Embracing the Edge 2012

I feel part cyborg after attending three technology conferences in a five day week!  Attending Closing the Gap on Monday and Tuesday and then the conference offered by the MANACE SAGE was a little much to take in all in one week.  Nevertheless, I connected with some great people with great pedagogical ideas about technology in the classroom.  That's not the meat and potatoes of today's post however...
At the SMARTboard Bootcamp session I attended on Friday afternoon, I gathered a great deal of info in an hour and a quarter on SMARTboards and some great sites that can be used with that particular piece of technology.  Joan Badger, Curriculum Coordinator for Digital Learning with the St. James Assiniboia School Division presented the group with some fabulous sites to access when using the SMARTboard. You can visit her blog at www.sssbootcamp.blogspot.com for many great suggestions for infusing the SMARTboard into everyday instruction. Here are some tidbits from Joan's presentation:

• To spice up your lessons with a little auditory stimulation, record your own sounds using Audacity, or the GarageBand application on your Mac computer. 
• Visit jamendo.com for copyright-free music. 
• To add visual interest to your lessons, download copyright-free content from the Creative Commons website.  It will filter copyright-free images that can be used in projects or lessons on the SMARTboard or in other applications.
• Use Screencast-O-Matic to film tutorials or creating videos for student viewing purposes.  Think of this app when you're contemplating flipping your classroom.
• keepvid.com allows you to keep a list of videos downloaded from YouTube.  Save as an .flv format!