Frog Brainteaser

This is a fun brainteaser to keep the minds of our students sharp as we head into testing season.  I got the idea and images from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.  They have some other fantastic riddles and brainteasers.  Download my SMART Board version of this brainteaser here. Enjoy!
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SEE Summit Reminiscence

Hey there, Mr. Smart Trainer followers,

Nothing new this week.  I was just reminiscing last summer's SMART Summit in Calgary.  Thankfully, one of my SMART friends uploaded some of these images to our shared photobucket.  I just wanted to share some of the SMART fun we shared at SMART World Headquarters.

Mr. Smart Trainer with Royal Mounted Police in Banff

 Mr. Smart Trainer, official Calgarian

 Outside SMART World Headquarters

 Our awesome, "ideal classroom" group

Mr. Smart Trainer as SEE Spotlight, presenting SMART Games

SMART Bowling

Did you think I forgot about you?  In the whirlwind of a year I've had, I have neglected my game-making.  I do apologize, but hopefully this will make up for it.  In our weekly #smartee chat on Twitter (Tuesday nights, 8pm CST), @gallagher_tech challenged me to create a game to simulate bowling for the SMART Board.  What a terrific idea, @gallagher_tech!  In this fun, kooshball-style game, you throw a ball at one of the pins, launching the question page.  Edit/answer the question, and "bowl" your ball to reveal the answer.  You can either remove or "X" out the pins that have been chosen.  You will know which have been bowled over because each pin and question page pin is numbered.  I'm really excited about getting back in the swing of things.  Just to give a peep at what's been going on in the life of Mr. Smart Trainer- I am Texas English teacher.  My state assessment is next week (cross your fingers for me!), so we've been preparing for the big days (Yes, DAYS, plural- my test spans two days of testing).  In addition to this madness, I have started my Master's of Education program at Schreiner University in the hopes of becoming the most hated man on campus, the principal.  Five weeks ago, my wife gave birth to an amazing little fellow, Thomas.  This has been a very blessed and busy year for Mr. Smart Trainer, so please bear with me.  Hopefully more Mr. Smart Trainer activities will be coming your way soon, but I need ideas from folks like @gallagher_tech, that get my creative juices flowing.  Help a Smart Trainer out!  Now for what you're here for- I give you the launch of my newest game, an instant classic- SMART Bowling! Click here to download your copy NOW!!!  As always, if you need additional instructions, shoot me an email. Enjoy!
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TCEA 2013

TCEA 2013 has come and is now gone, dormant for yet another year as teachers take the time to implement new ideas and technologies into their classroom routines.  I have to say that after my fourth year at TCEA, I had quite a valuable week.  I presented a SMART Boot Camp, which you can download here.  I had a wonderful audience that asked lots of great questions and hopefully had a valuable learning experience.  Of course after every training I facilitate, I do a postmortem assessment of my training on what went well, what didn't go well, and what I could have done better or forgot to do.  I woke up in the middle of the night, realizing I forgot to give my direct contact information to my attendees.  That information is in the last two slides of the presentation.
It was terrific to see some of my SEE Summitteer friends in the downtime throughout the convention, but it was also nice to make some new connections.  I hope your time at TCEA was as rich of an experience as it was for me.  If you have any questions about SMART Boot Camp, please feel free to email me.  I'll be happy to line up some training for your faculty and staff.
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I Want That!!!

The question of "What will SMART come up with next?" is always running through my head when I see their products.  Take a minute to watch this video on how our classroom can change through collaboration and a lot of help from SMART!  Enjoy!


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Notebook 11 Service Pack 1 Now Available!

Today is a very exciting day for me.  I received an email from Dave Milford from SMART Technologies.  He told me that Service Pack 1 for SMART Notebook 11 is now available to download from SMART's support page.  This is what I love about SMART- While attending the SMART Exemplary Educator Summit in Calgary this summer, we had the chance to visit with the creators of Notebook 11 to discuss quirks, bugs, and annoyances that we had with the update. One that I had is that when the switch over to NB 11 occurred, the links in many of my activities were removed.  This drove me banana-sandwich crazy!  In creating my activities, the thing that is most tedious is setting the links to send you back and forth to the proper place.  I am very pleased to say that with this update, all of my activities are up and running as they were intended!  I love that SMART took the time to listen to my problem, kept in contact with me through the process of getting it fixed, and then emailed me personally to let me know that the update was live and should fix my problem.  Way to go, SMART!  Download your upgrade NOW!!! Enjoy!
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SMART Activity Challenge!

