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17.2.07

Drag and Drop versus Raspberries and Giggles

A common problem I encounter in using the Smart Board are the sounds made and the repeated dropping of objects brought about by pushing or dragging against the surface with the skin of our fingers. Continual contact with the surface of the board is neccesary inorder for objects to move when we drag them, but friction between skin and the board, either makes those "rude" noises that the children giggle about, or cause our fingers to move unevenly and bounce across the surface, leading to us dropping the object we are moving, and returning it to the home space we collected it from.

Try teaching students and yourself to invert your hand, so that it is the back of your finger nail that makes contact with the board. This makes it easier to apply continual pressure to the object being dragged. Because the finger nail bends under the slight pressure needed, and because it is relatively smooth it will also move over the surface of the board without emmitting the dreaded raspberry and is more likely to remain in contact with the board. If moving from the Promethean or Hitachi board environments to the Smartboard for what ever reason, or just looking for another method of engaging with the board, then pen here can also be used as pointing tool. By pressing the pointing tool icon on the Smartboard's floating tool tray, then your pens can be enabled to act as pointers, and used to drag and drop objects about the board.

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