Category Archives: SMART Boards
PhET Simulations
PhET have some good simulations on their website (Physics and Chem):
Well worth trawling through to find some good ideas (like this skate-ramp) for the SMART board.
EDIT: this site’s helpfulness rating is boosted by the ‘run offline’ button next to each sim – they actually want us to download these and use them for free. Rock on. Needs Java.
Saving Videos
Firefox Users:
Just get one of the FlashVideo add-ons for your browser. I use Fast Video Download 1.3.1.4 and it’s great for YouTube and GoogleVideo.
Everyone else:
Simple steps to saving videos to use on a SMART board.
1. Download an .flv player programme. This one does the trick:
http://www.download.com/FLV-Player/3000-2139_4-10467081.html
2. For some videos on this blog, you can click on the ‘Download Video’ option beneath the screen. It will save the video to your hard drive as a .flv file. Your brand-new .flv player will play this, as will a SMART Board with updated drivers.
3. For other videos (directly taken from YouTube or GoogleVideo), you will need to go round the houses a bit:
a. Find the video and copy the full URL
b. Open KeepV.com in a new window
c. Paste the video URL into the input box and press ‘Download Video’
d. You will end up with a file called ‘get_video’ saved on your hard disk. To make it work, rename the file as ‘videoname.flv’
e. It should now work on your computer.
Flashcatcher is another product that can be used to save Flash files. It is a bit fickle, but for some Flash animations you just hover the cursor over the top-left corner and it will give you an option to save.
Remember – many video resources are copyright, and keeping them may be counted as breach of this copyright. However, in many schools internet access is so slow or restricted, the only chance you may have to show a class a decent video is to save it this way. Just be wise about spreading these copied files around.
i-Biology 