Flipchart usefulness

I feel blessed and relieved to have the use of a Promethean Board in my classroom.  Unfortunately, I am the only teacher in first grade who has an actual board.  A few of my colleagues have the free version of ActivInspire and a few have the full version.  I sat down with one of my colleagues the other day to share this blog and ask for ideas on what else needs to be included as posts as well as what she has found to be the most useful flipcharts.
She told me hands down that the math flipcharts have been the most amazingly helpful flipcharts that have organized things and made teaching math so much easier.  Our school uses the enVisions program, the first version with newsprints, not the 2.0 version.  Having the mini-lesson chart, newsprints and all of the worksheets that go with each topic all together has made her math lessons so much easier and saved her a ton of time she told me.  Based on this information, I am going to work on a demonstration video of how I created a flipchart for a lesson within our math program.  There is a video component that is not available within my flipcharts because you have to be signed in to be able to view the video so the link to the video would not work unless we are signed in.
I have worried some about the copyright laws in using the enVisions created materials.  However, our school has a license for the online program and we buy the newsprints so my understanding is that as long as I am only sharing it with my colleagues, who have the legal right to use the program, I am ok. I will be using the image on my screencast but since people who do not have access t the program cannot print it out, it is not violated copyright.  Or so I think.

The next piece

Yesterday I was at school preparing for the next few weeks and ran into the IT department head.  He told me that the ipads that the PTF has bought for the first grade should be configured and available as soon as we go back to school after vacation.  This information will give me the next page that I will work on for this blog, using ipads in the classroom.  I have only had my personal ipad for a few weeks and have not used it very much.  I am now going to have to start learning about how to use it, what apps will be useful in our classrooms and figure out how to use apple classroom.

Another piece of information that I was given is that the Classflow tool that is at the top of flipcharts works with ipads!  Once I have experience in working with ipads, I can send questions to the kids using this tool and they can answer using their ipads.  I can't wait to try it.  (I'm also hoping to find a way to send a version of the phonics lessons to their ipads so they can practice dragging and dropping the words into the correct heading.)

Exploring tools

As I have created videos on the tools for ActivInspire, I have had to use some tools that I either don't usually use or that are new to me due to how I have created flipcharts in the past.  I feel excited to share ActivInspire with people since it is something that has helped me present information more easily to students as well as given me the opportunity to present lesson within a technological framework that more readily reflects the choices students make with their downtime-using some kind of screen.  I am learning about new ways to make flipcharts and really having to think about how I could use the tools to engage my students more.  This has been such a valuable project in making me look at how I use technology as well as how I teach.

Reflection on Videos

I have been enjoying making the videos for how to use ActivInspire and cannot wait to share with my colleagues.  This has been an affirmation that technology integration is the direction I would like to go.  After all, if it is fun to share via videos, working with people face to face will be even better!