Sketchlot: A Free Whiteboard Website

With the free Web tool Sketchlot, you can create your “sketch” and share it with your students. They can then mark it up and send it back to you.  Suggested for teachers and students ages 8-18, Sketchlot is a Web application, not an app, and requires no installation or plugins. It works on computers, smart phones, and tablets. You can sign up your students with class codes. Examples of use include creating math questions, science diagrams, and text through Sketchlot.

now! Board for Interactive Classrooms

now! Board is a new portable technology that turns any surface into an interactive environment. It works with any projector and computer and can be used in classrooms, hallways, gymnasiums—wherever. The screen height can be adjusted according to room and student needs. It is extremely easy to use and at a price of $499, it can be an alternative to interactive whiteboards. Comments from teachers include the words: wonderful, amazing, and highly impressed. A teacher from Arkansas, who referred to the now!Board as a “cool tool”  said, “I was really surprised by how compact this gadget was. It’s about the size of a PB&J with the crusts of”, which makes it a perfect portable device for schools.

Low-Cost Portable Document Camera

Samsung Techwin has introduced an affordable document camera that’s compact, portable, and has excellent HD resolution and image quality. The new Samsung SDP-760 is not only budget conscious, but also user friendly and flexible. It has a weighted base, noise reduction technology, an 8x digital zoom lens, and can be operated with one hand. The camera works with interactive whiteboards and with the addition of Samsung’s App viewer, it can be used as a Webcam. The price is listed at $499.

Teachers Are Talking about Symbaloo

Symbaloo looks like one of those plastic puzzles with the tic-tac-toe squares. Of course, that’s not what you do with it.  It’s been called a Personal Desktop and a Visual Gathering Tool because you can fill in its board of empty squares with “tiles” that link to your favorite Websites. All you have to do is to select an empty square and create your “tile” by selecting from Symbaloo’s library, or if what you want is not available, you can make your own tile. If you teach American History, you might have a board (called a webmix) with tiles about Colonial Times, one filled with links to information on the War of 1812, and so on. You can move tiles around on your board, project Symbaloo on interactive whiteboards, use Symbaloo on computers and other digital devices, and share your favorite webmixes with others.  This free site also offers news highlights and major news.

When teachers began using Symbaloo, some suggested that a Symbalooedu should be available. The Symbaloo site for education is now ready for use and is free to individual educators for creating webmixes, webmix galleries, and sharing resources. Pricing, which allows student user accounts and options such as custom default content, branding, dedicated support, and analytics, is $34.99 per year for teachers and librarians and $.99 a user for schools and school districts. Lower pricing is available for a 2-year subscription.

Interested in Classroom Polling?

During November 2011 Turning Technologies is offering a series of one-hour Webinars designed to give a basic understanding of its product features and the learning strategies supported by these features. Information will include hardware setup, pre-presentation techniques, creating interactive presentations, facilitating presentations, generating reports and participant lists, priority ranking, competitions, demographics, comparative links, showbar, setting up connections, adding event codes, ResponseWare account administrator, license creation and activation, managing passwords, and responding with ResponseWare. If you are interested in learning about this polling system or enhancing your use of it, you can register online. If you can’t attend the Webinars, you’ll find Turning Technologies Tutorials of use.