Good luck, NIU pre-service math and science teachers!

When I retired from my job as a full-time secondary math teacher, I guess I wanted a bit of a rest. I wanted to spend more time with family.

I also thought I would finally spend some time learning more about using new technology in classrooms. Weird, huh? Most people would probably want to step away from those things that had consumed so much time. But I do still love learning new things and sharing.

Over the past couple semesters, I have had the pleasure of working with math and science pre-service teaching students. I think back to those days when I was a new teacher. (Most of the parents of these college kids were babies at that time or not even here yet.) Two of my very good friends and former HS teaching colleagues are teaching these students at Northern Illinois University. They were excellent high school teachers, and I respected both of them for their subject knowledge and dedication to teaching.

My underlying messages to these new teachers - More learning takes place outside of the classroom than inside. Much of what you learn about using the advantages of technology you will need to learn in your own time. You are teaching at a very exciting time, yet with many challenges. Keep your passion alive.

One thing I do to help is sharing web sites that should help them get started. Good luck to these future teachers. The future is bright!

http://tinyurl.com/scienceeducniu
http://tinyurl.com/matheducniu
http://tinyurl.com/janetteachessmart

(Symbaloo is a great tool for sharing collections of web sites. One of those tools that every students should know about.)

SMART Notebook and MS Powerpoint

Do you have Powerpoint presentations with information that you would like to work into a SMART Notebook? Maybe there are images or text that you don't have time to recreate.

You can import these Powerpoint files directly into SMART Notebook using File/Import. However, there may be a slight glitch. I attempted this using SMART Notebook v. 10.8 in Windows 7 and MS Office 2010. I had saved the Powerpoint presentation as an PPT 2010 file, the default file type. The SMART Notebook translator was unable to import the file.

To get this to work, I had to save the Powerpoint file as a Powerpoint 97-2003 presentation file instead. After that, the import worked like a charm. For the most part this was not a problem, since importing these files to Notebook loses the animation and special effects used in Powerpoint. At least all the text and images came across nicely, and I can add the animation and special effects available in SMART Notebook.

Do you have SMART Notebook files that you need to pass on to a Powerpoint user? You can export the SMART Notebook file as a Powerpoint file. Open the file in SMART Notebook. From the File menu, choose Export..., then Powerpoint. Each page of the Notebook file is exported as a Powerpoint 97 slide. Again, you lose the interactivity from Notebook, but can add these effects in Powerpoint. Any interactive Java objects are left behind and replaced with blank space on the Powerpoint slide.

You don't have to completely redo those presentations.