This year my district joined the many others across the nation by putting in interactive whiteboards in the classrooms. We went with some touch screen Promethean Boards, and so far it's been pretty nice. I do enjoy getting to write on PowerPoints, or having students draw diagrams that go along with word problems, it's really fun! But when you're done with direct instruction and you move to independent practice, then you have to pull up the web page that has the count down timer, you've got to repeat your directions 10 different times, tell the kids to be quiet every 5 minutes, give your behavior expectations, and no matter how many times you've pointed out the location of the clock no student will ever look at it because 'I don't know how to tell time on that clock'.
Instead of worrying about all of that, there's one website that you can go to:
The site comes with 10 built in applications.
Each of the apps serves a unique purpose instead of having to use a bunch of different websites. This has saved me time because I'm not having to answer the same questions 10 times, and it lets me focus on helping the students with their work. I'm going to be honest and tell you that I don't use all of the different apps, but I will explain them to the best of my ability.
- Random Name Generator- Instead of using the popsicle sticks to call on students this could be a replacement. You paste in a copy of your roster and it gives you a random name from your list. Downside is that if you're like me and you have several classes it doesn't work so great. The Dice roller would be great if I taught probability, I could see this being easier than passing out a die to groups of students and telling them to start rolling. (I don't use this app)
- Sound Level- if you have a microphone attached to your screen it works. You can set the appropriate noise level you want and the bar turns red when the kids go over that range. (I don't have a microphone on my screen so I can't use this)
- QR Code- if you are having your kids go to a certain site and you're tired of them typing it in wrong and tiny.url isn't working all you have to do is type in the website you want them to visit and it will create a QR Code for that specific site for the kids to scan. (I don't use this one)
- Drawing Window- there are two different sizes for the drawing window, but they both work the same way. The kids like using them more than I do. It's a little basic but it gets the job done.
- Text box- I use this for all of those directions that kids ask for 12 times, like page numbers. Now they know where to look when they have a question about what they're supposed to be doing. Of course you can use it for so much more than that.
- Work Symbols- these are to set behavior expectations for students. Again so you don't have to repeat yourself a bunch of times. My students told me that these seemed better for Elementary kids and they don't like it when I use them.
- Traffic Lights- I have no idea how I would use them in the classroom, but I'm sure someone does.
- Timer/Stopwatch- pretty self explanatory. It's a big display so it's easy to see across the room. I don't like that when its done ticking all you get is a little bell chime. Still works well, although sometimes it's a little glitchy and doesn't work well on touch screen.
- Clock- I like that the clock has both the digital and analog clock screen. It also has 12 and 24 hour modes if you're in to that kind of thing. It does also have the date on it, but it's small and hard to see sometimes, as one of my coworkers learned the hard way when an administrator took off points from her evaluation for not having the date posted.
- Background- I like the background changer because there are 35 different ones to choose from. My favorite one is the waterfall that is a GIF and you can relax as you watch the water cascade down (5/5 stars). Or you can go on a journey across the world with scenes from The Outback, Rome, Paris, New York, India and so much more.
I learned about ClassroomScreen from the technology specialist at my school. He noticed that some of the teachers were hesitant to use their new whiteboards when we still had the old school projectors hooked up. This was a great way for teachers to play around with the new hardware, while also learning about a new resource to use in their classroom. Even if you don't have an interactive screen, this would work great with regular projectors. I suggest taking some time to play around with it, or letting your students run wild with it. Either way it's something that I use in my class almost everyday, and I can't recommend it highly enough.
Happy Learning,
Casey
