aV & DISPLay Bridget Mccrea
8 Great Tools for Classroom Presentations
Teachers are pairing hardware and software to create lessons that engage students and inspire collaboration.
reating classroom presentations that keep tary class in Lambertville, MI. By combin-
students engaged and on task is getting ing her classroom Smart Board and Board
complicated for K-12 teachers, who have Builder, Lykowski can upload short video
to rise above myriad distractions to get clips, reading materials and graphics show-
their points across. Fortunately, there are a number of ing the various components of a mountain or
hardware and software tools available that can help elements of common land plains. “It’s a nice,
teachers break through the distractions and effectively easy and tidy package,” said Lykowski, “that
engage students in class. Here, educators share eight helps me tie everything together on a single
presentation tools that they’re using successfully in platform and present it in a very intuitive and
their 21st century classrooms. logical way.”
Board Builder clickshare
Described by its maker as a “modern day poster Designed by Barco, ClickShare is a wireless
[Link]
board,” Discovery Education’s Board Builder is a digi- presentation and collaboration product de-
tal platform (similar to Glogster) that lets teachers se- signed to let multiple users on multiple com-
lect backgrounds, text formats, templates and color puters collaborate on a single projector. The
schemes. Students can customize their collection of solution projects content from a laptop, tablet or smart- using ClickShare for screensharing of live television and
resources, tell their own stories and upload their own phone onto a screen with a single click. Students and lectures during student workshops. According to opera-
images, videos and documents to personalize their teachers can use the equipment to share information tions administrator Tiffany Yandell, ClickShare lends itself
boards. Second-grade teacher Cheryl Lykowski uses and ideas to create an ongoing conversation. Since the to collaboration because teachers can deliver a lecture
the presentation tool with her Monroe Road Elemen- fall of 2013, The Charter School of San Diego has been and students can handle the related coursework via one
20 | JUNE 2014
aV & DISPLay
35th Annual National Conference
streamlined process. “Because it’s ‘live’ read&write Gold
learning, it really has helped improve Texthelp’s literacy software for the
student engagement,” said Yandell. “At desktop, cloud and iPad helps strug-
the same time, students are also learn- gling readers and writers, students
ing how to do their own presentations.” with learning disabilities and English
January 20–23
language learners access the sup- ORANGE COUNTY CONVENTION CENTER ORLANDO, FL
educreations port tools they need in and out of the
An interactive whiteboard app that classroom. At The Glenholme School
captures voice and handwriting and in Washington, CT, teachers combine
Mark your calendars and plan
allows teachers to produce video their Smart Boards with Read&Write to join your peers and colleagues
at FETC 2015.
lessons that they can then share on- Gold to help the school’s special
line, Educreations is another one of needs student population graphically FETC is the content-rich international
conference that brings together
Yandell’s favorite presentation tools. organize their writing (by concept, education and technology leaders to
exchange techniques and strategies for Use 2014 PD Funds to
“What’s cool about it is that you can mind map or outline). The software teaching and learning success.
Attend FETC 2015!
record your presentation,” she pointed also predicts words and manages
June 30 marks the end of the FISCAL
out. A teacher who is conducting a text-to-speech for students handling school year. If you act now, you can
use unclaimed 2014 dollars to attend
short one-on-one lesson with a stu- issues like dyslexia. Educational Direc- FETC 2015.
dent, for example, can hit “record,” tor Sharon Murphy said, “It’s made
walk the pupil through a problem, our students’ lives much easier, and
Check with your administrator to
record his or her instructions and then makes presentations much simpler to see if there are any outstanding RTT,
Title 2, Title 3 or STEM grant funding
save it for later use. “The student can develop and get across to students.” remaining for 2014.
go back and rewind it — kind of like For more ideas to get
a YouTube video,” Yandell said. “The iMapBuilder your registration started,
learning stays with them, they learn at An all-in-one mapping software, iMap- visit [Link].
their own pace and they can watch it Builder allows users to design interac-
over and over again. It’s a great tool.” tive maps with pinpoints, heat maps,
PRODUCED BY
21 | JUNE 2014
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routes, zooming and other elements.
The maps are viewable on PCs, Macs
school in the region collaborated with
his high school students (who collabo-
Today [IT’S FREE!]
and mobile devices. Paul LaRue, a rated with one another in class) to cre- Choose a T.H.E. Journal Newsletter…
high school teacher at Washington ate a map of the surrounding county.
