Q7: Do you frequently offer control of the ActivPen to your students?

I think offering control of the ActivPen is key to students being more engaged.  If they aren't offered the opportunity to use the Promethean Board, they run the risk of being passive observers rather than participants.  I was in a training once with a middle school teacher who had a SmartBoard and his philosophy was, the students should be touching the SmartBoard more than the teacher.

Today, students were manipulating shapes to demonstrate addition and subtraction of fractions.  As a problem came up, one student was solving it on the Promethean Board, while others were doing it with manipulatives at their seats.  Students at their seats were checking the student up front, while also checking their own work.  The whole time they were staying on-task because they wanted to be the next one at the board.  Very engaging.

Q6: Student Engagement

 

Do your students seem more engaged since you have started using your Promethean Board? 

Yes, students seem more engaged.  The "clickers" are the best for instant feedback and engagement.  We just had P/T conferences and I heard from many parents saying that their son/daughter came home raving about the clickers.  I also had a student who, after his conference was over, ran to the Promethean Board to show his mom.  I gave him a blank flipchart and he demonstrated away, showing her how he had learned multiplication.

I have a question though for anyone who would care to answer:  Does the Promethean Board really engage more students? My answer is this...  I think the Promethean Board can still only engage one user at a time (with the "Dual User" feature it can engage two users).  It is still often a situation of 25 students in their desks, watching two users at the board.  I still need to be a good teacher and engage those students in their seats with questions that keep their minds active, so that they aren't just sitting there disengaged, hoping they will get chosen next.  Yes, engagement is higher because you can utilize all things that are on your computer, like images, video, flipcharts, websites, but it doesn't automatically improve engagement.  This is why I think the ActiveExpression Learner Response System is the best for student engagement.  They are really simple to use, you can setup a quick assessment on the fly, and every single student is engaged. Don't get me wrong, I am not looking for the "silver bullet" where --poof-- everyone learns without any effort from me.  That situation doesn't exist.  But I find myself going back and forth.  Some days I use it constantly, sometimes just jotting notes like I would on an old fashioned dry-erase board.  Other days I don't use it as much, going back to paper flip charts for groups to jot ideas and post on the wall. 

Engagement, ultimately, is a teacher quality.

Q5: Time Savers

Here is the question:  Which aspects of the software are the most effective time savers for you, allowing you to be more efficient with creation and delivery of content?

I think the biggest time saver is the "annotate over desktop" feature.  Funny, I was so confused by this at first and now I really like it.  I find myself showing students pictures, websites etc. and using this feature to point out key things that they need to know.

I also began using the Active Inspire clickers.  I was apprehensive because I thought there would be a lot of setup time.  But, I had a teammate who did it and said it was simple.  Sure enough it was, and I took a Friday to just hand them out and do some review of the content from that day.  I had a backup in case it didn't work.  We did some multiple choice, some T or F and then I asked students to text.  It comes so naturally to my third and fourth graders!  I now need to do a better job of integrating it into my lessons.  What a great way to do a quick review or a "ticket out the door" type of check-in after a lesson is over.

Q4: Favorite ActivInspire Tools

My favorite tools so far...

1. Timer/Clock:  I was using the timer found in the shared resources, but found out about the clock in today's Module 3/4 training.  The clock is found on the menu bar under "tools" then "more tools".  You can display an analog and/or a digital clock.  You can also have it count down like a stopwatch and then repeat automatically, or perform an action after the countdown, like move to the next slide.  Very basic and very useful.
2. Resource Browser:  I honestly think that Smart Technologies does this better than Promethean (it may be the only thing), but I DO love the resource browser. I can find gadgets like timers, dice and backgrounds.  Some of my favorites are the paper backgrounds.  I can make the board look exactly like my students' science notebooks and model how I want them to create entries.  I just found out that there are more resources to be downloaded at Promethean Planet, I will download them on Monday and maybe it will be even better.
3. Desktop Annotation:  I don't use it everyday, but when I need it I like how convenient this feature is.  I have been using it to annotate over math websites to demonstrate how to play math online activities and to annotate over maps to demonstrate scale.  The ability to save these annotations using the camera tool makes it extremely powerful.. I'm just not there yet.
   

Q3: Promethean Board vs. Dry-Erase White Boards

There are so many ways a Promethean Board is different than the dry erase board.  I think the first major difference is that everything can be saved.  Yes, I may be using my P-Board as a glorified whiteboard right now, but I can save my work from one day to the next.  So, if I begin a conversation with students about food chains, we can save and continue or review the next day.  I also created science groups on my glorified whiteboard, saved it and look at the groups every couple of days.

Another difference is the ability to move from the white board space to anywhere else on the computer or web.  Again, we have a conversation about food chains, then move over to a BrianPop movie about the topic.  Links can be embedded in flipcharts as well.

How about engagement?  If students know that they will have an opportunity to interact with the P-Board, they are all engaged.  With the "dual user" feature, I can hand pens to two students.  This week we experimented with the slate and the kids love it.  I found myself giving them tips on how to use it, but they are just fine experimenting and playing, this kind of stuff is in their blood!

And the thought of buying a lot less Expo markers doesn't break my heart...

Where do I want to be with my Promethean skills?

It is a couple of days after Christmas and the break is half over.  When I left my classroom last Friday they were in the midst of installing my Promethean board and the room was a disaster.  I am anxious to return sometime this week just to clean up and arrange my room with this new awesome technology.

As soon as I return I want to become proficient in the use of the PB.  In my experience it is best for me just to dive in and start using it.  I often project images of our class blog or wiki so I can demonstrate how to do something or show a really good comment from a student.  I see myself doing simple things like this initially just to get used to using it and for my students to get used to seeing me use it.  There are great interactive math sites that I can use on the board I can also use initially.  Then I am anxious to begin to plan with the PB in mind.  I want to write math or science lesson plans as PB files so that there is much more interactivity in my classroom.  I think it would be ideal if the students were using it as well, but with the SmartBoard, it was very difficult to have more than one student at a time use it.  Some thoughts for math and science:

•  Interactive manipulatives for math using EM Games or the Virtual Manipulatives math site.
• Math warm up - Putting a system in place where I put my warm up on the PB and begin my lesson there.
  
• Science videos with students circling key parts that demonstrate a concept.
• Class created files throughout a science unit beginning with KWL, adding concepts, ending with key points, vocabulary.  This way, when I want to teach it next year, I have a document of what I did.
  
• Virtual Science Notebook?
  

Where are you now with your Promethean Skills?

I am very excited to have a Promethean Board in my classroom.  Actually, it isn't in my room yet.  It is being installed the Friday before winter break.  A sly ploy to try to get me to visit my classroom when I should be on break?  I don't know, but I normally do not look forward to the end of a break.  In January however, I will be eagerly anticipating the opportunity to begin playing with my new Promethean board.

The boards are being installed in mine and 5 of my colleagues classrooms as we speak through a Morgridge Family Foundation Matching Grant.  I have agreed to 45 hours of training in the next year so that I can get up to speed.

Over the last two years, I had the pleasure of having a SmartBoard in my classroom when I taught at Alsup Elementary School in Adams 14.  I suspect that the Promethean Board is very similar to the SmartBoard, but I am anxious to figure out the differences.  The Promethean board I am getting is much bigger than my SmarBoard was.  It also has a fixed-mounted projector at the top of the board, which makes it much more stable, and much easier to stay out of the way of the projection.  My SmartBoard had to be re-oriented several times during the day because of the projector getting bumped.

I will be contributing to the DPS Promethean Blog and Promethean Users Wiki throughout this process so that participants (100 or so) can share ideas and lesson plans.  Many more updates to come...