SmartBoard Changes Classroom
SmartBoard is changing the landscape of the classroom, lesson by lesson.
Feb. 11, 2008 — -- When was the last time you went back to high school? I had the chance recently and was absolutely stunned by the way technology had completely changed the landscape and the process.
If memory serves, school used to be about memorizing data and formulas for the singular purpose of pushing that knowledge back on tests. However, having watched an engaged, creative faculty work with a wondrous device, the SmartBoard from Smart Technologies of Alberta, Canada, it's possible that classroom teaching may have transitioned into an entirely different ball game, motivated by curiosity, rather than just fear of a "C."
A SmartBoard is an interactive, wall-mounted white board that merges the familiar blackboard concept with the data retrieval, information-sharing and storage attributes of a computer. Diagram that sentence on the board for the class and with a tap, send it to the PC of the kid who's out sick or to the computer in the den for homework or the school library.
Clearly, it's useful to be able to mail, store and recall information more exactly and more efficiently than before, but that's a convenience, not a breakthrough. The column-worthy aspect of all this is that finally, educators can employ a technology not simply about letting kids do an old task a new way (calculator), but rather, a bits and bytes based product that fundamentally changes the way faculty can inspire and teach kids to learn and think.
I saw SmartBoards in action during a visit to The Nichols School in Buffalo, N.Y. Instead of a dry lecture on conjugating French verbs, kids in Sheila Zamor's middle school class didn't just learn to "mange fromage," but rather watched as the whiteboard transformed from a hand written grammar lesson to a discussion of how tu, nous and vous would order the different the varieties at the finest fromageries in Paris.
The learning difference between a lecture on sentence structure and a concurrent illustration of where and how that learning would be useful was stunning.
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