What a great day -- a full workshop with amazing teachers from the District School Board of Niagara! We spent the time exploring numerous ways to use their SMART Board from K-12, all subject areas.
As always, the experts from the classroom generated wonderful new lessons as we went through some sample files. A common question I get at such an energetic workshop is how do teachers efficiently share the lessons with colleagues -- both the ones created today, as well as those in the future?
This is a common obstacle to implementing new technology in education, and one that can be overwhelming. Let's face it - many teachers are already spending countless hours worrying about their own lessons. As such, sharing ideas and lessons with others is a great idea in theory, but without structure and organization can result in frustration for all involved.
Here are a few of the most popular ways to combat this common issue:
1. Make the most of SMART Exchange (http://exchange.smarttech.com)
- search by curriculum standards
- browse by subject area, grade level, topic
- tag your own files with identifiable key words (such as your school district's name) to make sharing with local colleagues more efficient
- 'recommend' good files, then search by 'most recommended'
2. Host a file-sharing area on your network - either using webspace or a shared drive
- teachers may feel more secure not sharing some of their 'rough drafts' of lessons with more local colleagues, rather than publishing them for all the world to see
- easy for many teachers within a division to access, update and re-post with little to no need for technology "know-how"
3. Use a file-sharing site online (such as drop.io)
- the free version allows for 100 megabytes of space; a fairly low-cost upgrade allows for an expansion of this space, with plans beginning at 10 gigabytes
- the name of your drop.io is easily customizable, making sharing within a district easy and effective
Whatever method you and your colleagues decide to use, the main point is that sharing lessons, tips and tricks amongst the experts in your division (and larger PLN) is crucial. Open and shared collaboration is one of the key components to the continued success of using new technology (including SMART Boards) in the classroom.
Maybe it's time we took a look back at one of the key lessons we learned in Kindergarten...
Vanessa
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