Notes from the IWB Network Meeting – Weds 4th July 2012

Notes from the IWB Network Meeting – Weds 4^th July 2012

Present:

Kathryn, Janet, Louise, Simon, Rachel (Cottenham), Glenn (St Peters), Mike (Linton), Paul (Longsands), Sarah (Ely), Fran, Alissa (Parkside), Mark (Comberton)

Thanks to Rachel for hosting the meeting.

The focus of the session was Algebra.

Mark:

A photo-finish from the Athens Olympics 100m.  Asking what this shows (without revealing the source) provides some interesting discussion:

How do we know it is a sprint?

What do the vertical lines show?

How do we know who won?

How do we know, from this picture, who came second?  (we don’t)

How many runners are there?

Up to this point we had only used it as an image, so we discussed how to use the board to enhance the discussion. 

                Use the camera tool to take a picture of one of the runners and move it to help estimate how far behind the final runner is.

                Demonstrate that the width of the lanes can’t be used to help decide the margin of victory.

Rachel:

Rachel shared an nrich problem (http://nrich.maths.org/7283) that works very well when the pieces are created as separate rectangles on the IWB because they can be moved around to show the different possibilities.

The questions posed by nrich (and others) were typed on a slide for pupils to use.

Sarah:

Sarah uses geometrical diagrams to allow pupils to work on algebraic expressions.  For example, start with a square with area x and a quarter circle (radius the same as the side of the square) with area y.  Then make other diagrams.  Eg the area of a semi-circle is 2y, etc.

We explored how to make the fragment that has area (x – y) made by subtracting the quarter circle from the square.

Alissa:

Alissa shared a file that involved balancing animal pictures as a way of introducing and exploring simultaneous equations.  This worked very well.

Glenn:

Glenn showed a way of helping pupils to understand what is going on when trial and improvement is carried out.  He gave an example using n² + n = 25, showing a numberline from 0 to 10 and removing the sections that clearly didn’t work until he was left with the 4-to-5 section.

Then he had a new numberline that ran from 4 to 5 in tenths and removed sections of this.

We discussed whether the zoom function on SMART could be helpful.

Mike:

Mike described a way of helping pupils not to be misled into trying to simplify further an expression that is already in its simplest form.  For example, to show that 3x+2 is not identical to 5x, Mike draws a line that he labels as being of length 1, another line (of a different, non-integer length) that he labels x and then clones these and makes a line to demonstrate the length 3x+2 and another, below it, to demonstrate 5x.  The lines are different.

An extension to this can show that x² + 3x is not the same as 4x²

Rachel:

Using photographs of celebrities Rach used the camera tool to take a picture of one half, copied and reflected it and used this to test the idea that symmetrical faces are considered to be more attractive.

She then allowed pupils to use photos of themselves …

Next year:

This was the final meeting for this academic year.

Next year we will meet on four occasions as usual.  Cottenham, Parkside and Comberton all indicated a willingness to host a meeting.

Thanks to all for their input during the year.

Notes from the meeting on Weds 25th April 2012

Notes from the IWB Network Meeting – Weds 25^th 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 4^th 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.

IWB Meeting Notes - 6th July 2010

Here are the notes from the IWB meeting held at Parkside Federation, Coleridge Campus on Tuesday 6th July 2010.

Apologies: Mike Furness (Soham), Louella Prince (Netherhall), Simon Palmer (KEVI), Alice Creswell (Parkside Fed)

Present: Andy Evans (Impington), Lydia Prosper-Grant (Kingsbrook, Northants), Richard Stuart, Fran Wilson, Jenny Everton (Parkside Fed), Sam Taylor, Richard Hunt (City of Ely), Ewen Chamberlain (Manor), Ella Kaye, Mark Dawes (Comberton)

Focus
For this meeting we focused on using the IWB for Number topics.

