SMARTboards

Here it is – in all it’s glory. It isn’t exactly in the place I had asked for it, and now the kids have to sit on the cold floor instead of the warm carpet, but we’ll get over that. They sure did a number on the wall behind it though with those blotches…. but besides that…. I am in love (and so are the kids).

I’ve only had my SMARTboard for about  a month, and already it is a major part of my day. We use it for the pre-loaded notebook files like balloon popping and vortex sorting – and they love the random group generator and the applauding timer. There are thousands and thousands of lessons out there. Unfortunately (like most things in my teaching life), I have to translate the ones I like, but I am getting pretty comfortable at making some of my own. I love how my SMARTboard is hooked up to the sound field system in my room, so that when I show a videoclip or play some music, there is surround sound. I love how you can write on the board with the “markers” on any screen – especially good for working on revision and correction (and that dreaded EQAO).

In doing many internet searches on teacher blogs and SMARTboard lessons, I stumbled across a fellow grade 3 FI teacher who blogged about the wealth of support and teaching ideas that she found on twitter. Twitter?? The thing I swore that I would never use? .. .. . I decided to bite the bullet and sign up. Besides a couple of friends and three celebrities (Rick Mercer, Brent Butt, Rainn Wilson), my main followers and followees are teachers. And sure enough…. I have found tonnes and tonnes of amazing things to do on the SMARTboard. I don’t tweet about what I am doing on a regular basis (i’ll keep that to FB), I tweet questions to my teacher followers.

A couple of amazing techy things that I found via twitter…

Prezi – technically Rob told me about this, but I investigated further after reading more about it via twitter. A cooler way to make presentations. It is especially great because it is stored online.

glogster – a nifty poster-maker – thinking about having my kids make Medieval Times Glogs.

wallwisher – this is a fun little site (although slow if you use it via the smart board and kids have to wait in line – a perfect thing to put up during lunch). I posted a question at the top, and the kids add “sticky notes” with their answer or opinion. I will probably eventually incorporate this somehow into other subject areas, and have them post stickies on a computer, rather than the touch keyboard.

dropbox – I love my macbook pro, but I don’t really want to unplug my thinkpad from my smartboard to plug in my mac to show something cool. I downloaded dropbox on both my mac and my pc at school and I save all of my files and bookmarks easily – no burning CDs and no memory stick. Bliss.

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I have been letting my kids stay in during recess to play with the SMARTboard and get used to it. I also shared some hilariously fun sites with them. They love to visit places around the world.

Fooled?

A couple of years ago I pulled the best April fool’s joke on my kids – inspired by my own grade 5 teacher. This year, I had nothing. Kids in my class came to school asking if they were going to write the test. Many of these kids are siblings to those who I pranked in 2008. No way am I using that test again for at least 5 years (or if I change schools).

This year, however, my kids thought they got me good. I played along. Here’s what went down.

After the bell rang after lunch for the kids to go outside, my principal got on the announcements with an angry voice telling me to come to the office asap. I finished getting the supplies I needed and headed down to the office. On my way there I heard giggling and shh-ing, so I knew my kids were up to something. My principal called me into her office and slammed the door. I caught a glimpse of one of my boys underneath her table. She proceeded to tell me that she has had so many complaints about my teaching and that she had no other choice but to fire me. You’re fired! Being a terrible actress that I am, I gasped and said “oh no”. Luckily I didn’t have to keep up the act because my ENTIRE class started laughing and got out from under the principal’s desk. How all of my students fit underneath the desk and were so quiet, I’ll never know. They were so proud of themselves though. I let them believe that they really got me.

They are so funny.