SMARTboards

Flickr and text types

4
5 years ago
by tombarrett in , ,

Today I asked some of my children to use a scanned example of a newspaper article in Flickr and add notes to it. Basically they were finding examples of language features that we have annotated in a more traditional way in their books. What I like about Flickr notes is the fact that there is still an unobstructed view even with annotations. I may continue this with text types throughout the year.

Click on the picture to see the notes.

I asked individuals to work on this using the SMARTBoard – then I cascaded this down to others by asking the child who has just completed an annotation / Flickr note to explain how to do it with another cild and so on.

Thankyou to Highwood Infant School

0
5 years ago
by tombarrett in , , , , ,

I spent most of today attending an INSET day at Highwood Player Infants School talking to them about using their IWBs which they have just had installed.

Many thanks to everyone at the school for inviting me and making me feel so welcome I hope that some of my ideas provide a springboard for your school’s IWB development.

Apart from the resources I planned to discuss we spoke about and used a range of other material. Below I have tried to record most of those thoughts from the morning:

  • Artrage 2 – a fantastic art package ideal for the use on the interactive whiteboard. Look out for more on this soon, here on my blog as I will be introducing the use at my school and planning some training.
  • Microsoft Local Live – we looked at the school and Highwood Player had really clear imagery from the “bird’s eye view” setting. Would be useful to look at before short walks or local area studies.
  • Quikmaps – Another mapping site that allows you to scribble and add placemarks. Again would be to look at before short walks or local area studies.
  • BBC Little Animal Activity Centre – we had a read of the animated books and phonic activities.
  • Google Earth – just mentioned this briefly but a wonderful tool that I am huge fan of. Read the rest of my blog for more information.
  • Topmarks Educational Website Search Engine – very handy when looking for something specifically aimed at schools.

Please follow the links above to the relevant sites.

Further down my blog, you will have to scroll a bit, there is the notes from the session with the links from the images. Please feel free to print these and use in school.

Notes from session (handout)
Ferry Halim Guidance
Powerpoint of Year 2 Instructional writing work (ordering digital images)

I would really appreciate it you could take some time to leave me some feedback about the training session – scroll to the bottom of this post (or the one further down) and find the word “Comments” click on it and leave me your thoughts.

I really value your feedback and remarks so that in the future and can take them into account for other similar training sessions. Thanks again.

Notes for INSET @ Highwood Player Infants

2
5 years ago
by tombarrett in , , ,

Aims for the session:

  • To give you some real, creative and practical examples of ways to embed the use of the IWB in your teaching.

Introduction:

  • Tom Barrett
  • Year 6 classteacher
  • ICT Subject Leader
  • Assistant Headteacher
  • I have been using IWBs for the last 5 years in my teaching.

5 Ways in for Free

1. Ferry Halim

Non-educational site providing a wealth of beautifully created games. Ideal for early whiteboard or mouse skills. Links to these skills I have highlighted in my Ferry Halim Guidance document.

2. Furbles

A maths programme that needs no internet access and runs as a small piece of software downloaded in seconds. Its uses range from sorting according to colour, shape number of eyes etc – to data handling and creating pictograms and bar charts. DOWNLOAD IT HERE
3. Mathszone



An extremely useful set of maths links to interactive activities throughout the maths curriculum. Notable links include activities from Toftwood Infant School.

4. Northumberland Grid for Learning


Some excellent activities for early mouse and whiteboard skills; such as connect the dots and dress the teddy.

5. Using Digital Photographs

Where is your troll?!
Taking photographs using the digital camera and feeding these into a literacy activity.

Instructional texts – link with science and forces. Year 2

Class went outside with skateboard, TA with a digital camera recorded each step when discussing how to skateboard. TA returned to class and loaded the pictures into whiteboard software (also printed small pictures off and photocopied for other independent work) – lower ability children were asked to work independently (could be supported initially by TA) to put the photographs into the correct order. Highly motivated and completed the task successfully.

Your next steps

  • Make the most of online resources – get the children using the boards with the Ferry Halim games.
  • Approach the IWB as a tool that can be used in every part of the lesson – from shared to independent to plenary.
  • Never worry about doing something that works perfectly well without an IWB; you are allowed to switch them off! – Just be aware of and reflect upon the choices you make.
  • Share your experiences regularly with each other. Have a fortnightly clinic session or make time for getting excited about successes in staff meetings.
  • Perhaps plan an IWB related target for performance management – as the development of IWB skills will be something that is already happening and is part of the School Development Plan

Any Questions?

Giving Feedback for this session

http://tbarrett.edublogs.org

At the very bottom of the post is a link to COMMENTS please leave your feedback in this way and if there are any questions or queries in the future please feel free to add a comment or contact me and I will try my best to help.

HANDOUT from the session with these notes.

INSET at Highwood Infant and Nursery

0
5 years ago
by tombarrett in

I have been invited by the headteacher at Highwood Infant and Nursery school to do a session in their INSET day. They have recently had Promethean IWBs installed and they would like to be inspired by some creative uses of them. I think that I will keep it simple and explore some of the useful online resources that have been successful at school such as Ferry Halim.

A new class – a new technology

0
5 years ago
by tombarrett in ,

It is strange talking to children about something that they have no previous concept of. We are so used to saying “you will remember when” or “you should know this”, so telliing my class about blogging and our class blog was something completely new. Many of the children surprisingly had their own website and used MSN a great deal but nobody had heard of a blog.

Anyway it was our first day back and after a bit of “getting to know you” we spent some time exploring John’s class blog at Sandaig and looking at the empty space that is ours! (well I had popped something on to get us started) The children seemed really interested and keen to start.

So as a first activity they worked on what they think would be some good class rules and then we shared our ideas in SMART Notebook and decided upon the most positive and important to us. Then I just quickly showed them how to blog this as an entry, really quick and simple. They enjoyed seeing their rules published on the blog and John has already commented on it, which I know they will enjoy reading tomorrow – lets hope many more people will comment as I think many are not totally convinced there are millions of possible readers – well maybe!

I think that for the rest of the week we will post work together and explore some safety guidelines – I think we will create some BLOG rules too. I spotted MHetherington’s blog for some ideas for this.

Testing embedding vid from SMARTBoard

5 years ago
by tombarrett in

As with BLOGGER I thought I would just see if I can embed YouTube video footage in a post. But after I pasted the code to the post frame it just sort of vanished. Not sure if WordPress likes embedding things. I will try to upload the file as an alternative. The upload feature is for images only, which I will test anyway.

Weymouth Harbour

Well it is clear from the quality of the image below that uploading files through WordPress is like passing it through a crude filter as this was a pretty detailed photo. I think it will be best for me to sign up for a Flickr account for the class and link to them

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