smart+notebook

I decided to integrate my Smart Notebook assignment with my Webquest by making the Notebook lesson a teaser for learning more about Nikola Tesla. The Notebook assignment is for the same grade level and class, secondary social studies and uses some of the same ideas incorporated in the Webquest to get students' attention focused on researching and generating biographical information that they can then use to understand the interconnectiveness of people, places and events throughout history. The basic layout of the lesson is to introduce the topic of Tesla and biography via the first page and then get to each subsequent page by clicking on a vocabulary link. Four words in the cloud lead to other pages based on the linked word. Any order can be used but the last one should be "experiments" because this one of the best routes to take students from the past and into future applications of Tesla's work and make connections in terms of timelines and people closer to the present day. I enjoyed working with this software, though it was difficult to find computers on campus with software. I used my own computer to create this lesson and I will probably use it in the future, if only for some of the note-taking and screen-capture features. I have very limited memory on my personal computer so working with Flash-based activities was not possible for some reason. I spent a lot of time trying to troubleshoot that issue and in the end settled for creating a lesson without it. I feel very comfortable with this program, it seems like an exciting tool to have for teaching. But I know I also have a lot left to learn about it in order to make the most of it.