Come to Learn! ~Vivi

A SMART Board

How to Use SMART Boards

SMART Boards, developed by SMART Technologies, are a specific type of interactive whiteboard designed to give students and teachers a more hands-on approach to learning. SMART Boards are used through the means of an overhead projector linked to a computer--typically the teacher's--on which lessons, notes and additional program helps are stored. SMART Boards display anything the linked computer displays, from Word documents to videos.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Computer Ceiling- or wall-mounted projector SMART Board

1. 1
   Orient the SMART Board screen by pressing the icon in the bottom right corner of the screen. Click "Orient," choose the highest calibration, and then continue following the instructions. Now the SMART Board is ready for you to write on it.
   
2. 2
   Explore your capabilities. You can write directly on the whiteboard with your finger. You can control any program on the linked computer from the SMART Board with a touch of your finger or a point of the pen. Access the Internet to show students something brief but important. This is especially helpful when embedding your links directly into your text on the screen, because students can take notes, jump over to see examples on Web sites you've chosen and then continue taking notes. Save your notes just like handwritten ones and print them later for students to use.
   
3. 3
   Explore your tools. The "Floating Tools" feature is customizable. Use the highlighting tool to color and feature important text prominently. Use the pointer tool to help students follow along during a lecture or draw attention to a component in a picture. Collaborate with other classrooms using the Internet.
   
4. 4
   Download programs, ideas, videos and lessons. The SMART Board gallery is full of pre-loaded, useful tools, but many more can be downloaded or used directly online. A mind-mapping program that would work well with a SMART Board is Inspiration/Kidspiration (free trial here: http://kidspiration.com/). However, there are many free Web sites full of methods other teachers have used to get the most out of their SMART Boards. For example, check out http://eduscapes.com/sessions/smartboard/#2 and http://education.smarttech.com/ste/en-US/Ed+Resource/Lesson+Activities/Notebook+Activities/Browse+Notebook/United+States/.
   
5. 5
   Teach students how to use the SMART Board. Teaching others enable you to learn the SMART technology more readily, as well as giving students new tools for enhancing their own learning. Students often enjoy writing digitally on the SMART Board. When students interact with material rather than simply sitting and absorbing, they're more likely to remember what they've learned. Students can present group work, share interesting facts or Web sites, give digital portfolio presentations and more.
   

Tips & Warnings

• The eraser, SMART pens and remote control can end up lost or floating around on students' desks. The pens should be in their special tray, but try Velcro-ing the eraser and remote control to the edge of the SMART Board to keep track of them, too. SMART Boards are useful for conducting "virtual" field trips. There are many examples of these online; one example is this virtual field trip collection: http://www.uen.org/utahlink/tours/.
• Cost is prohibitive, particularly for smaller, rural districts. However, there may be grants available to help fund the installation of SMART Boards in some classrooms. Either freeze the screen or shut down email programs before turning on the SMART Board; the students can see everything on the computer screen projected larger than life. Minimizing the email program may not be enough to protect sensitive interdepartmental information from students' gazes. This is especially true in the case of newer versions of email programs such as Outlook, in which the computer screen displays "pop-up previews" of the email content in real-time.

See more on http://www.ehow.com/how_5118340_use-smart-boards.html

SmartBoard Lesson Plan Sample (Posted by Vivi)

How to Make a Podcast (posted by ~Aja)

Easy Steps to Making a Podcast

1. Get Inspired and Make It Your Own. If you want to make a podcast then you obviously must have some notion or idea about what you want it be about. Whether it’s cars, sports, fashion, politics, or even tech–use your interests to carry over and make a superior podcast. It’s usually a good idea to know what you want to say before going on the air so make an outline of the session’s topic and prep yourself before recording.
2. Keep a Schedule. Podcasts can be daily or weekly, or just whenever you want. Consider how much time you have and work out a schedule with yourself, and/or with who ever is doing the show with you, to allow enough time for this task.
3. Get Equipment. You will need some equipment like a microphone, a computer (with Internet connection) and some sort of audio recording software.
4. Record and Tag. Try using Audacity, which is free, to record your show, and don’t forget to label and save your information.
5. Save and Edit. Save your audio file (in MP3 format) to your computer desktop and edit out extra background noise or long periods of silence.
6. Make an Intro. You can spice up your podcasts by adding an intro like some “lead-in” music or something else that you think people will find appealing– or if you don’t care what people think then just put whatever you want, or don’t put an intro at all.
7. Create your RSS podcast feed. The feed must meet all industry standards for a valid 2.0 feed with enclosures. Use a free service such as Apply Tools.  Starting a blog is probably the easiest thing you could do, so start a blog for your podcast but don’t post anything on it yet.
8. Put your RSS podcast feed on the Internet. Go to Feedburner and type in the URL of your blog and click “I am a podcaster!” Configure your podcast on the next screen. Only add elements that directly relate to you podcast. Your feedburner feed is your podcast.
9. Go to OurMedia.org and sign-up there. Then go to your files, and upload your MP3 file.
10. Publish it. Post it on your blog or website -make the title of the post the title of that episode of the podcast and enter the URL for your audio file. Write a brief description under of the podcast’s content—make it clever and informative so people want to click on it and listen. At the end of the post, put a link directly to your media file.
11. Wait a little bit. In a few minutes, you’ll have an episode! You may want to wait before submitting it to iTunes or another podcast directory until you’re completely satisfied with your podcast and you have some experience. And don’t forget to update and announce when you have new episode coming out.
12. Get subscribers and regular listeners. Put the appropriate subscription buttons on your website so people can subscribe to the RSS podcast feed. Everybody wants “regulars.”
13. List in Directories. This is a great way to get people to notice your podcast and pick up listeners. In addition to submitting it to iTunes, you can post it on other sites like Yahoo! Audio Search.

