Technology Teaching Teachers (T^3): SMARTboard Training

This was not my first rodeo with SMARTboard, however I felt I learned a lot in the new Notebook and was able to experience the session with new eyes. As an undergrad I also attended the SMARTboard training with Dr. Smirnova; this was a few years ago when the boards were new to me. As I sat in the class and participated in the lecture I felt SMARTboard Technologies had updated quite a few things and added new features that would allow my students to be interested and interact during a lesson.

I have to say my favorite part was doing the magic messages by reveal. We used an example with a microscope and a flashlight. However, I tried to do a 3 layer effect where we would be able to find the butterfly under the microscope but I could not figure out the layering effect, I was able to hid the butterfly with a block of background color but I could not get the layers right to reveal with the microscope. This was frustrating and I was determined to figure it out, unfortunately I was not able too. This made me realize how much time I wasted on something that would be great but precious lesson planning minutes were wasted on something so small.

This is where I start to become conflicted with time and technology. We have the tools to create extremely interactive and time consuming lessons but how much time are we wasting on the actual details then on the material? Yes once it's done it is done and just needs to be tweaked but how much actual time should be used verses what is wasted?

Here I have attached a document of what we worked on:

Slide 1: just getting used to what is available