Week+5

This week we looked at Smart board technology. Basically the board is really just a method to use your fingers to click instead of a mouse. The Smart notebook software is the real benefit, and is what makes the smart board a useful tool. With the software you can make attractive lessons having interactive technology literally at your finger tips. There is not much else to it. Working with the software can be done without the smart board and lessons can be planned at home, saved on a USB key and used at school the next day. I have experience using smart technology having designed a lesson plan for use with the board. Here is a link to a pdf version of my [|Lesson of Modelling Trig Functions.pdf] which I used on a smart board to instruct a class of grade 12 academic students in advanced functions at Ridgemont High School.

Benefits: Downfalls:
 * Ease of use.
 * Kinda cool to teach with.
 * Notebook software has nifty tools that can be used in any other software environment.
 * Cost is high.
 * Can become damaged with permanent markers.

=Plagiarism software turnitin.com= So this can prevent plagiarism and catch culprits. Equivalent to having a camera in the hallways monitoring people in anticipation that they will cheat or do something wrong. With today's information age I think its generally more important to educate students on correct practices rather than invest in ways to catch them but both would be good to use. This could be pretty helpful to teachers but I question how accurate it is.

=Markbook software= I used this software in my 1st practicum. Its pretty good, the interface could still use a lot of work. I will have to play around with it more to learn the ins and outs. I question how many know how to use the weightings and analysis functions and how many just opt to use the average. I really question how many teachers look at the mode and median when they evaluate final grades. In a lot of ways this software needs a user friendly help file (with videos). Or we could all just wait until Google makes something (Just kidding).