My colleague, Laura, and I are finding more and more ways to use the Smart Notebook software in our lessons.  I use the Airliner Slate which allows me to use my projector screen like a Smart board but Laura actually has a Smart board in her room. The nice thing about working with Laura is that she encourages me to try new things and we help each other solve problems with implementing technology.  She inspired me to try using the Smart Response clickers in new ways, not just for playing games.  Today I used my Smart technology in three different ways and was really happy with the results!

First, I put my objectives on a page and masked them with a large, same-color rectangle.  The students moved a white rectangle around the screen in order to reveal the four objectives and find out what our lesson would be.

One of the objectives was to review the answers to a homework page in the workbooks.  After a student led the review, each student wrote a question of their own about the content.  I used the instant question button to create blank questions and the students took turns reading their questions aloud.  We used student response clickers to answer the questions and then viewed the pie chart showing all of the students’ answers.  This activity generated great discussions about our misconceptions!

Finally, many students needed help with an essay question from our last test.  I created two activities to help them learn to organize their essays.  In one activity, students had to order the steps of creating a Bohr model of the atom.  In the other, they had to use a graphic organizer table to sort a set of statements by dragging them into the correct position.  In order to get more students engaged in the activity I uploaded the SMART Notebook file on my wiki and posted the link to Smart Notebook Express, http://express.smarttech.com.  The students had to first download the file to their computer then open the file using Smart Notebook Express.  Now all of the kids could try the activities on their own and check their own answers.  While it takes some time to prepare a lesson using this technology, the payoff was a classroom filled with engaged students.   Here is the Smart Notebook file that the students used today: Practice.  Download the file and then open it using Smart Notebook Express to see what they students were doing.