More About Whiteboards

Title Page of Flipchart

Learning the ActivInspire software was a daunting task. This software allows teachers to be so creative that it is hard to decide what to do with it. I had a lot of fun creating my flipchart for a Promethean board. While learning about the tool in class, I was excited to get started. Once that time came; however, I felt overwhelmed by the possibilities. Storyboarding, a process for planning the project, helped tremendously. I was still able to make tweaks as I worked, but having the whole project planned out on paper helped to guide my thinking.

There were several tools that we were able to try out in the ActivInspire software. I used magic revealers, magic ink, and containers, among others. We started learning about these tools in class, in a rather unique way. During our unit on digital images, we were also shown how these tools were to work in a presentation. I liked this idea, because it let us see the tool in action. I was definitely able to think about the tools that would work best with my mathematics topic.

While working on the flipchart, I was thankful to have the opportunity to download the software to my personal computer. This made things so much easier, especially since the timing of this project fell around spring break. It was also handy to be able to practice with the software on my own time. I learned how to work the tools better while at home because I could take as much time as I needed to get the skill mastered. Overall, this project was a very pleasant experience. I hope that I am fortunate enough to work in a school that uses this technology in the future.

Whiteboards Big and Small

ActivInspire

I am very excited about starting work on our ActivInspire projects. Promethean boards are a very common type of technology in classrooms. I believe this tool is an excellent resource for creating engaging presentations for classroom practice. There are a variety of resource packs that enable the presentation to become interactive, which is always a plus for students. When I was in high school, my classmates loved to have the opportunity to write or draw on the whiteboard. Promethean boards take traditional whiteboards to another, higher, level. With this tool, teachers are able to create pages in which students can interact with the material in many ways, including magic ink, move to reveal, and infinite cloner. I am very excited to create my project using these tools. I hope that I will have access to this great technology in my future classroom. 

On a separate note, a couple of years ago, I invested in an iPad. I love it! There are many things that I use it for daily from school assignments to games and TV. I have loved downloading long reading assignments instead of printing them, using the Blackboard app to check announcements, and, on the nonacademic side, catching up on TV shows and playing games. iPads have become very popular in education as well. There are many websites that provide information about the best apps for the classroom. In fact, one of the first things I researched about my iPad is how I can use in my classroom. One of the best uses I have found is recording examples and lectures for students in an app called, Educreations. In this app, teachers are presented with a virtual whiteboard on which they can record notes and examples while the app records voice narration. After a lesson is completed, teachers can upload it to their website. For students who miss a day of class this is a great way to help them catch up on the missed material. Additionally, teachers can post helpful suggestions for homework in a Kahn Academy style video. For these reasons, I definitely think that I want to incorporate this into my classroom. 

Picture This... The World of Digital Images

Images add dimension and interest in almost every context; however, using images on the web can be a bit tricky. This week we have been studying the world of digital images, discussing everything from resolution to copyright. For digital images to appear in the best quality, we learned that the resolution must be set to 72 pixels per inch. At this resolution, pictures are at a great size for use on the web.

We also learned that there are two types of images that are commonly used on the web. The first, raster images, are made up of many pixels a numerical value representing color. The second, vector images, are composed of paths, vectors, which can be straight or curved. For a mathematically minded person this is a very cool concept! Vectors, in mathematics, are defined only as straight paths; however, for vector images this rule is broken. Because vector images are made of paths, they can be scaled larger or smaller without losing quality! This is a very intuitive use of mathematics. 

We worked on two projects to practice with digital images. For the first project, we were to create a Picasa Web Album, a Google tool, which contained images of any content collected from the web. We then used that album to create a slideshow. For this project, we had to be mindful of the copyright regulations tied to using images on the web. Thus, we learned about Fairuse principles and finding free image collections on the web, such as Pics4Learining and Flickr Creative Commons.

The Scavenger Hunt project had us, in the math content area, scope out geometry concepts in the real world, take pictures of it, and create a presentation with the pictures. It was so much fun! For this project, it was vital to understand the proper resolution for images we use on the web and to have a consistent organizational strategy for the pictures. This really helped to keep a consistent look within the presentation.

Digital images are a great way to spice up text in many contexts when used appropriately!