Hands-on practices

During the afternoon the teachers had to prove that they learned a lot. In groups they had to prepare a starter for a Lesson Activity and had to use the techniques they learned.

Here some pictures of the groupwork

Thursday - the second day

The photo's are on a Picasso webalbum. Please take a look. Today we continue the work on the presentations of the teachers. It's interesting to see how they use the different options in Notebook in their lessons. Their is a teacher from Iceland who is using the board for deaf children. The results of those children raised because they could visualize on an easy way. We saw some good examples of 'extraordinary things made simple'.

And here the presentation of Martijn from Lentiz Lyceum.



After the break we had a preview on the Lesson Activity Toolkit version 2.0. It will probably be available spring next year, but the BETA-version some months earlier.

Evening program wednesday

After a hard day of working for the teachers, we stopped not before 6 p.m. we went for a boat trip over the river. It's a nice way of seeing Prague by night and the weather was fine, so we could stay on deck to see all the old buildings. Again we had a huge dinner, the really eat a lot over here. Traditionally there was a karaoke-performance of some of the teachers. Some of them are better on the SMART Board then on stage, but we don't mention any names .... Around 10.30 we returned to the hotel and a select group left for a trip along the pubs in Prague. We had local guides (Veronica and Emil) so we didn't had to search long for the nice ones. Some of the teachers proved their dancing skills on the floor....

Late in the evening, or early in the morning we returned to the hotel.

Here some video's of Kate, teacher from The Haque and Joe from SMART.

First day

After a nice and interesting evening we started at 9 with the program. The delegates from Denmark, Russia, Finland and Hungary arrived also. In total we have teachers from 11 countries all over Europe. The 'ice-breaker' was again used as a nice, interactive way of introducing the participants. Terry told us a little bit about the SMART Solutions and the ways SMART is helping teachers to use their boards in their classroom. After that Joe showed us some new features of Notebook 10 and demonstrated a quick workshop in basic lesson activity design in Notebook 10. We also talked about sharing content and took a look at some websites with SMART Lesson Activities for the participating countries. The rest of the morning program was filled with hands-on practices for Notebook 10. Teachers made lesson activities using the tables, animations and more new features. There are always new ideas to share and beautiful examples of lessons, made for their own students.

A forum like this is always a perfect place to find new 'stuff'. Especially interesting for Dutch math-teachers we got a nice interactive 'geodriehoek'. Thanks to Tobias from SMART Germany. We will place this Galery-item on the smart op school website.

After a great lunch we took a look at the Document Camera and Senteo 2.0. And of course we used the clickers to check if everyone was paying enough attention, especially after lunch.

The second part of the afternoon we had the teachers to present their lesson activities. Joe used a new Tool called 'Random Name Picker' to invite the teacher to come to the board.

Trip to Prague

After a good and save flight to Prague we arrived this afternoon in the hotel.

Checking in and for a couple of hours to the city center for a meal and a drink - of course!

Already met some people from AV-media, the SMART distributor over here.

In the evening we will have a welcome drink and shake hands with all the participants of the forum.

For the Dutch team I can already say it's a good team! Let's see how this works out in the next days.

Things of interest or for preparation

Some information which you can use to prepare:

1. Short program of the User Forum (details will be placed asap)
   Sep 30 morning - Flight to Prague.
   Sep 30 evening - Welcome drinks at the Hotel Diplomat.
   Oct 1 and 2 - User Forum - Training on SB 10, creation of lesson activities, sharing of best practices amongst teachers, contest on creation of lesson activities amongst the teachers, etc.
   Oct 3 - Morning - School visit in Prague. By lunch time they will be free to leave.
2. Algemene informatie over Tsjechie

Nieuw SMART Interactive User Forum in Praque

14 september 2008 - The next SMART Interactive User Forum is to be held in Prague - Tsjech Republic. From 1-3 october teachers from several Western European countries will share ideas and experiences about working with SMART-products in their classrooms.

So again a User Forum, after succesfull sessions in Helsinki and Stockholm. Please take a look to get an idea!

Helsinki - see http://championsteachers.blogspot.com/
Stockhlom - see http://smartboardsweden.blogspot.com/
SMART Math & Science - see http://digibord.wordpress.com/