Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Recording actions in SMART Notebook

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Recording Actions in SMART Notebook

Did you know that you could record your actions in SMART Notebook in two different ways?  There are several uses for recording your actions:

1. Save time - Who really wants to write out a math problem several different times in one day if you teach multiple sections of a class?  If you had the solution recorded as a video, you could walk around the room as the video played and assist students.  

2. Absentees - How many times per week do you get asked for copies of notes or extra help from students that were absent?  Wouldn't it be great to have your lesson recorded so that you could provide absent students a link to the video that shows all of the things you did within your lesson?

3. Copies of Class Notes - With a heterogeneous class, there are often multiple students that need copies of class notes.  If you had the notes recorded as a video, you could just post that video to a YouTube channel for anyone that needed the notes.  It would save paper and also allow all students access, regardless of their IEP.  

4. Support teachers - So often, we don't have time to cooperatively plan with all of a student's support teachers.   If they could have access to our notes via video, it would answer many questions as to what was given out in class on a particular day and even how you prefer a student goes about solving a math problem.  

5. Parent support - Many parents don't remember what they did in school, and often times, the teaching methods have changed since they were in school anyway.  Having a video of what was done in class is an easy way for parents to offer a level of support at home without needing a ton of background knowledge.  It is a resource they can use to review with their child as well. 

Below is a slide presentation showing how to set up SMART notebook to record your actions.  The presentation goes through 2 different methods

1.  SMART Video Recorder to record anything on your screen (even outside of SMART Notebook if you wish) and save it as a video file that can be posted anywhere - YouTube, webpage, google classroom, etc.  

2. Lesson Recorder which is an "Add-on" within SMART Notebook that allows you to record what happens on a page within Notebook and embeds the video on that particular page.  This is a nice feature since you don't have to do any advance planning to record your actions in class. NOTE:  this is not able to be exported and stays within your Notebook file.  However, you could use the SMART Video Recorder to record while you play the videos on each page.  



Thursday, January 21, 2016

New News ELA app!

News ELA just announced their new app!  

I have begun to incorporate the News ELA site into my class more often this year to allow students to read about current events in science.  They're not just good for science though because they have wonderful collections for all topics, including collections (text sets) for social studies, literature and even in Spanish!  My favorite part about News ELA is that I can provide the same article to all of my students but adjust it for various reading levels as needed.  They don't lose the main content of the article and can gain confidence reading.  

The latest announcement of their app makes it even easier to read articles and assign them for your classes. 

Read the email announcement:
Dear Valued Educators,
I’m thrilled to announce the launch of the Newsela iOS app, and with it, offline access to our entire article library. Finding and assigning articles has never been easier. And we’ll notify your students and keep you informed as they get to work.
If we can get this done in the first three weeks of the year, imagine what we’ll do in the next forty-nine. Stay tuned.
Yours in reading,
Dan Cogan-Drew
Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer
Get the free Newsela app today.
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Newsela
            
Newsela, 519 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10018, USA

Thursday, January 14, 2016

Using Google Slides to create an interactive digital planbook

Did you know you can use Google Slides to create an interactive digital planbook?

This year, I started using my google drive more consistently.  As a result, I came up with the idea to use Google Slides to create an interactive digital planbook to simplify my daily lessons.  See the presentation below to see how I use it and set it up. It has made my daily routine much faster and I can easily preview my day on the Google Slides presentation to see what I'm doing for the day.