My Continuing Smartboard Odyssey

Today the students took control of the Smartboad and the Ustream Channel.  They were the ones correcting their work and it went OK.  I need to get them to practice writing more on the board.  There is a skill to not touching the board with their hand.  After yesterdays post on using Ustream I received a comment from Ian H.  He recommended  Webcam Max as a PC alternative to using Camtwist to stream the desktop to ustream. 

The kids took control and here is what they did. I use links and screen captures because the old Macs in my room do not like to wait and process all the embedding. 

Correcting Question 1

Correcting Question 2

Correcting Question 3 and beyond

Using Ustream in the Classroom.

I love my Smartboard.  I use it extensively to connect my lessons to the web.  Slides go to slideshare and video is streamed and recorded through ustream.tv. I use ustream instead of the smart recorder because the recording is instant and you are able to embed the video into blogs and wikis immediately.  Here is how I do it.

Attached to my smartboard is a Logitech Camera.

I use this as my mic and as my streaming camera.  I could use it to capture student work being done in the class. I have had students make videos using this device.

Now I use Camtwist to capture the desktop.  This allows me to use the camera's audio and to capture all that happens on the smartboard instead of filming the board from afar.

This is what the camtwist setup looks like for me.

Now I am able to select Camtwist from the ustream menu.  This is my video input.  I use the camera as my audio and I have an instant screen recorder.

For those of you on PC's I will have to figure out how you use your screen casting abilities.  Camtwist is only for Macs.

Tomorrow gets kids involved in the recording process.

Streaming, Smartboards and Mini lessons

I am going to do some innovative thinking over the next few weeks.  Most of it surrounding smartboards and streaming.  Hoping to get kids to create mini lessons and post them to ustream, or have their mini lessons done live in class to ustream. 

This should be an interesting week.  I know this is a small post but I think it is important to get back into the blogging spirit again.

Most of the work will be initally housed at the Sargent Park Math Zone

How I use my smartboard

I have been blessed this year to have a smartboad in my room. Last year I had one and I had to share it for the second half. Our school bought 3 mini smartboards this year and this has allowed me to keep my board for a longer time.

Darren wrote a post about how he uses his smartboard to teach his lessons. He is a master of the art of using this technology. I still use it mostly as a whiteboard without ink. But I do use it to broadcast my lessons to the class blog. Using a free program called Camtwist I broadcast my desktop to ustream and one lesson a day gets posted to the class blog.

There is no rehersal for this process. It is just teach the way you always would. Talk about open walls. I have a room that is fully transparent. (The irony is that my room is like a coffin. No windows :) )

I will take you through the steps so that you too can broadcast your classes over the internet.

• Step 1 Get Camtwist or another program that allows you to broadcast your desktop. I have not used it but webcamMax might work on a pc.
• Step 2 Get a ustream or Mogulus account. Both of these sites are free and you can broadcast and record your lessons there. The beauty is that they have the video on their servers not your harddrive.
• Before you open your broadcast at ustream you need to have camtwist open to a setting that selects your desktop as the video source.
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• Make sure you have an audio source. I use a logitech camera attached to the smartboards mac mini. The logitech camera works well for capturing video and is excellent for sound.
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• One thing I learned the hard way was this takes lots of RAM. I only had 512 in the mini to start. Now I have over a gig and the machine works flawlessly. Before I upgraded the RAM it would crash regularly.
  
• On the smartboard I have firefox open and the smartnotebook open. You are ready to record and have fun. Using the f3 fuction on a mac allows you to go between windows at will.
• Remember to save the recording when you are finished. Ustream give you an embed code but it is missing the last . You have to add that yourself. I prefer to do a screen capture of the video and add a link to the picture. This takes less time to upload when you are viewing the blog.

I love my smartboard. Broadcasting my lessons make my teaching transparent and allows students to relearn the lesson if necessary. Students who are sick often use the lessons to stay caught up..... if they feel like it ;-)

Here is an example of one of my lessons.

I normally add the slides from the smartboard with the ustream at the class math hub.

I teach great kids

Part of the goal of the Grade 8 team this year is to dive headlong into Inquiry based learning. The first step happened this week. All the Grade 8 students researched four charities in our city. The students created posters and pamphlets for the school. A group of students from each of the 4 rooms created google presentations to show the rest of the school in mini assemblies in my room. The first two assemblies happened today. I am very impressed with the presentations that were created and the powerful message being sent to the rest of the school.

I think the larger project "2 minutes to make a difference" that will happen after the winter break. Here the students will choose something that they will do to "make a difference". They will document it and create a movie.

Here is the ustream of today's presentation.

How open are you

My good friend Darren Kuropatwa who got me blogging in the first place introduced me to the power of the smartboard. He would create these great lessons and then upload them to slideshare. This was a great way to use the technology in the class to keep the doors open 24 hours a day. Here the students could see what happened in class. Darren also experimented with digitally recording his voice and podcasting each class. This was alot of work. Enter Camtwist and Ustream.

816 Mult Int Part 1

View SlideShare document or Upload your own. (tags: spmath multiplying)

Last year I tried to broadcast my lessons on ustream using camtwist to capture the desktop aka the smartboard and my voice (no kids faces on tv... nice for the censors). My mac mini only had half a meg of ram and the smartboard and the ustream were constantly competing or the small amount of ram that I had. The experiment was finished when they removed my smartboard last year to be used in a different class.
Live Streaming by Ustream.TV
This year I got my smartboard back and some more ram for the mac mini. Everything is going smoothly now and a weeks worth of lessons are archieved at ustream. This is an easy way to keep your lessons and for student to access work when they are not at school. I am loving this. You might want to try it too.

Live from NY... no Winnipeg its Smartboard Live

I tried an experiment today. I finally got ustream to work in my class under much protest. It took forever to load and man it was making my mac mini chug like a Dell using Vista (had to say it). But it worked and wow talk about an instant remedy for kids who are absent in class.

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Here is my ustream about why this is a good idea.


Now this technology will allow you to project all that you do on your interactive boards to your class blog hub for all to see. I have the luxury of having 4 classes a day taking the same thing. So you do your minilecture...lesson or what ever. Have it on the whiteboard and presto with the help of ustream you have an answer to "Mr. Harbeck what did I miss?" Now Sally did you check out the math hub and the video of todays lesson.

Using Camtwist to project ones desktop eliminates the testy subject of student identity. You will have voices but no faces. Just like an old radio drama.

I will try this again if I can get camtwist to work. It stopped working part way through the afternoon.


Next on the agenda might be Mogulus. I have a channel and will figure out how to work this app. I think it might be time for the Math Action News at 6. With your hosts Frank Fraction and Donna Decimal..... Hmmmmm
Enjoy