Richard S
On the ActivInspire software, objects can be given permission to go into particular containers. This allows exciting possibilities where numbers or shapes with particular properties can be moved to certain groups. Richard demonstrated this with factors and multiples of 6. Others were excited about using this to create Venn diagrams. This does not appear to be possible on a SMARTboard.

Prime primitives at www.ptolemy.co.uk/primitives are a visual way to show prime factorisations. They are like using an iPad up on screen!

Richard is also exploring the NRICH number plumber at http://nrich.maths.org/6926

Sam
Sam showed a number of useful SMART notebook techniques, which can also be replicated on the ActivInspire software.

These included:
using Infinite Clone
creating Venn Diagrams.
In the box – setting up a “box” into which certain numbers can be placed (this is done using layers)
Directed numbers – where hot and cold cubes are added to a pond and the temperature is adjusted on a Flash thermometer (which involved using two pens simultaneously!)
Hidden things – changing colours of text to be the same as the background. When the answer is believed to be correct the colour of the background is changed and text that gives the answer (and which was previously invisible) now appears.

Sam gave some feedback on an idea that cropped up in the last meeting. She is finding Prezi to be really fun to use.

Fran
Fran showed us the Dropbox website at www.dropbox.com which she is using (for example with Heads of Maths across the county) to share files.

Fran reminded us of the Standards Unit materials on the Keele website at www.iwbmathstraining.co.uk and then shared with us a similar file she had made that showed different ways of combining diagrams of fractions to demonstrate adding and subtracting. Promethean’s ability to snap to grid was particularly helpful here.

Fran gave a brief tutorial in how to make an “In the box” file. She likes to be able to take the front off the box to see what was allowed to go inside. On Promethean boards ‘order’ and ‘layers’ are different things.

Fran had hidden “zoomed” parts of a numberline by scribbling over them in white. Erasing this enabled the extra information to be seen.

Mark
Mark showed that a rudimentary “Snap to grid” does exist on SMART and that this is particularly useful for aligning one object with another. Richard pointed out that a hidden set of squares could therefore provide a work-round for the absence of proper snap-to-grid.

We discussed that in many situations low-tech is good, by looking at alternative ways of demonstrating how to multiply fractions.

SMARTnotebook v10 will import Promethean files directly, without needing them to be converted to PowerPoint first.

AOB
Thanks to Fran for providing refreshments.
Next year we will follow a similar pattern of meetings: Autumn, Spring, Summer i, Summer ii.

Meeting Tuesday 6th July 2010

The last meeting of this academic year will take place from 4:30 - 6pm on Tuesday 6th July and will be hosted by Fran Wilson at the Coleridge Campus of the Parkside Federation:

Coleridge Campus
Radegund Road
Cambridge
CB1 3RJ

Everyone with an interest in using an IWB in teaching and learning of maths is welcome to attend.

IWB Network Meeting - 11th May 2010

Here are the notes of the IWB Network Meeting held on 11th May 2010 at Parkside Federation (Coleridge Campus), with thanks to Fran for hosting.

Present: Fran Wilson (Parkside Fed), Nick Wong, Kate Bell (Longsands), Ewen Chamberlain (Manor), Mark Dawes (Comberton), Sam Taylor, Lisa O’Hora, Richard Hunt (City of Ely), Simon Palmer (King Ed VI, Bury St Eds), Chris Gratten (Netherhall), Rachel Clarke (Cottenham)

Apologies: Cecilia Freer, Sarah Pattison (Swavesey), Mike Furness (Soham)

1 Apologies

Amongst the apologies was a message from Cecilia, which was shared:

Please accept my apologies as unfortunately I can’t make this or the next meeting. I really enjoyed the last one and have been using some of the ‘reveal’ tips regularly.

2 Promethean/Activ

Fran has been trying out a new board and software that allows 2 pens to be used at the same time on a Promethean board.

Rachel asked how to use the magnifier on Promethean:

- press and hold to zoom

- zoom in on a protractor

Simon likes to customise the toolstore to include the tools he uses most often. You can also change the settings for the magnifier function:

studio settings à Tools à Page zoom speed …

If you click & hold right-hand button then it will zoom out slowly.

