Portable media players such as the iPod Touch are becoming an increasingly common part of the education landscape. Some districts are making large scale adoptions of the product so each student has a device for everyday tasks such as research and note taking.

Did you know there are also a number of ways to use the product with your SMART Board interactive whiteboard?

Here are a few tips and tricks from peers on how to use the two to enhance your lesson. If you have other thoughts to share, please start the conversation below in the comment section.

Video

Students and teachers can use their iPod Touch to capture video and then analyze or build a story using SMART Notebook collaborative learning software.

At Atwater-Cosmos-Grove City School District in Grove City, Minnesota, physics teacher Kristin Straumann uses her iPod Touch to capture video that she later brings up on her SMART Board. For example, as part of a lab on projectile motion, she took her class outside and captured a video using her iPod Touch of someone punting a football at different angles and different heights. “We’ll bring [the iPod Touch] in, and plug it into the computer and watch it on the SMART Board and be able to annotate over the video,” she says. “The students can measure over the angle and do the calculations to figure out things like hang time and distance of the punt.”

Teachers can use Notebook in transparency mode, which creates a transparent layer over the video that functions like a SMART Notebook page. You can then make notes over the video, capture your work, and insert it into SMART Notebook software with the click of a button.

For math or physics projects like the one in Straumann’s class, your students can make use of SMART Notebook Math Tools, such as the ruler and the protractor to analyze the video and make a variety of calculations.

Voice recording

The iPod Touch enables students to capture audio,which they can later use to add richness to their Notebook presentation. Consider giving students a project in which they read a story or conduct interviews with the device. Then, using Notebook, they can insert the audio and piece together a story using the interview, visuals and their own voice, and present it to the class.

Podcasts

Would you like to make your Notebook lessons accessible to students from their iPod Touch? Jesse Gregoris at Near North District School Board in Ontario, Canada used screen capture software (he recommends using Camtasia for PC or the built-in screen recorder included in QuickTime for the Mac) to capture a math lesson on multiplying binomials that he delivered on his SMART Board. Using iMovie, he later added narration, explaining the video examples of the math equations. The result was a video podcast that could be synced to his students’ iPods using iTunes, or shared on YouTube. He notes that the fast-forward, rewind and replay functions enabled students to learn and relearn at their own pace.

For more, check out the blog hosted by Christopher Walkling, Secondary Educational Technology Coordinator at Near North District School Board.

Teachers can also use the SMART Recorder to add narration and capture the Notebook slides, as this teacher shows in her podcast.

EDCompass asks: Are you using your SMART Board with an iPod Touch?