Sharing good news

[Lara]

Hi all

Well we've had our boards and AP for half a term now - and our SEN room and hearing impaired unit are currently being fitted with them so they don't feel left out - so I thought I'd share how things are going.

Most of the staff were quite interested in the boards, a couple excited and a couple negative when the installation happened. I have made sure that I have been avilable at the drop of a hat for technical and AP queries at all times (marking's getting rather behind though!) and given regular slices of training - 5 or 10 minutes every week or so.

And now...
Everyone is using their boards all the time - even the negative staff. I have colleagues coming to show me things they've discovered. One of the Y3 teachers who has been drawing Phoneme Fred (Ruth Miskin) characters has now created, grouped and dropped them all into the Resource Bank. All our governors and parents and wowed everytime they come into school. Yesterday I had my PM lesson observation and everything I'd planned worked really well - am in to using the transparency slider to put images behind text to sustain interest in literacy at the moment. I can't remember how I managed without my board and top of all that, my Head keeps telling me how wonderful I am!

Yes we've had several technical glitches, but because everyone is so positive, they're really patient and dont' moan about it!

In fact the only thing they'd really like to improve is the 'smoothness' of handwritten text - the pixels cause jagged edges. And I haven't heard anyone mention that for at least a month so I guess they've got used to it.

Just sharing - have a good weekend everyone.

Lara
(The one who wanted to get up at 3 in the moening to go and use her board - have grown out of that now, mainly due to never waking up until the alarm goes off!)

[Margaret Allen]

How fantastic Lara! {}

Do you know I went into a school yesterday, (the promised they would write in sometime so if they recognise themselves they can volunteer who they were) but it was wonderful. So engaging, so motivating and stimulating. I wanted to bottle their enthusiasm and excitement and send it to Blackburn for those that have spent so long creating the software to share it too!

I showed them how to make something a container

Design Mode:
Double click on object to get object properties:
Check the "Container" box:

Now anything placed on/within this object is contained can be taken "with it". Useful for grouping an object with a word on top of it, but the word can still be taken off it because it isn't grouped.

Anyway I showed them that and someone said, brilliant I could use that with number arrows couldn't I? :cool:

There was a mixed range ability there, they have only had their boards six weeks and some people have been more adventurous than others, but everybody was so excited by the potential they could see was available.

The lovely thing is that AP allows you to work at your own level but there always appears to be a work around there for those moments when you think "I wonder if it will do that?" +wave+

I would love to have a top tip area for AP. Would people find it helpful? Would people contribute? So many people visit the forum, but not everybody feels able to contribute is there anything we can do to encourage some of you to "pen a line" :confused:

Lara, don't understand what you mean by jagged edges? Can you put it bettererer please :rolleyes:

+wave+

[Lara]

Jagged edges put betterer, ok Margaret I'll try...

Because of the pixels on the screen the curves of letters aren't completely curved, there are tiny squares at the edges where anything is not running exactly horizontally or vertically. We're used to this when using paint programs anyway, but they're just fussier about hadnwriting!