Tech and Take

Here are some ways to connect ideas to a picture. Your ideas are your words and you can make them into an image. You can type in text. First it will looklike a text box. The little green circle allows you to rotate your words. If you wanted to make a flower you would start with a circle and then type the words for your flower petals. All you would need to do is rotate the words and move them to your circle. You can also use shape tools to make an image. Make a variety of shapes and fill them in with a color. One idea is to use a circle to make a turkey body. Using shapes to make the face and then have students generate what they are thankful for. Type them in a text box and then rotate to make feathers for the turkey.

www.storyit.com
This site has many different resources for stories. You could go to story starters select a topic. It will print a picture sometimes it will have text and sometimes it won't. You can print out a word list with lines for both primary and secondary. Has borders for any holiday you want. You can make pages with graphics and lines for students to write their own story.

Tip of the week - October 10, 2007

Change background color - hold your finger on the SMARTboard (about 3-5 seconds) for a right click. Scroll down to background color and a color tile will appear. Choose your color and viola. Ideas to use for scenery for plays or emphasis important ideas/concepts.

October 3, 2007

Tip of the Week – October 3, 2007

You can go to Fruchthendler Blog to see ideas for Smartboard

Go to technology section of our webpage and click on smart recourses, click on blog (interactive resource on the web - people will respond to what it being said or post their own comments). This where the tips of the week will be posted – The goal is to have everyone participate more so we can have more ideas.

There are also different resources on our blog sight on the right hand side that have different links – movies, tips,

To add comments:
It’s a word document type – if you want to make a comment to what someone said click on comments and screen pops up so you can type your text – you can go anonymous or click on other and type your name – you could also type grade level - then you click on publish comment – can’t go back and correct or erase – unless we go to the original post. It does correct some things i.e mr dye = Mr. Dye

If you go to need blogger.com sign in (need gmail or blogger account) the Fruchthendler blog click – New post click (takes a little time) put in your title type message, you can add movie, pictures, change font and then click on publish post

In the classroom
Mr. Dye has it set up about questions about homework, projects – teachers can check it and students so they can help each other. Also have pictures where you can start a story and then they can add on different parts to the story. Polls, questions, helps build community and is a great extension of the classroom, also links to games – Dye changes his polls once a week but it is up to the individual. All you have to do it drag and click. He is willing to help you do what you need doesn’t think it will take but 10 minutes. His is linked to his website and is easy for the older kids and great with help for the younger ones.

We are encouraging everyone to go on to our blog and add input.

Art Enrichment Activity

Each time we start an Art Enrichment activity, it is easy to portray images from the artist's collection and to find websites about them from the Internet on our interactive white board. With this image of sunflowers by Van Gogh spread across the Smart Board from corner to corner, I was able to capture the attention of my first graders. Before painting with acrylic paints, we started by counting how many flowers we could find noticing that some were partly hidden. I invited students to come up and circle the center of each flower with the Smart Board pen. Then, we replicated the same step on white poster board with our pencils. Each step of the way, we noticed little details about his painting. We examined the paint strokes and decided that Van Gogh must have put a lot of paint on his brush to give it so much texture. So we changed our Smart Board pen to show a wider line and painted petals around our circles on the Smart Board. Each technology step on the Smart Board, helped us create our own creations on paper with paint. Slowly, our creations turned into beautiful master pieces that were inspired by Van Gogh and a dash of technology. Ooh La La!

Just Use It! :)

I know that using all of this new technology can be hard at times, especially when it looks like it will just be more that you have to do. My suggestion is to simply use it as much as possible throughout the day as a hightech whiteboard. Open up the notebook software and anything you would have written on the board simply put it on the Smart Board. The first step to great Smart Board use is to simply become comfortable and familiar with it. If you ever need help, don't hesitate to ask me.