directly from what the Document Camera is seeing and put it into the software and utilize the features of the program to interact and write on top of the displayed image.
Now what does this mean you may be asking? Well you can relegate that overhead to being a coat rack and use your Doc Cams and IWBs to display those old overhead sheets. Yes I am saying to keep all of those great overhead resources that you have used throughout the years just re purpose them and use them in another format.
Place that overhead sheet on top of a blank sheet of paper and then under the doc cam. Open up either the SmartBoard or ActivInspire software and in the toolbar select Inset: Image from Scanner/Camera. You will then click OK on the type of doc cam you are using(comes up as the default). Then look at the screen and there will be a new window that opens with the live image from the doc cam showing. Now click Capture on the window and it will place the image directly into your open Flipchart or Notebook file. Now it is just a matter of picking up a pen from the tray or using your stylus to begin writing on top of the overhead resource without getting any ink your hand.

Even on a Rainy Day you can get a Ray of Sunshine

As I was walking through one of our schools today I went into a classroom and started talking with a teacher whom has one of our Interactive Classroom Solutions set up in her room. We discussed some things about her board that she could not get working and were able to quickly correct the issue and get her back into action.

As we talked before her students came back in from specials she told me that this was her first year in a classroom with an Interactive White Board(IWB), and that she had not really had any formalized training. As we discussed some quick things she could do to get acclimated to the software and to the board itself she started telling me of all the neat and fun websites she had found on her own to assist her with using the technology. I could tell that she was excited and proud that she had learned to use the product on her own and began to show me all of her resources.

After this I imposed on her to ask how long she had been with the school system as a teacher. She immediately said that she had been with the school system for 30 years and this was the start of her 31st year. I then proceeded to ask her what technology had she used in the previous years and her response was a Chalkboard and Whiteboard, nothing else. So it came down to the last part of our talk as her students were lining up to come back into the room I asked how she felt about using the technology and what would she do if she had to go back to a classroom that did not have an IWB in it.
Her response "...they would have to drag me out of here kicking and screaming. I don't know what I would do without it now." To see the look of excitement and energy in her eyes brought a ray of sunshine and a great feeling that our teachers are "Getting It." They are beginning to understand that the technology is there to help them not to hinder or hold them back. Kudos to this 30 year veteran teacher to completely step out of her comfort zone and take a chance on what can feel like a daunting task smelling like a rose.

Using Social Media to Brand Yourself?

So how do you best brand yourself using Social Media?

We have been discussing all day today ways to brand yourself through the use of Social Media. I sat in a room with a number of other professionals from different educational and business backgrounds and everyone agreed on the fact that in order to make yourself, your business or your products you need to increase your digital footprint. So the discussions then moved to the how aspect of branding.
Making yourself Stand out from the crowd, using different unconventional methods to get your point across. So what do you use to do this, Twitter, Blogs, Facebook and other forms of social media?
Be an expert at something. Choose something that you are working on or have a passion for and learn as much as you can about it and then get the word out. Use all of these forms of social media to get the information out to people and increase your base of knowledge while gathering in people to help you fill in the blanks.
Concentrate on the contacts you make. In business we always have heard about networking with others to meet and interact with other professionals from similar and different fields. In the past this was done in a face to face setting. Well lets come into the 21st century and start doing the same thing but on the web. Lets use Twitter to broadcast out and gather up information about topics you are interested in. Use Blogs to give your opinion about technologies, gadgets, ideas and information that others can comment on and could redistribute out to others. Other social media outlets like Facebook where you can create fan pages dedicated to what your interests are which allow others to see what you have to say and to send you information as well.

The biggest thing that I can say I have gotten so far is that the more you brand yourself through the use of social media the wider your base of knowledge to pull from and share out information.

Unplugging your Technology

While sitting in on a trouble shooting workshop with Promethean earlier this week, I received a lot of useful information that will help us out a lot with the ActivClassroom solutions we have in the district.

One piece of information that updates our Classroom Solutions training is that you do not have to plug in your ActivSlates every night to charge them. It was stated in the session that the ActivSlate with regular use need only be charged every 30 to 40 days. Now if you use it consistently in your classrooms everyday you may need to charge it sooner than 30 days.
So how do you know when the ActivSlate needs to be charged? You will notice a decrease in the reliability of the board to respond to your pen touches. As well there is a small LCD screen in the upper right corner of the board that has a small battery indicator icon. Just check that and when you get down to one block you are close to the point of needing to charge. Now how long to charge the ActiveSlate. If you just plug it in when you leave for the night you will be fully charged by the morning. If you are in a pinch and need the board to be fully charged for your afternoon class the ActivSlate really only needs about three to three and a half hours to get a full charge.