Court House City Schools (OH), has The map was later published on the T.H.E. News FETC Learning
been using the software with his social county’s travel and tourism website. Update Network
Spotlights the latest in technology Features FETC event speakers sharing
studies students. Recently, for ex- “It’s great to see students take owner- trends, tools and analysis for K-12 best practices, technology integration
instruction and administration. tips, thoughts and practical advice for
ample, third-graders from another rural ship of technology and create some- K-12 educators.
thing that actually has a purpose
WAtcHiNG tv iN cLASS to it,” said LaRue.
K-12 Mobile IT Trends
dyknow Classroom The latest information about
Research and best practices networking, databases,
Collaborative classroom man- for incorporating mobile hardware, developer tools,
technologies into K-12 data security, wireless,
agement software for K-12 instruction. virtualization and cloud
computing.
teachers and administrators,
DyKnow helps teachers like
Kamilah Chajin effectively T.H.E. 21st
collaborate and share infor- Century School Common Core
Focuses on smart classroom Tech Update
mation with students during technologies, e-learning tools, An in-depth view of the technology
audiovisual technologies, hardware, and professional development issues
short classroom periods. A
display devices, infrastructure and around implementation of the new
high school science teacher at the interactive classroom. Common Core State Standards.
David Posnack Jewish Day
VIDEO: In a video made with MaxCases, teacher School in Davie, FL, Chajin
Mark Hammons shows how to use apple TV and uses DyKnow in conjunction
an iPad as an interactive projector, document
camera and more. See all this month’s videos.
with her Epson BrightLink
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interactive projector to “cre-
22 | JUNE 2014
aV & DISPLay
ate a Smart Board out of a traditional whiteboard.” epson document camera demonstration, adding, “These lessons are hard to get
DyKnow opens up like PowerPoint, said Chajin, and After winning a free Epson DC-20 document camera across with a Smart Board or whiteboard, but when my
allows her to write on her computer (using a special last year, Rachel Perkins, a math teacher at Barren students can see exactly what I’m doing and how my
pen) and project the presentation onto the white- County High School in Glasgow, KY, began using it hands and the tools are positioned, it becomes pretty
board. Students receive the information on their to show geometric constructions, demonstrate proper self-explanatory for them.”
laptops or devices, and it’s also saved to a server compass and straight-edge placement and illustrate
for later use. “Even students who are home sick can the various origami folding methods that she uses as apple tv
participate and engage in my presentations,” said a teaching tool in geometry. Perkins said she saves A small device that connects via HDMI and WiFi or
Chajin. class time by being able to show all students a single Ethernet to stream movies, TV shows, sports, music
and YouTube videos, Apple TV is typically associated
aNd iNtroduciNg… with home television sets and computers. At asheville
Here are three new presentation options to explore: School (NC), however, teachers are pairing their Apple
AVer’s student engagement software system Sphere2 has two different elements: the Sphere2 Document Camera Soft- TVs with iPads and Smart Boards to create interactive
ware (for the teacher’s PC or Mac notebook) and the ClassSend app (for the student’s tablet, notebook or Chromebook). presentations for their students. Varghese Alexander,
The camera software integrates up to three live video streams (from document cameras, Web cams or TabCam Wireless director of technology and a high school math instruc-
Streaming devices) and multiple still images. It also allows teachers to send content via WiFi directly to students’ mobile tor, says the school’s math and humanities teachers like
devices. Using ClassSend, students can view, annotate and store lesson content in real time. the wireless aspect of the equipment and how it lets
With brightness up to 3,100 lumens and an ultrashort throw ratio of 0.28:1, Casio’s new LampFree Ultra Short Throw them demonstrate complicated topics using both inter-
projector was designed for the education market, where devices that can project content over a very short “throwing” nal and external sources (such as online videos). Alex-
distance are becoming the standard. Weighing less than 13 pounds, Casio’s XJ-UT310WN not only enables projection ander said, “We have one statistics teacher here who
from data files stored on a USB memory device, but also allows wireless connection to smartphones and computers via
uses his Apple TV in every lesson because it allows him
WiFi. The projector also lets teachers display content from a mobile device, which can also be used to control presenta-
to do anything he could do on a computer, only wire-
tions, eliminating the need for additional hardware and equipment.
lessly on a Smart Board in front of the class.”
Panasonic’s TH-80LFB70U Interactive LED Display has an 80-inch screen and features high-speed, multitouch inter-
active capabilities to promote collaboration. Students and teachers can draw and write directly on a document or image
Bridget McCrea is a business and technology writer in
on the screen, and wirelessly sync with Windows, Android or iOS devices using the embedded Miracast functionality.
Clearwater, FL.
23 | JUNE 2014 NEXT:
accessibility in the
flipped classroom
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