Being Less Helpful* with SMART Notebook

Sometimes being less helpful would be a good thing. A "helpful" friend who shares the highlights and score to a game you've PVR'd is an unwelcome friend. Similarly, giving our students all the information we think they need can diminish curiosity and bypass opportunities to build inference and thinking skills.

Cover Up

Using white ink to cover information in SMART Notebook can be used to encourage curiosity, while building inference and thinking skills.
 
Help students to develop their ability to infer meaning from text by covering key words and short phrases, and then ask students to suggest what might fill the blanks. Ask students to write their suggestions on the board to complete the document. When finished, read the document together to see if the text reads smoothly and coherently. Finally, use the eraser tool to reveal the underlying text so that students can compare their inference with the original writing.
Many textbooks and resources turn problem solving opportunities into pattern matching activities. Sometimes these scenarios and the questions that follow have the possibility to spark curiosity and prompt thinking, but too often instead of scaffolding the question in a light and differentiated way, the resource builds an elevator to "the answer" where all that is required of us and our class has the equivalent complexity to walking and pressing a button. By covering up as much information as possible we can open the range of approaches and help students to develop their thinking and problem solving skills.

The Technique

To cover text with white ink:
1. Pick up a pen from the tray
2. Press the Colour button to display the palette
3. Press the white square in the lower right
4. Press the Line Style button to the right of the colour button to choose a wider pen thickness.
5. Draw with white ink over the items you would like to conceal.

Sources:

• Michelle Grainger: Markville SS Digital Literacy strategies for OSSLT (bit.ly/Pf3fla)
• Dan Meyer: Math class needs a makeover (bit.ly/QwwOM5)
• Foundations of Mathematics 10, McGraw-Hill Ryerson

---

[*]"Be Less Helpful" is Dan Meyer's slogan. For more of his work see: http://blog.mrmeyer.com

Getting into the "Real-World" with SMART Ink

Internet connected classroom computers link us and our students with the world. A web browser is a powerful teaching and learning tool providing access to current information, real data sets, rich media, interactive applets, and collaborative authoring tools. When used with a web browser, you might think of your SMART Board then as a centrally located computer interface, with the added benefits of easy annotation and capture.

Introducing SMART Ink

With the release of SMART Notebook 11, the "ink layer" has been replaced with a new program called SMART Ink.

Write Anywhere

SMART Ink is activated when a computer which has SMART Board Tools running is connected to a SMART Board or another SMART interface like an Airliner. A small toolbar is added to the title bar of each program. Picking up a pen adds a pen colour indicator to the SMART Ink tool bar to show that it is ready for writing. You can write or draw anywhere on the program window. Writing on the screen does not block interaction with the program like it did with the old "ink layer," and ink is associated with the underlying program so that it follows the location of the program window even when minimized. Unfortunately, ink does not scroll with the underlying program, so annotations will become misaligned on a web page if you scroll to read more.

Insert Writing as Text

Through SMART Ink, handwriting can be inserted as text in any application. First write the phrase to insert on the application. Next select the writing by returning the pen to the tray and touching the writing.[1] Make sure that the cursor is at the location you would like to insert the text by touching that place. Finally touch the icon beside the writing to recognize and insert the text. Unfortunately SMART Ink handwriting recognition is not as accurate as within SMART Notebook.

Choose a variety of Tools

Different pens and additional tool like a highlighter can be selected from the SMART Ink toolbar at the top of each window, or from the floating toolbar at the edge of the screen. The floating toolbar can be shown by choosing "Show Floating Tools" from the icon: in the tray in the lower right of the screen.

SMART Ink Setbacks

There two key features that were present in the old "ink layer" system that have now been removed: Ink can only be used outside of SMART Notebook when a SMART device is attached, and a few tools like the Magic Pen no longer work outside of SMART Notebook.

---

[1] On boards with Touch Recognition enabled it is not necessary to put the pen back before selecting the writing because the board can sense the difference between the size of a pen tip and finger.