Making Your SMARTBoard Brilliant - Part I

 What makes the SMART Board "smart?"  Google's definition of smart includes the following:

• showing mental alertness and calculation and resourcefulness
• chic: elegant and stylish; "chic elegance"; "a smart new dress"; "a suit of voguish cut"
• bright: characterized by quickness and ease in learning

For this piece of the Cool Tech Tricks SMART Board series, we're going to focus on the "chic" aspect.

Dr. Jamie McKenzie has done a great deal of research in how images can assist in learning and how a picture really can be worth a thousand words.  Check here for an article he wrote regarding choosing images.

Fortunately, in the SMART Board gallery, we have a wealth of images, backgrounds, multimedia tools, and interactive activities that are sure to not only engage students, but lend themselves to students physically being at the SMART Board interacting with it themselves.

Searching through the gallery is simple enough, but there are so many resources there that it can be overwhelming.  Have an idea in mind of what you need, then use the search tool.

In the above search for matter, you can see there are over 400 items that would fit this category.  Although pictures to dress up the SMART slide are nice, let me play the devil's advocate.  What are the kids going to do with that image?  In a core classroom, if it's just there for aesthetics, find something else that would engage the students in learning.  This could include labeling, matching, finding hidden items with the images, classifying, or brainstorming.

In the above example, you'll find there are 200 pictures, but 43 interactive lessons dealing with matter.  Although you can make the pictures interactive, the work is already done for you if you choose from the 43 interactive lessons.  To search through these activities, click the triangle in front of the description to open the multitude of examples.  Browse through and double click on the ones you want to use in your lesson.  They will then be inserted into the slide.  If they are items you use on a regular basis, save yourself some time and drag the item up to the area titled "My Content."  This is the equivalent of bookmarking them so you can easily find them later.

The same idea can be applied to images you've inserted to SMART Notebook from another source, like your Pictures folder or the Internet.  Simply drag them into the My Content area so that you can use them regularly.

These handy tips can help to better engage your students and can make your life a little easier.