Cropping Student Photos for class activities with ActivInspire

The start of school is fast approaching. Are you ready? Do you have something planned for the first day of school? Why not use your ActivInspire software and a simple digital camera(or document camera or web cam), to take pictures of your students and crop out their heads so that you can create fun interactive flipchart pages with them.

So how do you do this you might ask, well after you have taken the pictures and uploaded them to your flip chart follow these simple steps using the Camera Tool to crop out each students picture.

Click on Tools (from the main toolbar)

• Click on Camera.

• Select what you want to use; Point to Point, Freehand, Window or Fullscreen Snapshot.

• You will see a Rectangle, some pick up boxes and a Camera Shapshot toolbox on the screen.

• Highlight, select or click on the area you want to capture.

• When the Camera Snapshot box appears select the destination for the image; Current Page, New Page, Clipboard, etc.

Now that you have the images in your ActivInspire flipchart you can now use them in any way you want. So how do you use them?

You could have your students search "People" in the Resource Browser and choose a character image and put their head on the character using the Grouping Feature.

Watch this short video to see how its done.

Or you could set up a class flipchart page for your students so that when they come into class in the morning they can move their picture to show they are present and mark if they have a bag lunch, box lunch or hot lunch for the day.

Check out this short video.

This is just the beginning of some of the things you can do with your ActivInspire and using the Cropping Tool under the Camera Options.

Slides and Images: Kathryn Vaughn
Videos: eherreid

Websites To Keep Your Students Mentally Active this Summer

Now that we are just a few days away from the end of yet another school year, the fear sets in, and a question comes to mind. Are my students/children going to forget what they have learned during the school year this summer? We all know that somewhere down the line we all seem to click off the learning button when it comes to the summer. The beautiful days, full of sunshine, trips to the pool, beaches and other areas to visit.

Fear not, try out these links to give your students/kids some fun time on the computer. Oh and it is educational too.

1. Have your students learn about the US Mint with History In your Pocket website.

2. Play all types of interactive learning games with Funschool from Kaboose.

3. Learn lots of fun and interesting facts about everything at Fact Monster.

4. Get more information that you want to know about in Math at Math Playground.

5. Learn about the Geography from the National Geographic Kids site.

6. Did you ever want to learn how to play a musical instrument, try out Play Music.

7. Learn about America's Story from the Library of Congress.

8. Get a grip on Art with the Art Junction.

9. Learn about the Science Experiment of the Week.

10. Learn how to create computer programs with Scratch from MIT Media Labs.

These websites range in difficulty to offer challenges to all grade levels from Kindergarten to High School. So after your students/kids have visited their favorite vacation spots or have been outside running around all day getting physical exercise. Give them the opportunity to exercise their minds too with a couple of these websites.

Need Some Feedback? Use MYstuDIYo

MYstuDIYo is a quick way to create a quiz that you can embed into your blog, wiki or website. Now I know that the website says to create a quiz but you can think outside of the box, maybe to apply this as a feedback generator, a user poll, temperature check, etc. Remember what I always say, "Your imagination is your only limitation."

MYstuDIYo can offer up multiple different options for you to get data. It takes only a couple of minutes to get started and 4 short steps that get you to the final goal. It is just as the website says, you can "Create a Do-It-Yourself Quiz."


There is always a downside to these sites, yes you have to create yet another annoying username and password to log in to create your quiz. But it literally takes seconds, they just need an email, username and password. Oh and of course you have to check that box which says you agree to their terms of use.

You have two styles of quizzes to choose from. The standard multiple choice and a general feelings type of question. ex: "How do you feel about something" or "How well do you know this."
I am actually creating a quick quiz while I am writing this blog entry so that you know how fast it is to go from start to finish.

Step 1 is to select a Design (which is optional) - you could also use the advanced options and add you company or school logo.
Step 2 is to Name your Quiz, Select a Category and add an introduction (this can be a media file)
Step 3 is to Start adding your questions. You have choices here as well as to use media, some advanced features and to of course preview the question.
Step 4 is to choose whether or not you want to have the scores show on the top of the screen or to have a user created ending to the quiz.
Step 5 is where you can go see your active quiz, share it with people through email or to grab the code and embed it onto your website, blog or wiki.

It took me less than 5 minutes to go from start to finish, now it may take you longer depending on how many questions you put in. The big thing here is to know that you have this as an avenue to generate data. And speaking of generating data, you also have access to all the submitted data which can be viewed in real time as users answer the questions.

Image provided by: MystuDIYo