Smartboard Training

At the beginning of the week both the ICT and modern languages electives were given training for the Smartboard.
I found this training extremely useful as the technology is designed for and frequently used in classrooms therefore all the skills we were learning could be directly transferred into classrooms.
We were learning the basic skills like moving the objects, resizing, writing in different colours etc which was necessary and needed but we also learned how to use tools which made lessons which could have previously been simple or boring into something a bit more exciting and engaging.
I really liked the idea of using different ways of revealing answers, methods such as erasing, dragging objects onto colours, sliding and linking question pages to the answers. This was all made possible by contrasting background colours with that of the written answers. All this could be done whilst pupils come up to the board and write over anything with a pen.
The technology makes the lesson engaging for the pupils and is easy to use for the teacher.
The possibilities are endless for any subject and pupils can really be involved in the activities!
The voting systems are a fantastic tool for the classroom as each pupil can type in their own ID and the teacher can see who is answering and record their answers from every vote ever made. Their assessment is automatically saved and easily accessible.
The voting systems can also be confidential so are similar to Poll4 in this respect but are better as they are already linked to the Smartboard and do not need each pupil to have a device linked to the internet.