Instructional video storyboard

Here is my storyboard!

The Promethean Board

Another technology that I have been working with is an interactive white board called the Promethean board. A lot of people have heard of the Smart board, but that is just a name brand, kind of like Kleenex rather than Puffs. I could use this technology to help the students become more involved in the classroom. It takes a little longer to make flipcharts (kind of like a power point slide show), but you can share your flipcharts with any other teachers who use the promethean board (if you want to). I really like that I can use layers (which I just learned). Using layers I can hide answers underneath of pictures and have students identify what each picture represents. Then I can let them move my "reveal-er" over the picture to let them see if they are right. The promethean board also comes with an "iclicker" type of technology, so I can have students answer before we reveal the answer. I really love how interactive the promethean board is, though there are a few glitches. Sometimes the "pen" squeaks against the board which is unpleasant, so I think I would like to use a smart board rather than a promethean board. Another glitch is that sometimes the pen will stay as a clicker even when you try to use it as a pen. I haven't figured out how to get out of the glitch yet, but I hope to. Overall, I really like the promethean board. I would use it if i had one in my classroom, but I would not go out of my way to buy it for my classroom.

Here is a poll that I would use in my classroom...

Replace audience response hardware with Poll Everywhere

Polleverywhere.com

For one of my technologies I decided to learn how to use polleverywhere.com. This is a fascinating technology. If I wanted to use it for myself I could have an audience of 30 people who can answer poll questions by text message, But because I am a teacher, I can have up to 40 people send text messages to each of my polls. So this works like an iclicker, but it is cheaper if all of my students have free text messaging.I would have to pay $50 a month if I wanted to grade my student on their answers. That doesn't sound that bad.

So I really like how I can group questions. This way I could have 8 different classes texting answers to 8 different polls. I can keep them separated and not worry about exceeding my 40 person limit with more than one class. I could also take attendance, though I'd have to be careful with that one.

I spend a few hours exploring what I can and cannot do. (There is a lot I could do if I was willing to pay money). There are only a few things I have been really disappointed with. One is the fact that I cannot format my words in my polls, so chemical formulas will be a bit confusing for my students (without subscripts or superscripts and such). Another is that I cannot embed my polls straight into my google website. Whenever I do, I get a message that says"Warning: your HTML contains some tags that are not permitted". Finally, I wish that the whole page would fill up with answers, rather than one column. Otherwise, I love Polleverywhere and  I plan on using it in my classroom.

Try it out. Tell me what you think of my post! Text "299962 [answer]" to 37607