On August 1st, Illinois Smart Education Consultant Ginny Washburne will be hosting a Smart Users Conference at Naperville Central HS in Naperville, IL. The address is 440 Aurora Ave. It is a free event. To sign up, go to this google spreadsheet and fill out the form. For more information email Ginny at ginnywashburne@smarttech.com.

Today I sit at my computer attempting to write my first blog. My main goal is to improve my writing and share thoughts about teaching and learning. This year I have read an amazing amount of opinions, views and ideas as I have ventured into social networking. Most I have agreed with and some I do not. But as a result of all my exploration on the web I have deduced that I can waste a lot of time looking and playing and not actually doing anything productive. I have made use of Twitter (bobbartl… Continue

A new version of Notebook is coming out, probably in January. A Beta testing period starts in August and goes to December. You can sign up to participate on the Smart website at http://smarttech.com/NotebookSEbeta. Notebook software has traditionally been teacher focused. Now it's moving to a student focus. This shows the iTunes like interface that kids are familiar with. He is also opening multiple files within the same notebook page and it cre… Continue

Bret Gensberg did two Smart Board sessions this morning at NECC. I'm sorry to say I missed the first one, but I'm glad I went to the second! He is a phenomenal speaker. He brings passion to his subject, which happened to be the Smart Board. According to him he "Eats, sleeps, and breaths Smart Board" and people give him money to buy more. He is available to come do professional development onsite for you, so if you are looking for a funny, passionate, and practical Smart related PD, contact him.… Continue

And it's free if you already have Senteo response systems! Coming late summer, August probably, is the new Senteo 2.0 software. It's a big improvement. You can still get questions in as easily. The big change is the management side. There will be an integrated gradebook. You can tag students with demographic information to sort data by groups and compare their results to other groups or class average. You can import other grades from other sources (not sure of details on that) into the gradeboo… Continue