Last week, I had the opportunity to attend a Nureva Educator Event in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.  During this workshop, I was able to collaborate and share ideas with other teachers about the use of the Nureva Span Wall System.  If you are not familiar with the Nureva Span system, you have to check it out.  This is a collaboration tool at its finest.  See below what it can do…

Extended Learning

The Nureva Span Wall System gives educators the ability to connect up to four systems together to extend learning to a 40 foot wall space.  The learning space you get from a system of that size is significantly larger than anything you can find with conventional interactive whiteboards.  But the Span system is not meant to be limited by the moniker of IWB.  It is meant to be a collaboration tool, allowing teachers and students to work in the same canvas, gathering feedback, comments, and ideas.  The panoramic learning space means that the class can work and interact together at once on an extended surface.

An Open Canvas

A Span software account can be used to create a canvas in which teachers and students can work together.   Students with a Span account can create their own canvases, or  push ideas to the teacher canvas from their mobile device.  If your students don’t have a Span account, they can still engage and interact by collaborating at the board, or by sharing ideas through Quick Share.  It doesn’t matter if you are using a laptop, phone, or tablet, Quick Share allows collaborators to get their ideas up to the board, quickly and easily. This is by far, my favorite feature.

Presentation or Collaboration

The Span system allows for flexibility, as Canvases can be used by  multiple users at one time, meaning that it is far more than just a presentation tool.  Rather than being the sage on the stage, presenting all the content to students, teachers can be an effective facilitator of ideas by giving students the freedom to contribute to the canvas.  Collaborators have the ability to share:

• Text
• Notes
• Images
• Sketches
• Screen Sharing

As a result, the Span Canvas becomes a truly immersive experience.  In our district, students user Chromebooks in the classroom.  Students working with a Span account can observe, work, share, and contribute to the content on the screen at any time.

In the Cloud

Best of all, if you are an educator who likes to prepare lessons from home, you don’t need to worry about installing software on multiple devices.  Span is available as a web app at http://span.nureva.com.  So if you are at home on the weekend, and you need to create a canvas, you can simply login to the web app, create, and then pick up where you left off when you get back to work – your ideas follow your account in the cloud.

I have so say that I’ve not been so excited about using a new tool at the beginning of the year, as I am about this.  We just installed 3 Span Wall Systems in our district, and are looking forward to extended use of Span software across the district – check out the affordable pricing.

If you have questions, check out the Nureva website or the long list of videos on YouTube.