Thursday, June 16, 2011

Category Sort

Category sort is a rather simple game but can be used to sort words or phrases in Hebrew Language as well as in Chumash and Navi.  Hebrew Language can be sorted by Zman; in chumash you can sort by Shevet; in Navi you can sort by Melech or by place.  Hebrew words can be inputed by dragging and dropping text boxes. 
A game I played in my Navi class was for the end of Shmuel Aleph.  I put across the top cities/places where David and Shaul traveled during Shaul's chase to kill David.  Then I have phrases that described what happened in those places. Giva was a very long list of things that happened there while places like Nov or Ein Gedi had short but important lists.  The students came up one at a time to move one item into the correct city.  Sometimes they took from the word bank at the bottom of the page and sometimes they moved a phrase from one list to another to correct someone's mistake.  Once the entire class agreed it was correct we checked it.  I then had the students put the chart in their notes to be used as review for the test.  The kids loved it and it was a relatively fast review of where David and Shaul went which I used at the beginning of the class to review past material before moving on with the chase!

Sentence Arrange

The Sentence Arrange game in SmartNotebook 10 is a great way to review P'sukim as well as story lines (which can be done in English or Hebrew depending on your class and your school).  To input text type your sentence or part of your sentence in a textbox and then drag and drop.  This will not work for images, so do not cut and paste the text of a P'suk and try to input that you must type what you want in a textbox!
Once you have the pieces of your P'suk or your sentences of the the plot the students have to put them in order. They can do this from memory or the other students in the class can try to tell them what to put in using DIFFERENT words, kind of like the game taboo.  Another way to do it is having the students in the class compete for the best time, this works best for a smaller class so students are not waiting for their turn for very long.  You can also give them a version of this game on paper and have them cut and paste their work at their seats while waiting for their turn on the board, thereby having each student do it twice, once in a tactile way and once on the SmartBoard, which is clearly fun!

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Using Gallery Games to enhance lessons

Many of the new gallery games provided by Smart Notebook 10 can be used to enhance Jewish Studies lessons.

Anagram
In order to put these balls in order to spell words in Hebrew you must type the word in backwards in a textbox and then drag and drop into the input box.  Once you have done that you are off and running to play review games for vocabulary and spelling.   I highly recommend using the timer to enhance the game.  The disadvantage to this game is only one student can play at a time and the others end up watching. Depending on the size of your class smaller classes can handle watching and waiting to see if they can beat each others speed. For larger classes centers are in order, even for older kids.  While a small group takes turns playing this game on the SmartBoard another small group can be working on a word find or crossword that reviews the same vocabulary while a third small group can be playing hangman or other word based game to review as well.

SmartBoard 10 Games in Hebrew

Many of the new gallery games are able to be used in Hebrew, but only if you know a few tricks.  You can search the gallery for these games and follow the simple instructions to make them usable in Hebrew.
The following list of games can be used in Hebrew if you type the word you want to use in a textbox and then drag and drop the word into the text input box--you will then see it in the box as if you typed it in.  If you try to type directly in the box it will come up looking like this: ???????
The games that require drag and drop a text box are:
Vortex, Sentence Arrange, Category Sort, WordBiz (be sure you also drag and drop the list of letters needed for the game in the appropriate box), Key Word Match, Word Generator, Time Line Reveal, Checker Tool, Multiple Choice, Random Word Chooser, Question Flip, Question Tool, any image games just treat your textbox as an image!

In following blogs I will give ideas of how to use these games in Jewish Studies Classes to keep the students involved in the class and interested in reviewing their work!

Using Hebrew keyboard on the SmartBoard

Once you have Hebrew Enabled in Windows you can use this same procedure to use Hebrew in any text based program.

1. Open Smart Notebook
2. Click on Big A at top of page, just like you would to type English
3. Click on your screen to open a textbox
4. On bottom tool bar there is a box which says EN, click on it
5. Choose HE Hebrew
6. You can now type in Hebrew

TROUBLESHOOTING:
If it doesn't work the first time you clicked out of the textbox by mistake, make a new textbox and try again.
Don't forget when you are done to follow these steps to go back to English:
1. Click on HE box at bottom of screen
2. Choose EN English

Enableing Hebrew in Windows

First step in using Hebrew on the SmartBoard is to have Hebrew available as a language on your computer. To do this in Windows follow the following steps:
1. Start
2. Control Panel
3.  Date, Time , Language, and Regional Options
4. Regional and Language Options
5. Languages Tab
6. Details
7. Setting Tab
8. Add...
9. Input language:Hebrew
10. OK, Apply, OK, Apply, OK