SMART, SMART, SMART

We all remember last year's initiative that pledged to place a SMART Board in every classroom in Gaston County. As we enter the second year of this initiative for most teachers (and the first for others), I wanted to take a few minutes to remind everyone of a few resources that are available to you. Click through to read more!


First of all, by now all teachers should have visited our SMART Initiative wiki and completed the ten tasks assigned there. Even if you completed these long ago, keep this site bookmarked as it holds helpful information in case you ever need to revisit the basics. The next step for new SMART users would be to attend Level 1 (or Developing) training at your school. This training focuses not only teaching basic SMART Skills, but on how to create interactive and engaging lessons that can be used during every part of instruction. The most important part of these training days are to pay attention to the model lessons. We are using lessons that can actually be used in the classroom- and the point is to show you what we are looking for when you're using your SMART Board. The most important part of using a SMART Board? It should be, for the most part, students using the board. For those of you who have asked for a reminder of the skills covered in Developing level training, you can download the handout here. During these training days, we also take a look at the SMART Exchange, a wonderful place to find (free) lessons that have already been created. Some of these may be perfect to use as is, while others will put your newly learned skills to use as you edit them to make them your own.

After attending Developing training, there are a couple of options. For those of you who still need a little review or more time on the skills covered, you can enroll in an online refresher course- SMART 101. A new course starts at the beginning of November, so register soon if you'd like to attend! You can read about it and register here.

The next step in the process of becoming a proficient SMART user is to attend Level 2 professional learning. In these sessions, we still focus on creating interactive and engaging lessons, but test your skills a bit as we learn to do new things. If you've attended that training and need a refresher or want another copy of the handout, click here.

Finally, I want to leave you with access to a couple of other documents.

Creating Groups in SMART Notebook- this may be useful if you'd like to create just one lesson to use over the course of a whole day, several days, or for a whole unit. Grouping pages allows you to easily find exactly which part of the lesson you need on a given day.

Convert You Tube Videos for Use in SMART Notebook- you may have seen some great resources in You Tube, but we know it is blocked here. If you convert the videos you need at home, you can easily insert them into your SMART Notebook lessons.

What are your favorite ways to use SMART Notebook or your SMART Board in your classroom?