URL ADDRESS: http://www.digitaltrends.com/how-to/how-to-make-a-podcast/

_____________________________________________________________________

Podcast Gear: What you’ll need for a successful podcast

• Microphone
• Audio recording software
• Podcast Manager & Hosting
• A computer
• Time
• A smooth radio voice (optional)

Tips for Hopeful Podcasters

• Make sure your feed is iTunes valid.
• Make sure your feed is in the directories.
• Make sure you ping the appropriate services such as FreshPodcasts (see below) after you update your show.
• Get familiar with your sound editor—try to play a round with it a few times before taking the full leap into the podcast.
• If you wish for the RSS feed to work in Apple iTunes, you must add special field
• Make sure the RSS podcast feed is valid.
• Make sure your podcast is hosted by a reliable server that can handle huge bandwidth spikes. Be wary of cheap hosting services will not work for this.
• Be exciting—always have something fresh and new to talk about and bring guest on to diversify the conversations
• If you’re playing music, make sure to get the rights to the song or songs you wish to play

URL ADDRESS: http://www.digitaltrends.com/how-to/how-to-make-a-podcast/2/

What is Video Blogging? (posted by ~Aja)

Teachers Are Using Video Blogging in Their Classrooms 

 

How Are They Doing It?

There are teachers from all grade levels and even college professors are using this method to teach certain aspects of their course content. You can find videos online designed to teach kindergarten students the letters of the alphabets. There are videos that cover different aspects of science, such as space, the structure of atoms and gene splicing. I found several videos pertaining to my career, agriculture education and FFA. Several FFA chapters and/or agriculture instructors have posted videos to YouTube promoting the various activities that they take part in. This is a great way to gather ideas for your own chapter to use. The FFA Creed is a very popular topic on these vlogging web sites. There are several renditions of the FFA Creed presented by FFA members from all across the country. This could be one way to show a freshman the proper way to speak, stand and present the Creed when preparing for that career development event.

URL Address: http://www.squidoo.com/Video-Blogging-In-Education

What is Vimeo?

Vimeo is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos. It was founded by Zach Klein and Jakob Lodwick in November 2004. The name Vimeo was created by co-founder Jakob Lodwick and is a play on the word video, inserting the word "me" as a reference to the site's exclusive dedication to user-made video, and is also an anagram of "movie."^[1]
Vimeo does not allow commercial videos, gaming videos^[2], pornography, or anything not created by the user to be hosted on the site .^[3]

URL Address: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimeo

What is Sibelius? (posted by ~Aja)

  

Sibelius 6: Notation Software

  

No more cleaning up scores

Only in Sibelius: Magnetic Layout takes care of almost every detail of score layout for you - so effortlessly, you’ll hardly notice. As you write, it gives everything just the right amount of space and avoids collisions – producing beautiful results. This one feature saves you up to half your writing time.

Track changes and compare versions

Only in Sibelius: Have you ever written something better the first time around? Versions keeps track of revisions to your score, lets you look back at earlier versions of it, and see what changes were made since. Collaboration becomes a joy, and you can even add sticky Comments to leave notes for yourself, or others.

 

Conduct your scores

It’s time to take to the podium! Live Tempo lets you conduct the playback of your score to produce a nuanced, musical performance. Simply tap a key on your computer keyboard, MIDI keyboard or foot pedal, and Sibelius follows your beat.

 

Great new sounds – in no time

Take a listen…

Experience the new piano
in Sibelius 6 »
More sounds...

High-quality playback now needs no set-up at all – just hit the space bar, and Sibelius plays back using amazing sampled sounds. High-quality playback is more seamlessly
 integrated than ever, thanks to the latest technology from Digidesign’s AIR team.

Sync with sequencers and DAWs

Only in Sibelius: Add a live performance to an audio recording, or sync a recording with your score playback. You can do all of this and more thanks to ReWire support, which lets you sync Sibelius playback with products like Pro Tools, Cubase, Logic, GarageBand and more.

 

Beautiful Keyboard & Fretboard windows

If you prefer using a keyboard or guitar to notation, these beautiful new windows are ideal. Simply click on the keys or frets to input notes and chords – or “play” your computer’s QWERTY keys just like a piano! They’re great for teaching, too.

Easy chord symbols & guitar diagrams

Chord symbols and guitar chord diagrams can now be created quicker than ever from your computer keyboard, MIDI keyboard or MIDI guitar. They also feature many enhancements and extra notations, including guitar scale diagrams. 

What is Finale? (posted by ~Aja)

What’s New in Finale 2011?

The premier family of Music Notation Software.

Finale 2011 offers you the flexibility, freedom and power to create any music you can imagine. From lyrics and staff layout to Garritan sounds and new fonts, Finale 2011 is more intuitive and efficient.

Music comes alive with Finale.

Finale provides easy access to everything you need to compose, arrange, play, and print music. Whether you’re creating orchestra film scores or .MP3 files for your iPod, your music comes alive with Finale. Preferred by musicians worldwide Finale is the world standard for music notation software. More than 2.5 million professional and aspiring musicians, composers, engravers, arrangers, and educators use the Finale family of notation products. Finale is for everyone Finale 2011 provides you with the flexibility, freedom and power to create any music you can imagine. Instead of forcing you to adapt your creative process to the software, Finale adapts to you. The result? You can quickly and easily turn your inspiration into applause.

URL Address: http://www.finalemusic.com/default.aspx

      ____________________________________________________

Example of Finale 2010  - Song - by websurfur10
URL Address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UssFVrnUz4Y&NR=1