"BACON," Continued

I managed to get all the lines on my BACON score sheet locked into place on the Notebook page, so now the students aren't accidently dragging them out of their original spots when moving the cursor on the screen.  I like how the students are giving one another advice as they use the Smart Slate:  "You're almost there, keep moving the cursor!"  "Now tap the pen on the slate!"  "Don't drag the pen across the slate, just hover like a hovercraft!"  This activity has been a good one for getting the students involved with the slate, and giving everyone a few quick turns to practice with it.


For this week's assignment, my plan is to use the pull tabs with a math lesson on rounding whole numbers and decimals.  I'll put the original number in a rectangle attached to a pull tab, and after the students round the number to the given place value, they can pull the tab to check their answers.  I expect to use about five problems per page, with a total of at least twenty-six problems so that each student gets a turn to pull a tab.

Fun With the Smart Slate

Today we used the Smart Slate to play a game of "BACON" after we finished our Math MEAP.  Bacon is a dice game, and I had recently found some cool interactive dice in the 'Statistics and Probability' folder under 'Math' in the Gallery.  I used the line tool to create our score sheet, and I had planned on using the on-screen keyboard to enter scores, but when I was very far away from the screen it was too hard to see the teeny, tiny numbers on the keyboard (I have an eye doctor's appointment next Tuesday!).  The kids had a ball clicking on the dice to make them "roll," although occasionally one of the students would accidently click on one of the lines of the score sheet and move it somewhere else.  I think I noticed a way to lock things in place; I'll have to check into that before our next game of BACON.

Lots of Gallery Tools!

After discovering that I was missing out on some of the "goodies" Smart Slate has to offer, I set out to get them added to my Notebook software.  It didn't take long to figure out how to download the full set of Gallery Essentials, and now I have lots more toys to play with.  I hope to begin building a Science lesson for my intro to microscopes unit.  I practiced a little, and found that I could add a Quicktime movie as an attachment.  I not clear on whether I can actually import or embed the movie into the notebook page.  Anyone have any suggestions?  I have not yet tried to do anything with Powerpoint presentations, but I  hope to work with those soon.  Also, I plan to add some hyperlinks, but I haven't practiced with those yet either.  It all takes time!

Feeling Some Success with the Smart Slate

For the past few days, we've been using the Smart Slate quite a bit in Math class.  We are working on some "MEAP" type multiple-choice questions.  The students are working out the problems using pencil and paper, then entering their answers into our Renaissance Responders.  I am using the Smart Slate to remotely operate the Responder dashboard on my computer, which is displayed for classroom view.  It's great to be able to circulate around the room and not be tethered to the mouse on the computer in the front of the room.  Also, I am passing the Smart Slate to different students to demonstrate how they arrived at the answers to the math problems.  Some students are very eager to try it out, and some are almost afraid of it.  For the most part, they are very excited about the technology that we are using.  In addition, they are enjoying my moderate frustrations as I try to figure out the technology as well.  We've all gotten pretty good at switching from pen to eraser, turning to new pages or going back to previous pages, and the students have commented on how much better my handwriting has gotten!


I have spent some more time looking at resources as well, and was excited to find fraction tiles that are very similar to the real ones we use in class.  This makes it very easy to model fractions with the students, since I can demonstrate with the virtual set while they are using their own tiles at their tables.  I hope to add more virtual manipulatives, but I'm not real clear on how to save the ones I find on the Virtual Exchange.  When I downloaded the fraction tiles, it opened up as a Notebook page.  Will I just need to keep a folder filled with different Notebook pages, or is there a way to combine all the resources?  I noticed that there is an "Import" option--I will have to do a little more investigating!

We're Learning!

Well, so much for my idea of using the Smart Slate and the Mobi View at the same time!  We found out that the students have to be very careful to take turns with their devices, or all you end up with is a mess because the two pens are competing with one another to control the mouse.  We tried to use the "Draw a Stickman" site, but we didn't end up with anything that looked like a stickman!  The students were excited to use the devices, though, and we did learn about how tricky it is to use the pen.  Because of the problems we ran into, not everyone in the class had a turn to use the Smart Slate.  I would like to have each student get a turn to practice with it this week, so that we can begin to feel more comfortable using it.


I have also done more research into resources to help us integrate the Smart Slate into our different subject areas.  One resource that I want to spend some time investigating is an online preview of the book Literacy Smarts, which is a collection of activities and lessons involving the use of the whiteboard.  The entire book is available for preview at http://www.stenhouse.com/shop/pc/viewprd.asp?idProduct=9516.  After I have a chance to look at it more closely, I may consider purchasing it for my classroom.