Teachers who attend our Summer Institute in Palo Alto become NGPF Fellows the following school year -- this Fellowship includes presenting with us at PD sessions, offering NGPF feedback on products, writing guest blog posts, ... the list goes on. Today features a Tech Tool Review from James Redelsheimer of Robbinsdale Armstrong High School in Plymouth, MN. Here's what James has to say...

Tech Tool:   Smart Board / Smart Board Notebook Software

Cost:  Varies: Many schools have them installed in all rooms.

Use Case:   I like to use the Smart Board to review important concepts utilizing the interactive and intuitive features of Smart Board Notebook software. For example, having students come to up to the Smart Board and touch and drag words to a correct column, or shifting a demand or supply curve to the right or left. It’s also great to use when playing a review game with supply and demand curves such as this game. Also, if you have bad handwriting (like me) you can write a term, and convert it into typed words.

Implementation Guidance:  The major implementation is becoming familiar with the Smart Notebook software. The best feature of Smart Notebook (in my opinion) is how easily it is to drag and move terms or lines around with ease. Students can easily figure this out, but the most important thing is for the teacher to become comfortable using Smart Notebook. It really is easy to use, just begin by playing around with the features. For example, just type in a term, click outside of the text box, and the term is easily moved around the screen by touching the Smart Board.

Pitfalls to Avoid:  Make sure to orient the screen before use, so when students touch the screen they are able to move items easily. Also, when you are writing on the Smart Board with a pen, you set it down before using the touch features to drag items.

Example You Have Used/Created:

• Reviewing the characteristics of different types of IRA’s on the top, and students would come to the board and drag to the correct column as a review.
• Playing supply and demand baseball by having teams come to the board and moving the curves the correct direction.
• Using with a lecture highlight terms using the creative pen feature.
• Using the word recognition feature. In the example below, I wrote Hello by hand, then clicked the drop-down arrow top right, and the first option is “recognize Hello” - Just click on this and a typed word automatically appears, a perfect tool for those who don’t have great handwriting!

About the Author

Jessica Endlich

When I started working at Next Gen Personal Finance, it's as though my undergraduate degree in finance, followed by ten years as an educator in an NYC public high school, suddenly all made sense.