Monday, July 29, 2013

Smartboard Activity: What is the activity builder and how do I use it?

The activity builder was a nice touch from the people at Smarttech.  With the activity builder you can create categorization activities quite quickly.  Students will drag items from the the Notebook page into a category and if they are right the object will stay or disappear and if the student is wrong the item will bounce back to where it was.  Using the activity builder is extremely useful and very easy to use.

Smartboard Activity Builder Tutorial

1.  Using the "shapes" button, create shapes for each category you will use.  In this example I will use three.








2.  Create your first shape and then copy and paste it for however many categories that you have.









3.  To add some flare to the shapes I added a picture to each one.  To do that, click the object and then the "Properties" button.  Click the "Image fill" option under "Fill Effects."




















4.  Click the "Browse" link.
















5.  Navigate to the image and select it.  Click the "Open" button.


















6.  Select the "Scale to fit" option










7.  My image is now in my shape.  I added a title as well.  In this example I will categorize volcano descriptions.








8.  Add all the words, images, or objects that will fit into the categories that you set up.










9.  Now you are ready to build your activity.  Click on the "Activity builder" button on the left side of your Notebook software.  It looks like a puzzle piece.  



















10.  Select your first category object.  












11.  Click the edit button in the "Activity Builder."
















12.  Drag all of the correct objects and text that fit this first category into the "Accept these objects" block.
























13.  On the "Reject these objects" block click the "Add all remaining" button. 




















14.   If any item doesn't belong just drag it to the garbage can.
























15.  Click the "Done" button.













16.  You should notice that your text and objects now have a green or red box next to them.  Green is for the words that get accepted and red is for those that get rejected.














17.  Follow those instructions for the other two category shapes that we already set up.  Now click on the "Settings" button for each category shape.  Decide what action need to happen when the object is accepted or rejected.  Notice that if you attached a sound to an object you can also get that object's sound to play if it is either rejected or accepted.


18.  When you are all done with your activity click the "Identify" button to get it started.  When you are finished with your categorization activity make sure you hit "Reset All" so that you can start all over next hour or year.


If you have any other ideas or activities that you have created please don't hesitate to share using the comment section below.

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