Thursday, March 3, 2011

smart boards

At my placement at Williamston High school, all of the teachers have smartboards in their rooms. However, my mentor teacher rarely uses it but she still knows more about how to use them than I do. I had never even seen how one works before and was stunned when I saw her tap a link on a webpage on the smartboard and then saw the browser navigate to that website. I have never had a touchscreen phone so that may also be one reason that this concept was so new to me. However, once I learned more about how to use them in my TE class, I realized how useful they can really be. They basically make the board and standard projectors obsolete. Why ever bother to have your students write on the board when they can write on the smartboard and you can save their conclusions on your computer? It combines the flexibility of writing on the board, being able to underline, circle, or draw lines, with the ability to bring a prepared powerpoint with the outline of the lecture or activity. Plus, it allows the teacher to use any online resources in a more active way. Instead of having to sit or stand behind their computer, the teacher can move around by the smartboard and have students easily interact with the Internet in a way which allows all students to see what is going on. After contemplating all these benefits, if I am lucky enough to be in a classroom with a smartboard, I would use it on a daily basis for lectures, student presentations, and activities. I would actually use it for pretty much everything in the classroom because it is the ideal combination of ease of preparation of lessons and the ability to adapt and be flexible and easily save results during class. Plus, the more I use it I will only discover all the other useful things it can do and will become even more adept at harnessing its technological power for my students' learning.



Original Image: New SmartBoard 010
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lisathumann/2984541404/sizes/s/in/photostream/
by: LisaThumann

Released under an Attribution-Share Alike License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
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2 comments:

  1. RachelDMarch 14, 2011 at 4:26 PM

    I think smartboards are one of the coolest things to have in a classroom. My CT has one at my placement and I have never seen her use it. I feel like it's such a waste of a good learning tool. Like you it wasn't until my 401 that I even knew what a smartboard was. There are so many possibilities in using one in a lesson.It allows student interaction in which they are already excited about having a different form of technology that this excitement would carry over into what ever lesson topic you're teaching. I'm all about smartboards and would love to have one in my future classroom as well.

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  2. AndyVMarch 16, 2011 at 4:55 PM

    I definitely agree that it is such a waste to not use one. Every school that has them should get a good expert to lead a professional development to show teachers the amazing things they can do with smart boards.

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