Smartboards.. Not Just For Teachers!

I understand that the article was written in 2005, but the author missed the point beyond belief even for that time. The smartboard was created in the UK and has been in place there for over ten years in almost all of their public Schools. Today in the year 2010, almost all Smartboard activities and resources have a .UK at the back of the web "addy".


What this guy failed to mention was that the "efficiency" of the teacher lies in the fact is that the organization on "these guys" is streamlined for the teacher, but student engagement is the key to its overwhelming success.

Smartbaords are not a window of your computer screen, they are a touch screen of your entire computer. They allow a teacher to multitask just like a normal laptop and do away with the mess of wiping off a "white board" every class period. On top of that, Smartboards come completely bundled with a ton of teaching aids from interactive graphics ranging from frog dissection to animated probability excercises all wrapped up in a Microsoft word style interface for lecture as well as note taking.

What is not mentioned is the fact that the student's ability to be in front of the room and navigate around such incredible features is the interest level comonent here. We have 65 rooms complete with 65 Smartboards. Students fight to get in front of the room amoung other tasks, solve math problems, and do daily oral language. The Author is right only in the fact that teachers do have much more time circulating around the room. What is failed to be mentioned is that this "little shiny technological" object is student objected, student based, and student taught.