Sunday, March 31, 2013

Using Kindle on the Smartboard

In January I wrote about my frustrations with trying to get my Kindle library to show up on my Smartboard. I finally figured it out and am now able to project my Kindle books for my whole class.

In some ways this is great. I don't have to take the time to scan each page, which saves a lot of time. The print of the book is small, but you can change it, which really helps. Suddenly any book I own digitially becomes a big book that we're able to use as a shared reading for a class text. Since my word wall is right beside my smartboard we've been able to find the word wall words and match them in the text. We had a great time finding all the words we knew in "The Paper Bag Princess".

The downsides, however, are that the Smartboard doesn't "talk" to the iPad like it "talks" to the computer. Touching the Smartboard doesn't do anything to the iPad  Instead I need to be standing beside the iPad to turn the pages. Unfortunately the way my classroom is set up I need to have my iPad at my computer station, which doesn't make it easy for me to lead the class in the book and then turn the pages. I'm constantly running back and forth between the Smartboard and the iPad. The Smartboard itself just because a projector screen in this case- it's interactive capabilities are useless.

SO, it's not perfect. Scanning the books and importing them into the smartboard software is better overall because then you can actually circle the words in the book and interact with the book digitally.

Still, not having to sit by a copier and scan books is worth something. I have Scaredy Squirrel in my Kindle library just waiting to be introduced to the kids on Monday. It's not perfect, but magically turning a regular book into a big book is pretty exciting.
(Of course I always have a hard copy of the book as well so that during quiet time the kids can interact with the actual book).
Smartboard turned big-book

2 comments:

Rebecca D. said...

Maybe you covered this in January, but why can't you just install the Kindle desktop app on your computer that's hooked up to the smartboard? Or sign into the Kindle cloud reader on that computer?

organized chaos said...

The kindle app for PC doesn't download picture books for some reason. I haven't been able to get any of my picture books onto my PC. Unless you know something I'm missing!