To all of my terrific visitors that have come through Mr. Smart Trainer, I would like to thank you for giving my activities the opportunity to shine in your classrooms.  Unfortunately, as you may have noticed, it has been quite a while since I have posted any activities.  Well, I have been diagnosed with a horrible case of creativity loss.  I have not been able to come up with ideas for new activities in quite some time.  So, I have a challenge for you... or rather for me.
I challenge you to send me ideas for activities that will be challenging for me to create.  Either comment your ideas on the bottom of this post, shoot me an email, or hit me up on Twitter or Facebook.  I will do my best to do your idea justice and will post them here on Mr. Smart Trainer.  So, think of something you will be teaching in the near future, perhaps a holiday theme idea, anything that may give my creative juices a much needed jumpstart.

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One SMART Summer

This was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of summer- in like a lion, out like a lion.  First of all, my district started summer staff development off with a BANG!  We hosted an unconference “techpalooza” where we created the schedule for the conference as we went along.  My duties were to cover SMART and technology interactivity in the classroom.  We took a quick glance at Notebook 11, checked out some of my interactive games from Mr. Smart Trainer, and then found a few other interactive flash-type websites that I frequent.  This is a great model to follow to kick off summer staff development and a great way for teachers to get their “earned-off” days.  For the next two weeks, I hosted SMART professional development, covering just about everything I know about the SMART interactive whiteboard, from Basic and Intermediate Training to SMART Games.  The short vacation portion of my summer started in mid-June and ran through very early July when I started to prepare for the SMART Exemplary Educator Summit at SMART’s world headquarters in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

 I got to spend the most amazing week with 49 of the world’s most proficient and powerful users of SMART products as well as the amazing SMART staff (SMARTians).  We got to share how we use SMART, collaborate with others to learn new tips and tricks, and built an amazing personal learning network.  Most of these people I have talked to several times since the summit via Twitter, Facebook, or email.  We stayed at University of Calgary’s Hotel Alma, and got to see a lot of what Calgary has to offer.  SMART took us to murder mystery dinner theater and to the Wild West Events Center for line-dancing lessons as well!  Headed by our fearless SMART Exemplary Educator leader (you have to be fearless to head up a group of 50 strangers!), Deena Zenyk, did an amazing job coordinating the event to make sure that we were all in the right place at the right time.  Her support staff also did a terrific job to get us where we needed to go and fed us extremely well.  We had the opportunity to participate in a soft launch of Gold Star SEE, the SMART Exemplary Educator gaming platform, to track our SMART participation.  If you are a SEE and haven’t checked out Gold Star SEE yet, you better get in the game!

It was bittersweet leaving SMART’s headquarters, but 7 days away from my expecting wife and 8-year old little boy is tough.  I knew I was coming home a lot SMARTer than when I left.  I had lots of ammunition to finish out my SMART summer with two more weeks of SMART professional development for the staff of Kerrville Independent School District.  At the end of my last two weeks of workshops, the cherry on top was getting to train the faculty of pre-service teachers at Texas A&M at Corpus Christi on their brand new 800 series SMART interactive whiteboard. 

We are four weeks into our school year now and it amazes me how quickly time has flown by.  September 20^th marked the one-year anniversary of my blog-writing attempt on Mr. Smart Trainer.  I ended the year with just under 21,000 visits.  This is quite an amazing feat for just starting out, but I will continue to create and share everything I find and make with the SMART community.  Make sure to stop by and see me at TCEA this spring in Austin, TX, and hopefully in San Antonio at ISTE, or stop by Mr. Smart Trainer and say hello.

Thanks for stopping by,

John Mein

Help End Cyberbullying

Several organizations are doing their part to increase the awareness of cyber bullying and cyber harassment.  SMART Technologies is one of those companies.  Where many people that put these presentations together charge a fee to view the content or to participate in a conference or webinar, SMART's solution on the SMART Learning Space is completely free.  This is a great presentation to do at the beginning of every school year with your students or in professional development.  Cyber bullying is wild and rampant and needs for responsible digital natives to put an end to it rather than participating in it.  For more information and to view SMART's presentation on Cyber bullying, visit the SMART Learning Space here.  Help put an end to Cyber bullying.

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September SMART TX Virtual User's Group

Today I will be participating in the SMART Texas Virtual User Group webinar that is hosted several times a year by SMART Educational Consultant Heather Lamb.  Today's topic is not reinventing the wheel when creating SMART content.  Most often I hear the phrase, "Work SMARTer, not harder."  This is the focus of my portion of today's presentation.  I hope to see you all there!  You can download my presentation here!
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It's Been a Great Year!

It's hard to believe that one year ago today, I wrote my very first blog post! I didn't really know what I wanted to get out of writing a blog. I just wanted a place that I could share some of the cool things that I have created or found with other teachers around the US and maybe the world.  I am absolutely blown away by the number of people I have had visit my website.  20,661 people is an astronomical number to me, and I have to do a double-take when I see that number on the screen. I am ever-so-grateful for those of you who I have had the pleasure of sharing my SMART Story with.  I will continue to share my SMART content here with all of you.
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SEE Summit Dance Party!

Enjoy!
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