EDU618FALL11

This article focuses on the misuse of technology, mainly smart boards, in the classroom. In the article the author states that some teachers may find their teaching to be gimmicky or that the students will only pay attention to the technology. In turn, those teachers will only use the smartboards for power point presentations or as a glorified chalkboard. That does not have to be the case, as those previous examples are probably the worst uses for a smartboard. The article quickly points out that these boards are interactive and should be used that way. In the classroom, the last way that I intend on using a smartboard, if I am lucky enough to have one, will be as a chalkboard. There are so many great ways to use it and the technology is ever evolving. I intend on making use of this device to the fullest extent.

This is a website that has a ton of ridiculously cool interactive activities for teachers to use in the classroom. This company, Lakeshore, has interactive boards for Math, Language, Science and Social studies that would be a really cool way to keep kids active in the classroom while incorporating technology. I would personally use this to try and keep math interesting and interactive. Allowing students to feel like they are an active participant in their learning is a great way to empower them.

This is an interactive math website that places math fundamentals in a galactic interplanetary battle. With a variety of mathematic concepts at in a wide range of subjects, the website prompts the user to perform mathematical operations in timed duals versus a computer opponent. The theme of the website as well as the layout of the activities make it a resource that appeals to student desires to play and compete.  While the website does not really provide students with a learning opportunity, but it is a great way to assess student understanding of concepts. While having a battle in quadratic functions, I quickly realized that I am not as strong with the equations as I was with the graphic representations of functions. This site provides quick activities that could be highly valuable in adjusting and refining teaching units. 

This is an interactive activity called the Weather Maker from the Scholastic online activities page. It allows you to manipulate the temperature at the equator and at the Earth's poles as well as to control the humidity. Based on the selected inputs, an animation of your home is exposed to the resulting weather conditions.  This could be a fantastic tool for the elementary science classroom as the students explore weather change. Various weather and precipitation outcomes can be inquired about and the students could control the weather maker and adjust the various elements to create the desired climate. Based on exploring the weather maker students can make observations and draw conclusions on seasonal climates, temperature change, and weather patterns. 

This site has numerous whiteboard activities which one can download varying for grade level and content area. I particularly liked that before downloading, you can view previews of the content. It seemed to have a lot of games, which may be a little too juvenile for older students, but some can be incorporated. I particularly liked the Jeopardy! game template, as I feel that is applicable across grade levels and is fun for the class to participate in. The fact that you can customize these for whatever you are teaching is great, so I think this site should be really reviewed across disciplines, as you can use things listed as Language Arts in other disciplines and vice versa.

This resource has a number of whiteboard activities for different areas of study. I focused on the English (Literacy) section. It seems somewhat limited in some respects, as it only has a few activities for certain books/plays, but the ones that were there were pretty cool. I really liked the Romeo and Juliet activities. I thought the intro scale about love at first sight would be a great way to get kids hooked, and the activities in which the kids put the things that happened in order were good as well. I liked some of the middle grades activities more. There was one in which you have to look at different newspapers coverage of the same event and make a Venn diagram of how the stories overlap. I think this really makes learning more interactive and meaningful to the students and utilizes the technology well.

I really love this interactive site.  It would work great with children in art the first example is the chair.  If you launch the site and then go into the museum and click on specific art work such as the chair you can then work with different activities.  This is a great way for children who need some assistance coming up with ideas but then there are parts of the activities that create further exploration such as designing a table to go with the chair you created.  Great art site!!

I love the way you can search for standards and then lesson plans/activities that meet the standard. Some of the activities on this page are too low-level for high-school students, but many of them would help my students get up out of their seats and participate in class by drawing on the board together. I would certainly use this site when teaching grammar, so students can group-edit and see the result. 

So maybe this wasn't exactly on our list of sources, but I found it by clicking away from one source to another. This site has nifty suggestions for different websites that pair well with smartboards. I indeed to use National Geographic's MapMaker to track the states & countries we cover in our class, so at the end of every nine weeks, we can see what sections of the world have been explored via literature.

Summary of available materials - resources for active whiteboard use, activity suggestions, and useful links Use in classroom: Can be utilized in the classroom by involving students in the utilization of the whiteboard to present materials to class based on a review of assigned materials related to specific topics. Student learn to utilize technology and take an active and interactive part in the teaching and learning process

English Language Grammar and Vocabulary Exercises

This is a huge bunch of interactive (i.e. fill in the blank) exercises for English Language grammar and vocabulary. It's from a German website, and it seems like it might be a good resource for a student who was having trouble with a particular language or grammar area.

Found this link by poking around some of the Carnegie Museum sites. I like the idea of using the structure they point out with an IWB. You could have pictures of each thing you list on your word-association warm-up, and even give some multi-media examples in the music section, and have students list first impressions from listening/watching. An IWB could make this lesson really fun and interactive.

This is a collection of lesson plans and ideas from the home page of the Denver Art Museum. I walked through a few lessons, and they seemed to be interesting and engaging. It's making me wonder if any local museums have programs or collections of lessons that are based on artwork or historical artifacts in their collections. Hmm...

This article is a great resource for IWBs because it is inspirational and provides the reader with a variety of ways to make full use of IWBs in the classroom (even more ideas are included in the comments section!). This would be a great resource for teachers who are looking for new and interesting ways to put their IWBs to full use.

I think this is a fantastic resource for English teachers because it connects students with actual authors through author-planned workshops, which serves as a motivational tool and keeps the class interesting. Also, it provides teaching plans that comply with national standards and student activities based around each type of writing. These workshops would be perfect for display on an IWB because of the IWB's interactivity.

I'd love to use these howstuffworks videos to explain the role and prevalence of propaganda--perhaps in a unit exploring the literature of the WW2 and the atomic bomb, or the MacCartney era and/r the Salem Witch Trials, and/or the Cold War. These videos could form a segueway into examinations of political rhetoric prior to an election so that my student in 12th grade English could make informed voting decisions.