Mindshare Learning Report — Software Review

What’s in a Notebook? Well, for starters, it really depends on how much time you have on your hands! And if you’re a teacher, the answer is most definitely rhetorical. Of course, I’m not talking about any ordinary paper notebook that you can pick up at any old school supply store. I’m talking about the award-winning SMART Notebook, the software that comes with SMART’s ubiquitous interactive whiteboards and provides the content and functionality that makes the SMART Boards come to life, so to speak. What’s in an Aegom Middle School Math Notebook? Lots!

Aegom Interactive develops SMART Notebook curricula and trains educators on how to use SMART Boards and SMART Notebook software. SMART has awarded Aegom’s Middle School Math with the “select” accreditation meaning that this software meets SMART’s stringent requirements for instructional material that is SMART Board-ready. Aegom has also just released K-6 Math for SMART Notebook as well. All of their Notebook lessons have been designed to correlate with the US, Canadian and British math curricula.

Aegom’s Notebook lessons install easily into Notebook Gallery where they are then organized by grade level and strand. Each lesson has a curriculum correlation for easy access. This is exceptionally useful for the classroom teacher who wishes to track what curriculum expectations he/she has covered in a given math Notebook lesson. Further, with the SMART Response (formerly Senteo) activities at the end of most of the lessons, this is a must. Also, Aegom has included the ability to update the Notebook lessons through the update section of Notebook as well.

Aegom Interactive has put together a suite of 200 math lessons that cover all mathematics strands for easy delivery in a middle school classroom. In fact, many of these lessons can be used in a secondary classroom as well. What first impressed me was the consistent layout and feel of the Notebook lessons. Once you use a couple of the lessons, and follow the built-in helps, you can easily move through each lesson like a pro. Each of the lessons begin with Teacher’s Notes that include a section which clearly explains how the icons function, and how you might set up your computer to get the most benefit from the software, and then clear and concise lesson objectives. From the Teacher’s Notes page you can easily click on any of the lessons using the built-in page button. Each page also includes a header section that indicates whether it’s the launch, a concept, or the practice portion of the lesson.
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Obviously, Aegom’s Math Notebook is a huge time-saver for a classroom teacher. The teacher doesn’t have to spend hours searching for appropriate content to populate a given lesson, and put it together in such a way where it is pedagogically sound, interactive, and makes impact. Further, if you’re working in a grade team you can collaborate on the delivery of the lessons quite easily because of the consistent look and feel. Lessons could be shared easily with students afterword so that they might go over again the concepts that were taught in the lesson.

Moreover, Aegom’s math lessons are meant to be interactive. One of the first things I tell teachers when convening a SMART Notebook session is to ensure that every page of every Notebook has interactivity built into it – that’s why the word “interactive” is part of “interactive whiteboard”! Make it multi-modal, and make it interactive. While making it interactive, ensure that the level of interactivity is meaningful. Aegom gets it right on both of these counts! There are a number of different modes of interactivity built into the software, and the interactivity is for the most part, meaningful. One little recommendation would be to include some real-world multimedia connections to their math lessons; these are significant attention grabbers, and they help the students connect their math learning with the real-world in real-life scenarios.

Another feature that Aegom includes is the built-in SMART Response (formerly Senteo) components for many of the lessons. In my opinion, this is a necessity. Research indicates that regular formative assessment makes a positive impact on student learning. Again, it’s also a huge time-saver for the teacher. Creating a lesson, developing a formative assessment piece and then delivering it could take hours whereas with Aegom’s Notebook Math you have it all in one place, and it’s delivered easily.

As you look at incorporating this material into a sound three-part instructional format in mathematics, it clearly fits into the first part which is typically the smallest portion of time allotted to learning in a mathematics lesson. I would recommend that Aegom build into their Notebooks a clear and cogent place for all three parts of the three-part lesson format. Once this is accomplished, it will become first rate material that I would highly recommend. Regardless, I still recommend it because it can be used in the opening and closing parts (assessing student understanding using SMART Response) of a three-part math lesson. Integrating interactive whiteboards and student response systems into classroom mathematics instruction would be dynamic. Incorporating Aegom’s Middle School Math Notebook into this mix would be exciting. Bringing both the hardware and software together using a three-part lesson format in the teaching and learning of mathematics would be dynamic, exciting and effective!

Looking forward to Aegom’s next round of Notebook lessons – let’s hope they produce some much needed language Notebooks!

Timothy Gard
tim.gard@tel.tdsb.on.ca