Boardmaker Bonanza

Tonight I taught the first half of a workshop on Boardmaker 6.0. It was a small group, but the biggest hits of the evening were the three following new Boardmaker 6.0 features.

1. Shuffle - the participants in the class loved the new feature that allows you to select three or more buttons and have them randomly swap places. Perfect for making Bingo/Lotto boards and randomizing those multiple choice questions. More here.
   
2. Enlarging a button while keeping the symbol and text proportional. I don't know how many people know about this, but if you hold down control (shift on a Mac) the image, text and button change size proportionally. You can even shrink or enlarge multiple buttons proportionally. More here.
   
3. Drag and Drop Multimedia - former 5.0 and earlier users really loved being able to drag pictures from internet browsers and other applications right onto a board. They particularly liked being able to pull images off of favorite educational websites like Starfall, Learning Pages, DK Images and others. (On the same wavelength they liked being able to import images into the symbol finder regardless of image format.) More here.

On Thursday we'll review all the features we've covered, talk about templates and learn to use the symbolate feature and a few more things, plus lab time to create.

Links to the PDF Tutorial Files above come from the Mayer-Johnson Sharing Site.

A Dozen Boardmaker Boards

I just uploaded a dozen Boardmaker boards to the TLWMSN group to share. There is a science lab on the properties of matter, a history lesson on the Eiffel Tower and some classroom/behavior management boards. Enjoy.

I also had a chance to try out some of the features I mentioned yesterday but hadn't used yet. I particularly liked the drag and drop for dragging pictures right out of a website (had to do that at home, my new school has no internet!!!!!!) and into a worksheet. I also liked the shuffle feature which let me drop the answers for a matching section of a worksheet in order and then mix them up later with out worrying about if I had two letter A answers in a row or whatnot.

Later I downloaded all of the addendum PCS symbols (I have purchased them on my own over the years and have 2000-2006 plus the sign language). I ran out of room on my hard drive and decided, without a second thought, to delete that absolutely worthless piece of junk software Overboard (read my review). Everything fit just fine after that.

I am really loving the new Boardmaker and I plan to post boards to the TLWMSN group as I make them, I hope everyone else will too.