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The edTech Ninja is back in school. School started August 12. The Ninja always likes to do a getting to know you activity on the first day or week of school. This year, the little ninjas worked in pairs on a SmartBoard Notebook file that was designed to get students to share about themselves. All About [...]

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Jeopardy Template

I like to look for fun and interactive ways to review concepts before a test. One of those ways was using a Jeopardy style game. There are several PowerPoint versions of Jeopardy games but I wanted one I Notebook...

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• One of the Tech Ninja's issues with Notebook 10 was the floating toolbar in both the Mac and Windows versions. I politely complained over at the Smart Exchange in the thread entitled Floating Tools Won't Go Away. There has been much discussion and several suggestions on fixing the annoyance. The cool part is Smart actually listened to the Ninja. Recently Smart released Service Pack 1 for Notebook. One of the features in this new release is it allows you to choose which side of the screen you want the Floating Toolbar to appear. A huge boon for those of us Mac users who keep our Dock on the left side. In the Windows version, it even lets you choose if you want the toolbar to even start-up. Unfortunately, the feature didn't make it into the Mac version because of time, but it is suggested that this option will appear in Service Pack 2. Kudos to Smart! Now my only issue is my computer doesn't always remember which side of the screen I want my toolbar to be on. #
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• The Ninja's favorite new video sharing site is edublogs.tv. Created by the same people who created edublogs, this is a site similar to TeacherTube or YouTube that allows teacher share their educationally related videos with the Internets. Bonus, there is no advertising on the site and if you embed the video into a blog, when the video is played, there isn't a selection of other videos you might like, it just ends. The Ninja likes that. Try it out! #
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• Today (April 22) is Earth Day! May the Tech Ninja humbly suggest the website Meet the Greens: A site for kids about looking after the planet. The Greens are a family who are looking for ways to help out planet Earth. Different "Green" topics are covered in "episodes" that is a collection of links from Flash cartoons about the Greens (very humorous) to links to online quizzes and activities. Also check out Energy Hogs. #
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• While searching for video resources for the Pledge of Allegiance on YouTube I came across a song that explained the meaning of the Pledge in a fun and educational way. The song was by Teacher and the Rockbots. Currently they have four albums out. One about American, on over multiplication, one on Science and one covering the World. The Ninja's students love them! Additionally, they have worksheets and online games to reinforce the concepts covered in the music. You can buy the CD or download from services likt iTunes. Video example after the jump.... (more...) #
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• Smart has released Notebook 10 for download. You will need a serial number from a Smart device to register and unlock the software for more than a 30-Day trail. Once registered, that activation code can be used on multiple computers and multiple installs of Notebook. The first 10,000 to register can a free 60 MB trail to the Smart Learning Marketplace. Also, the Lesson Activity Toolkit has come out of beta with several new types of games and activities that are customizable for the teacher. #
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