Customized SmartBoard Lesson

To highlight the new Lesson Activity Toolkit for Smart Technologies Notebook software, I am going to create a customized interactive activity using the new resources available in the software.

Since I'm not in the classroom this year, I thought I would see if anyone wanted me to create a customized activity they could use inside the classroom on their SmartBoard. I could then get an authentic reaction to the lesson and post it on my SmartBoard blog.

So...if you would like a customized activity to use on your SmartBoard, please let me know and I'll try to create something useful by this Friday. While I can only create one customized lesson by Friday, If I get multiple responses, I'll do my best to recommend resources that might be useful.

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Permalink Reply by Jane Krauss on October 8, 2007 at 9:34pm

KEVIN! What a great offer! How could kids use a smart board to interact with a map and show changing populations of several bat species in a region? Kids are making a case for species conservation through habitat protection and if they could show populations over time and area in an interactive way it would be really powerful. You didn't ask for an easy one! If this fits the bill it would be great to see what you would do. Jane

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Permalink Reply by Marielle Lange on October 9, 2007 at 8:31am

Jane, this can be done without too much difficulties.

Two options: Google Earth and Yahoo Map. Both allow for external data to be used to populate a map.

You can check out a simplistic example at:
yahoomap activity
Information on how this gets done can be found at yahoo developer website.

You have a googlearth example of mapping polutants

To James, you can find a nice collection of small learning activities at: learning activities gallery (various examples I found on the web)

You can find a good number of widgets that could be integrated within a lesson content at:
education widgets

I am most interested in getting to hear what type of activities educators think would be great to be able to run on a whiteboard, to enhance their learning content.

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Permalink Reply by James Hollis on October 9, 2007 at 9:36am

I accept your challenge. :o)

Can you give me some specifics about the class? Age, class size, learning objective, etc. I will want to try to correlate to grade-level standard.

I will create a :30 minute activity so if you have any other specific objectives, just let me know!

Thanks for responding so quickly!

Jim

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Permalink Reply by Jane Krauss on October 9, 2007 at 9:17pm

4/5 grade, studying the biomes (and ecosystems) of the state of Oregon, and bats, which are a sensitive species. The learning objective is to understand how bat populations have changed over time and correlate those changes with development, loss of habitat. Kids would study bat habitat and ecology, and make a case for conservation based on research into population changes, changes in habitat. Grade level standards would have to do with biodiversity and species interdependence in science, and expository and persuasive writing in language arts. Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Jane Krauss on October 9, 2007 at 9:21pm

Thank you Marielle. Along with Kevin's help I think we'll have something great!

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Permalink Reply by Marielle Lange on October 10, 2007 at 4:28am

I was not aware of the "Lesson Activity Toolkit for Smart Technologies Notebook" at the time of my reply. It looks like it allow you to design activities more complex than the 5-10 min. type I listed.

I visited a huge ed-tech show in London only a few months back and I thought I had collected all info on smartboards but didn't hear mention of the toolkit. Things really develop very rapidly in that area!

I am curious to see the resulting activity. That would be great if you could film the lesson or the activity and publish it on teachertube or some other place.

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Permalink Reply by Jane Krauss on October 10, 2007 at 8:30am

Good idea!
More notes to James, above. It's more about outputs than I indicated. Kids are ultimately trying to make a scintillating, interactive, PERSUASIVE presentation.
Jane

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Permalink Reply by James Hollis on October 12, 2007 at 3:38pm

HI Jane!

Yes, if the objective is for the kids to create a presentation, then it wouldn't really lend itself to the Lesson Activities Toolkit. I could always take your objectives and lesson outline and create an interactive introduction to the lesson.

I do have some things I can share with you that your students may be interested in.

1. I created a Google Earth tour of three bat populations. Each landmark has additional information in the form of text, pictures, and/or video. The file is bat.kmz - if you have Google Earth installed, you can just double-click on the file. (I added a video in Classroom 2.0 that demonstrates how I found the information for my tour.)

2. I've attached an html file called bats.htm that has a YouTube player showing a bat playlist I created.

3. Here's the embedded playlist "A Tour of the Bat" I created on YouTube:

I always asked my students what would be the best way to communicate your findings to a wide audience. Creating websites, sharing links using various bookmarking sites, and creating visual tours are great ways to share information and encourage students to make sure their data is accurate. This type of assignments seems to lend itself nicely to collaborative group efforts.

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