Simon sometimes sets up his slides with other things off the screen and brings them on using the zoom function.

We are not sure if this is possible in SMART …

3 Prezi

Tom showed us the website www.prezi.com , which does a similar job.

The user sets up the material they want to include and arranges it so it can be zoomed, rotated, etc. This gives some of the functionality of PowerPoint but has the advantage of not being linear, so people viewing it can go to particular parts of the presentation.

It was felt that there was considerable scope to use this with pupils, who could make their own revision materials, etc.

Using it online gives this its full functionality but it can also be downloaded.

4 VLE

Sam shared the ways she makes SMARTnotebook materials available for pupils to use at home. Pupils can download the student edition of SMART. The drawback of this that there is reduced functionality.

At City of Ely they have the full SMARTnotebook on the VLE for pupils to log into. They can open files but can also make their own and can save work directly onto the VLE. The students can type answers and finish diagrams, etc, or create their own files from scratch. These can be projected in class.

Pupils are able to use ICT at home and the lack of ICT access in maths lessons is less of an issue.

5 Websites

Richard showed us the National Learning Grid for Wales (which is available in English!). Either search for NGFL Cymru, or go to www.NGFL-Cymru.org.uk

• e-Chalk – Richard showed us rotations. It will show the construction lines too, if wanted.
• There is a nice protractor.
• Lisa likes the enlargements on NGfL Cymru. When using the negative scale factor the pupils respond particularly well.
• There is also some particularly nice material on Physics and Humanities that might be useful for maths lessons.

Mark showed www.colmanweb.com

• This includes a presentation of the investigation Frogs.
• Following on from last meeting (and the travel graphs), there are graphs showing how footballers run. These are accessed via the ‘geometry’ link.

Mark also showed the NCETM Mathemapedia entry called “Board Desk Head”. www.ncetm.org.uk/mathemapedia/BoardDeskHead

This includes Fran’s picture and links to lots of the Keele materials we have looked at in previous meetings. This was felt to be an important article.

6 Ways of using the board

Mark’s pupils have been learning how to use the functionality of the IWB, such as cloning. From an initial file that consisted of 9 pages of axes, the pupil were asked what happened to the equation of a straight line if the line was reflected in each axis, reflected in the line y = x, or rotated about the origin by 90°, 180° or 270°.

The pupils wrote up their ideas and cloned lines which they then reflected or rotated to back up their arguments.

This puts the pupils in control of the lesson.

Fran pointed out that the key thing – as with BoardDeskHead – is the maths that is going on. Sam shared data from her Masters work, where pupils remembered much more when the IWB was used.

Fran suggested that while “whizzy” is nice, the thing that helps the learning is the good use of the board to support mathematical learning.

We also discussed the idea that the dynamism/movement is what makes the use of an IWB so powerful. Moving something on the computer is different from moving it up at the board. There is more involvement if the board is being used.

Fran has the whole class working on the same task up at the whiteboard, solving one problem collaboratively. The pupils pass the pen between them and the teacher isn’t involved.

Sam does “pass the pen” with her SMARTboard, even though a pen is not required (because pupils could write on it with their fingers!).

7 GeoGebra

Nick showed a GeoGebra file to demonstrate expanding quadratics. The brackets are shown geometrically (like the grid method for multiplication) and when a point is dragged up at the board the algebra and the diagram change together.

Nick was worried that this might be too ‘busy’ and the group discussed ideas about simplifying it and whether having a particular numerical value for x was useful or not.

It was agreed that the interactive nature of the file was particularly nice.

IWB Network Meeting - 17th March 2010

Here are some notes about the IWB Network Meeting held on 17th March 2010.
Thanks to Sam for hosting this at City of Ely.

