SMART Exemplary Educator 2014 Global Summit Day #3 It Takes a Teacher to Inspire Amazing

Today's Theme:  It Takes a Teacher to Inspire Amazing

Today was all about SMART Amp!  SMART Amp is software that allows any web-enabled device to connect to the workspace and work collaboratively. Heather Lamb led SMART Amp Camp.

  The following is what impressed me about SMART Amp.

• Extremely easy for a teacher to get classes set up
• Easy to pull all your students into the collaborative work space.
• The ability to group students and share a collaborative work space
• The ability to add images, text, links, SMART Notebook files to the work space
• The ability to use it on a variety of web-enabled devices with ease
• The ability to look out student editing in follow me mode, so the teacher has the opportunity to refocus and redirect activities
• The ability for the teacher to sit back and listen to what the students have to say
• When students work in anonymous groups, the barriers come down and reluctant students may feel more at ease contributing

We had the opportunity to collaborate using SMART Amp at the Summit today and the room was "noisy".  We need to realize that learning involves healthy noise.  While we worked with our groups collaborating on our workspace it was easy to see how using SMART Amp allowed us to add value to the work of others.  Instead of telling students to keep their eyes on their own work, we will encourage them to work together to solve problems.  I am anxious to use SMART Amp with my first grade computer students as well as my high school business students.  There are so many ways that SMART Amp can be used throughout the learning cycle. 

After dinner the SMART Exemplary Educators held a live #SMARTee Chat from the lobby of Hotel Alma--SMART CTO Warren Barkley came to participate live with us. Moderator Refranz Davis asked us if we could have one wish for our classroom what would it be.  Linda from South Africa tweeted that she wanted wifi.  It is too expensive and her school can't afford it.  That is when SMART CTO Warren Barkley told Linda that he would take care of it for her.  Just another example of how SMART is doing what is best for students. There were many tears of joy flowing at the #SMARTee Chat tonight.

After the SMARTee Chat, I sat in the hotel lobby with Renee Fruge from Louisiana, Karoline Thordson from Sweden, and Therese Lennhager from Sweden. We talked about what teaching was like in our schools, how we got to be SMART Exemplary Educators, and what life was like in our home towns.  It was really one of the best parts of my day.  Yes, I love learning and sharing at SMART headquarters, but just as important is learning and sharing with the SEEs that are here and I am so thrilled to be able to add them to my personal learning network.  After all, it takes a teacher to inspire amazing, and you just never know who or where that teacher may be!