Four years ago I produced a pack of Smart Notebook files for Steljes, the distributors of Smartboards over here in the UK. They formed part of a teachers pack that was distributed to schools around the UK.

The files were also available via the Steljes Software site. That site had a revamp a while back, and the files are no longer available online.

I have copied the files onto my Think Bank website so that Smartboard users can still access them. Each file has a corresponding teachers’ guide in pdf format.

The six lesson packs cover the following topics:

• The Blast Furnace (KS4)
• Cells (KS3)
• Forces (KS3)
• Metals (Ks3)
• Muscles and Joints (KS4)
• Reflection and Refraction (KS4)

To download the files, and the corresponding teachers guide, click here.

If you don’t have a SMARTboard  – you can open them via Smart Notebook Express  http://smarttech.com/notebookexpress

Here‘s a nice simple resource that could be used to teach Sound and Waves in Science. There are several sites that show oscilloscope traces when looking at sounds, and this is another one. It’s produced by Aartpack, and they call it a Digital Theramin – named after the staple musical instrument of 50s sci fi movies

What I like about this one is its simplicity. Plus it would work well on an interactive whiteboard to show how the shape of the sound “wave” changes as the pitch and volume changes.

Click the Menu button to show the optionss, and set it so that the Sine Waveform is set to a value, and the other 3 are turned off (no scale), like this:

Then if you click anywhere on the screen, a sine wave will be drawn and a note will be played (turn up your speakers!)

If you drag your finger/pen to the right the note will get higher and the waves will get closer together. Likewise drag your finger/pen to the left and the pitch will get lower.

If you drag up the screen the note will get louder, drag it down the screen and the note will get quieter. The amplitude of the sine wave will reduce.

This would be very nice to demonstrate sound waves at KS2 or Ks3.

The only drawback is that there is no way to set it up so it works without having to touch the board. I’d like to have seen a mode where you could place a button on the screen, and move that button up/down left/right to change the note. That way you could let go of the board to address the class and keep the note playing/displayed. I’m pleased to see it will resize to full-screen so you can make the resource fit the entire whiteboard.

There are more complicated settings that you can play with if you want to do some more advanced stuff, but the sine wave feature alone makes it a very handy bookmark to have for your Sound lesson! You can access the digital theramin/oscilloscope here.

There are other interactive resources on the Aartpack website too. It’s worth looking around the whole site to see what they have for other subjects too.

I’ve put a batch of my Smart Notebook files up on my Think Bank website for anyone who wants them to download.

Best thing to do is to right click and “save target as” since Smart sometimes gets confused.

Fishing Rod Keyword idea

Skeleton

Pulse Rate Fair test planner

Generic Post It Planner

Living or Non Living

Food Chains

Flowers

Body Parts

Plenary for Space

Plenary for Electricity

Plants and Flowers

Weather Forecast

Frog Life Cycle

Properties of Materials anagram activity (includes countdown themetune)

There are also a few Literacy and Numeracy Smart Notebook files on the site as well as some simple Flash activities on the site as well.

If you want the Blockbusters game, you can download that here.