3 Levels of SMART

[Shannon Jakeman]

Our school division is preparing for trainings on using the SMARTBoard in the classroom. We are trying to break up the trainings into 3 levels - beginner, intermediate and advanced. What 5 areas would you focus on for EACH level? In other words, what do you think the advanced training should focus on? Intermediate? Beginner? Would love your input!!

[Nathalie]

I think beginners would benefit from learning about the activity toolkit and all the fun things that already made for them... it's at least a start for them... to feel not quite as overwhelmed...perhaps pick a few so they know where to look...

[Jennifer Gibson]

I also think the lesson activity toolkit is a great starting place for beginners, but of course, you would want to spend sometime showing them how to use the various tools on the toolbar. I find people at this level often really need basics: how to open Notebook, how to save a file, how to change print to text...

I think your intermediate and advanced should work on using the animation and layering features to reveal answers. I would think the focus at these levels should be the students. It would be great if the teachers at this level were making docs that require student interaction to reveal information. Another great thing to show at this level is links.

Good luck!

[Nick Shuman]

I did a similar approach for high school staff. I actually broke up the Beginner level into two parts: SMART Board 100 and SMART Notebook 100. The "Board" training focused on the basics of turning the board on, connecting cables, orientation, floating tool bar and ended with online resources. "Notebook" training was on the Notebook software with all of its tool bars, drop-down menu functions, gallery and attachments tab. I didn't do an Intermediate class, but did do an advanced training that included lesson activity toolkit, cloning, hand-writing recognition, grouping and un-grouping of objects, etc. All of my training tutorials are available online and feel free to use them and tweek them to fit your needs: http://sites.google.com/site/smartsharecenter/smart-downloads/smart...

[Matt Granger]

In the intermediate to advanced section I would show how the SMART Recorder works. This lets students and teachers record what's happening on the screen. Teachers can use it to record lessons. Students can record presentations or solutions to a problem and can review it later or post as a video podcast, etc.

In the beginner section I would show how to use the SMART video player to play and interact with video. Unfortunately, I think this only works on the Windows version.

[Obe Hostetter]

I would look at this Dave Blemings's Moodle for ideas. He has some levels and lots of SMARTBoard resources. His moodle address is http://prrd.net/moodle/login/index.php Login as guest.

[Don]

Hi Shannon,

Here is what we do at CCS California:

- Basics - 2 hrs hands-on - SMART hardware, Digital Ink Layer, Ink Aware applications, SMART Notebook basics - pen, screen shade, eraser, line tool, creative pen, shape tool, shape recognition tool, magic pen, Page Sorter Tab, Gallery Tab, internet resources
- Beyond the Basics - 2 hrs hands-on - intermediate Notebook tools, dual-page, pin a page down, customizing the toolbar and floating toolbar, screen capture, object and properties, alignment, tables, Lesson Activity Toolkit, page recorder, video recorder, grouping, My Content, attachments, internet resources
- Curriculum Integration - basically takes the first 2 classes and help teachers see how they can integrate the board into their lesson plans