Notes from the IWB Network Meeting – Weds 25th April 2012
Present:
Glenn (St Peters), Mike (Linton), Paul (Longsands), Rachel
(Cottenham), Sarah (Ely), Simon (King Edwards), Fran (Parkside), Mark
(Comberton)
Thanks to Sarah for hosting the meeting (and for
providing cake!).
The focus of the session was Geometry.
Mark:
Two features of the SMART notebook can be used together
to make tetrominoes and then pentominoes.
One is ‘infinite clone’ – start with a single square and set up infinite
clone (right click the square, or tap the square to select and then click the
arrow in the top right-hand corner).
This allows lots of squares to be dragged from this one. The other is ‘alignment’. In some versions of the notebook this is
found under ‘View’, in others under ‘Format’.
Choose ‘show guides for active objects’ and ‘snap objects to
guides’. This allows the squares to be
joined together easily.
Rotations are very basic on the notebook software. If you want a shape to rotate around a
particular point, because the software will only let it rotate around the
centre of the object you need to create a larger object that has the point to
be rotated around at the centre of the object.
An easy way to do this is to copy the shape, put it the far side of the
centre of rotation from the shape, colour it white, and then group it to the
original shape. The combine object now
rotates as desired. This is only a
work-round, though, and must be set up in advance!
Vectors work brilliantly on the IWB. Set up a couple of vectors, then put them on
infinite clone and demonstrate the rules of vectors by dragging multiple
copies.
Fran:
Cabri-3D is cool!
It is worth getting for sixth formers to use and great to use for
younger pupils, but the cost may be prohibitive if it will just be used with
KS3 and KS4.
Use ActivInspire Promethean software for rotations! It will allow you to set up a centre of
rotation and to rotate a shape around that point. The centre of rotation can then be moved and
the shape rotated again. This is
particularly good for loci work with, for example, a rolling square.
Rachel:
The centre of rotation can also show where the line of
reflection symmetry goes. This is very
good when reflecting pictures.
Fran:
Make a button and add an action, like reflect, to make
this quicker to access.
There are lots of great effects that are possible on
ActivInspire.
Glenn:
Cut corners off a triangle and rearrange to show that the
angles add to 180 degrees.
Do this by setting it up in advance with a copy of the angle
on top of each vertex – drag these and rotate as necessary.
Mark:
Can use the camera tool to take a picture of these. Beware – on SMART to get the image from the
camera tool showing at the same size you need to set it to be at 100% and not
at the default “page width”. If you take
a picture using the rectangle version of the camera you can then right-click
and ‘set transparency’, allowing you to make the border parts transparent so
they will overlap nicely.
Fran:
The transparency tool will also allow shapes with holes
in to be created – this has lots of uses.
Taking a picture and rearranging is also useful for
things like showing the area of a trapezium.
Sarah:
NGfL Cymru has lots of excellent materials. http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/
Next Meeting:
This will take place on Weds 4th July at
Cottenham Village College, from 4:30 – 6pm (thanks to Rachel for hosting).
The focus will be on Handling Data (as originally
advertised) or on Algebra (from the session cancelled earlier in the year).
At the start of the session we will ask participants to
share their problems/requests/demands.
This might be a lesson idea and a question about how the IWB can be used
effectively as part of the lesson. The
group will then work on solving that particular problem during the session.
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