Assignment #5

For my presentation I did a SMART Board activity on the Spanish Flu. Actually it is more of a quiz, but at least it is a fun quiz.
For starters, I had to learn more about the Spanish Flu then what I had already known (which was very little). Next I started playing around more with some of the functions of the SMART Board. I downloaded the Lesson Activity Toolkit 1.0 that Prof. Sorenson provided to me on a link. On top of all the "Essentials for Educators" pictures, the Toolkit provided a lot more options to use for this activity. There are games, activities, and what I found most useful were the tools and activities. In the "Tools" icon was a set of pages titled "Notebook Files and Pages." For my first page I used one of the activities called "Balloon pop" It was set up for a vocabulary lesson, so I altered it to relate to my lesson. On the page is a question and underneath it are eight balloons, each with an answer written on them. When the balloon is clicked on it pops, revealing a check mark if correct or an X if incorrect.
The next page in the lesson I used the "Multiple Choice" option under the "Activities" icon in Toolkit. It allows you to type in a question and underneath it are four possible choices. When editing, after you put in the possible answers, it asks you to select the box number with the correct answer. I ended up doing four different questions, which are all contained in the same slide. When an answer is correctly chosen, it goes to the next question until all of the answers are correctly chosen. Then it gives a final score of how the person did on the quiz.
The next page I did is a fun game using the "Blue-Vortex Sort" option under the "Activities" icon. This gives the student a number of words and beneath them are two vortex traps. The student then drags a word to the correct vortex. If it is correct it swallows the word, but if it is incorrect it spits the word back out. To edit this activity, each vortex needed to be labeled (it could have allowed more room for letters) then it allows you to create the words to go inside the each vortex (the left labeled Vortex 1 and the right labeled Vortex 2).
On the fourth page I chose a blank map of the United States with the outline of the states in the "Essentials for Educators" icon. I used the "Question Flipper 2" in the "Tools" portion of the Toolkit. On one side I typed the question I wanted to ask, then when clicked, the box flips over revealing the answer to the question, which I obviously had to type into the box. I also added the abbreviation for ten of the U.S. states to narrow down the possible answers to the question. The student puts a smiley face on what they believe is the correct state, and then clicks on the flipper to see if their answer is correct.
The last slide I used the "Click and Reveal" boxes to insert a question and to cover the answer to the question. A blue box covers the question and answer then, when clicked, they are revealed. I also, for the first time, saved an image that I found online to "My Pictures." I was then able to add this picture to my slide (which was the answer to the question) using by clicking "Insert" then "Picture File" on the tool bar. I was also able to save a clip from YouTube for the first time to "My Video" (which I might add took for ever to figure that one out). I then inserted a link to the clip again using "Insert" on the tool bar.
Once I navigated around the Toolkit in SMART Board, I became familiar with most of the different options. I knew what kind of questions I wanted to ask, so then it became a matter of deciding which activity would go best in providing for each question. I was not comfortable at all, really, with the SMART Board stuff, especially the Toolkit that I added for this assignment. But with some practice, it was not very intimidating. I had a little trouble figuring out how to save pictures and video clips, since I had never done this before, but it was worth the time to figure out how to do so.
I love the SMART Board activities, and I think it will provide a better learning experience for students and also a better teaching experience for teachers. I had fun figuring out how to edit my lesson, and I think the finished product turned out pretty well.