SMART Bored
A recent quick blog posting got right to the heart of my weariness of SMART boards. They are heralded as the icon of technology in schools. Little is said of their limit: you find them only in schools. Unlike other technologies that have the potential to change the way we teach and learn—Twitter, social networks, iPhones, YouTube—SMART boards remain bolted to the classroom wall (or locked away in a closet). Either way, students’ learning with them is likely to be as stagnant as the device itself.
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Thanks for this! Might use this info in a competitive application process for a class set of laptops.
In a neighboring school, I hear they removed all the white boards to ensure (force) their teachers to use this one tool..the SMART Board. That is just not smart!
Thanks for the posting, Tammy. I think laptops have greater potential in classrooms. SMARTboards tend to reinforce old chalk-and-talk with a digital flair. I’ve not seen it change pedagogy. Laptops, on the other hand, at least give students the tools, instead of handing the “cool technology” over to the teacher.
IF SmartBoards are just cool technology for the TEACHERS, of course they don’t change anything. But in our small rural school, my students use the one in my room (which I bought) to make presentations, create quizzes for learning and review, explain concepts to their classmates, edit and revise essays in groups, etc. I turn it over to them at the beginning of the year and it gets them so much more involved in everything. I find it a great time saver for me as once material is stored, it is there until I change it or use it again. And, in a room with a small TV, it is so much better for videos, pulling things off the internet, etc. I think it is all in the atmosphere the teacher creates. And all the SBs are not in schools; businesses use them, too. My husband’s workplace just got a couple interactive whiteboards. I think it is just a tool that makes SOME things work better.
Hi Rhonena,
I completely understand some of the benefits to having a SmartBoard in the classroom for a teacher who is willing to share pedagogy with students, as you yourself do. Too often, though, I’ve seen teachers use SBs just to continue chalk-and-talk teaching practices, which undermines the possibilities SBs offer. What’s more, new technologies offered by the internet and online software make it possible to move students’ learning outside of the classroom walls. How can SBs be used to connect with students’ online lives? I imagine, for example (as an English teacher), posting a poem on a class web site, asking students to digitally annotate it for the next day’s class. Then, when we come to class, the SB becomes a public way to tie homework/classwork, individual/whole class learning.
Please share our dialogue with others. I would love to know what other think, too!
Hi again,
I have thinking about how to get the creativity aspects of the SB into the kids’ hands more. SMART technologies has started a beta version for on students’ computers at school but we haven’t tried it on a student laptop. Most of the kids don’t bring their laptops to school, althought I see more ever year.
If they have material on their personal accoumts or a blog that our school allows through the filter, they could give their presentations using the SB. They easily create interactive quizzes and exercises with SB, but those are on the SB only unless I download and save the files as a pdf for example.
If we create a wiki on BlackBoard or another site, I can open the wiki on the SB and have students see all at once the changes made by fellow students during after-school hours. If we can manage to get the beta SB notebook version on their home computers, it should be easy for them to open their accounts on the SB at school to show and use their quizzes, discussions, illustration, and demonstrations such as how to edit a wiki page, for example.
I would love to hear how others use it. I see some teachers in my school using their SB for a screen on which they project from an overhead projector with transparencies. What a waste of equipment! The math teacher who does this makes me cringe when I see the waste, knowing there are other teachers who would learn to use the SB in class and use it well. Ii have volunteered to come in to give him some time to explore the possibilitiesm but he doens’t seem interested. It’s a shame because he gets students the year after I have had them, and they are used to “owning” the SB, learning new things to do with it all the time, as I regularly schedule “time to learn a new technique while producing a poem, critique, essay, etc.” and that’s when I let them use any technology they are interested in using to create part of the project. If they learn something new, I get them to teach me, which is always fun!
We had some fun adding audio and video files to Movie Maker for the first time, and how to edit, and we learned as we went with the help of the manual and common sense of following directions!
I won a $5000 DirectBuy Teacher Award for getting technology for my students and bought new computer setups and some digital cameras and digital videocameras.We did PSA and found the new larger flat screens so much easier to edit on, and my students paired up a few at a time to learn how to use the cameras- there was a lot of student teaching student on the spot; and enthusiasm was high for the project as they knew everyone would see them and they wanted to do a good job. I didn’t have a quiet lunch time for months as I had kids in using the equipment all the time. I love it when I see them taking over and owning their projects.
Hi Rhonena,
I’m running a bunch of errands today but wanted to give you a place to find resources to your questions. Check out this page on Classroom 2.0
http://www.classroom20.com/forum/topics/649749:Topic:48758
It might make you sign up if you aren’t a member already, but I think it’s well worth it! Please let me know if the site is helpful.
Speak again,
Tom