Smartboards

We finished installing our second interactive whiteboard yesterday afternoon in our grade one classroom and it is amazing to see the excitement it creates.  By 8:45 this morning many staff and students were already crowding into the classroom to see it (and this is our second one!).  Our grade one teacher has used the board for one whole day at this point and I had an opportunity to review her day with her.  In short she was even more excited at the end of the day as clearly was already looking at the interactive nature of the technology and that it was not simply a really cool chalkboard.

For anyone that is interested we chose to install the model that has the arm attached to the wall directly above the board the the projector that is only a few feet away.  Our first board is the more traditional set up with the projector hanging from the ceiling about 10 feet away.  This newer style is certainly nice.  Because the projector is mounted so close to the board the person using the device is less likely to step into the projectors beam.  In addition to that there is a control panel mounted on the wall right next to the board that allows the user to connect and easily switch between a number of devices such as a vcr and dvd.

Students and United Streaming

Just a quick note to let others know that I have asked the rep at United streaming to create a student account for our school.  I used a single student account for all students as it seems easier than dealing with yet another username and password.

I see at least a couple of purposes for the request.  First you can set up class lists of links to videos which students can then watch on their own schedule.  Secondly students can use this account to search for videos when doing research for their own projects.

A student account is different from a teacher account in that students do not have access to the teacher tools section and the features associated with it.  I am not sure if we have a potential issue with students downloading videos and eating up server space but I understand that if this does become an issue a quota can be set for this account and similar accounts in other schools.

Wondering about Wikis

Does anyone have any advice for wikis.  I have a teacher that wants to start one with a group of students but is concerned about security.  She is uncomfortable with the idea that students can write to the wiki without any approval process before the editing is publicly visible.  I would prefer to have our teachers use one that has no advertising and very simple, uncluttered interface.  Some of the ones I have looked at, even the "education" ones are quite busy and might be quite distracting to look at.

RSS Reader

Have finally set up my RSS feed reader and things are working quite well.  I was able to get a feed to most of the blogs set up by members of our committee.  There were a few that my reader did not work with.  Not sure what the issue is.  It may have something to do with the blog site being used.  Both blogs that did not work with my reader are blogmeister blogs ( Jim & Kim).

Another media converter

Just a quick note to share another resource with everyone.  Although I have found Zamzar to be quite functional there were times when it did not seem to work.  I am not sure what the issues were but ended up trying others and have found one that seems to work as well or better than Zamzar.  You can find it at the following link:

Media-convert

I have also made a link to this service in the resource section of our group resource page.

United Streaming Followup

I am almost through my first assignment created with the assignment builder tool available from Discovery Learning/United Streaming.  So far things have gone quite well.  Students have been fairly successful at working through the materials at their own pace.  The supplementary materials in the Teachers Resource book and the Black Line masters have proved to be quite helpful.  The lab activity was fun for the kids and it was easy to incorporate some math and computer skills into the assignment.  Students have yet to write the quiz so I will have to wait to see the results.

Although I have used united streaming extensively in the past it has been primarily to download videos to the entire class via the LCD projector or a DVD player connected to a TV.  For this assignment I purposely designed it to have students view the videos independently to guage its effectiveness.  It is clear that if multiple students are viewing the material in the classroom at the same time independently they MUST have headphones of some kind.  I was certainly distracting to hear all the other soundtracks playing in the background as I was trying to watch the video on my screen.

This was also the first time I had used video segments instead of showing the whole video.  I certainly see this as beneficial although next time I would probably show the entire video the the class as a whole first and then have them use the segments on their own as a followup.

All in all I am quite excited about my next assignment.  I am interested in the experience of others and am willing to show you the process I went through.

United Streaming

I have been spending some time 'playing' with the United Streaming/Discovery Learning service and continue to be impressed by what it has to offer.  I have discovered that it is certainly more than a video streaming service.  I recently completed my first assignment complete with video segments, weblink assignments, and online quizzes.  My plan is to use this assignment as the core component of the Understanding the Nervous System part of grade 6 science.  My plan is to have the more advance students in class work independently through the assignment while I work with a small group of at risk students.

Anyone interested in viewing the assignment can do so at the following link on my class page:

Nervous System Web Assignment

Of course you are welcome use the assignment if you are interested.  I have set it up so that it can be shared within our division.

Terry