Present:
Sam Taylor, Lisa O’Hora, Richard Hunt, Luci Maltby (City of Ely CC), Rachel Clarke (Cottenham VC), Steve Gales (Sir Harry Smith), Louella Prince (Netherhall School), Graham Willis (Neale-Wade CC), Fran Wilson, Richard Stuart (Parkside Federation), Mark Dawes (Comberton VC), Tabitha George, Cecilia Freer (Swavesey VC).

During the meeting several people shared ideas/methods/materials.

Sam demonstrated the use of some of the features of the SMART notebook software.
• Use animations to reveal answers. Click on an incomplete diagram to show what should come next.
• Four possible answers are shown. Clicking on incorrect answers makes them fly out. The correct answer spins in place to highlight that it is correct.
Ideas that work with both SMART and Promethean included:
• Use the “recorder” to replay ideas for pupils. This was felt to be particularly useful for pupils who might not have fully understood a multi-step method the first time around – they can watch it again.
• Use the reflection tool to make ‘bugs’ from pupils’ names. The pupil writes their name on the board, this may be rotated and is then reflected and grouped. The pupils can then add different features (eyes, antennae, legs, etc) to make it look like a bug. Sam had then animated them, which was time-consuming, but the pupils loved it!

Richard has been making extensive use of resizing. As an alternative method to hiding and revealing an object (one difficulty with this is remembering where to click!) Richard makes diagrams and text very small (using the handles in the corners of the image). He can see enough of the diagram to recall what it is, but the pupils can’t read them from a distance. Anything that is needed can easily be enlarged.

Mark showed a use of the camera tool that keeps the picture taken on the same page as the original. The copy can then be manipulated to highlight a particular issue. For example, to help determine whether a series of Russian Dolls really are similar to each other the smallest was photographed and then enlarged next to the largest.
He also recalled something that Fran had mentioned several years ago, which is that parts of pictures can be made transparent (right-click) on the SMART notebook. This made it even easier to see.

NCTM Illuminations. These have recently been updated. Mark likes:
Isometric drawing tool: http://illuminations.nctm.org/ActivityDetail.aspx?ID=125
Pythagoras Proof: http://illuminations.nctm.org/ActivityDetail.aspx?ID=30
Line of best fit: http://illuminations.nctm.org/ActivityDetail.aspx?ID=146
Other materials here: http://illuminations.nctm.org/Activities.aspx?grade=3&grade=4

NRICH. There are a number of interactivities that are worth looking at. For example, the Factors and Multiples Game. http://nrich.maths.org/5468

Fran has been using the Cogs starting point on NRICH [http://nrich.maths.org/810 ]. One of the Keele University sites is now free to access: iwbmathstraining.co.uk
This has all of the Improving Learning in Maths (Standards Unit) materials in SMART and Promethean format. Fran demoed the files attached to A5; these featured vehicles passing each other and showed how this was related to the graphs of motion.

Richard was then reminded of Wisweb www.fi.uu.nl
Building houses was agreed to be a particularly impressive applet.

Question:
Is it possible to convert Promethean Files to SMARTboard …
This was only thought to be possible by exporting as PowerPoint. This loses any functionality.

Meeting 9 - Minutes

Meeting 9 originally fell on a 'Snow Day', so had to be postponed.
A small group of us met at Sawston on 3rd March 2009 and shared ideas about how the IWB can be used as a presentational tool.

The Minutes of the meeting are available here: 9IWBNetworkMeetingMinutes3rdMar2009.doc

The files mentioned in the minutes are linked below. Some of the SMART notebook files have been converted to PowerPoint. If you have a SMARTboard then it would be better to use the notebook version, but the PowerPoint file is available for those with other types of board.

Congruent_triangles.notebook

Three_straight_lines.notebook

Three_straight_lines.ppt

Rhombus.notebook

Rhombus.ppt

How_tall_is_the_beanstalk.doc


The next meeting will be held on Thursday 7th May at Hinchingbrooke School in Huntingdon. It will run from 4:30 to 6pm. Thanks to Heather for hosting this meeting.