A few weeks ago I did a blog post about the SMART board. I
just started teaching second grade and many of the teachers in the school have
a SMART board in their classroom. I was able to see first- hand how students
become engaged in the lesson when using a SMART board. My favorite feature was
when the teacher was able to print out the class notes that were written on the
SMART board. This allowed her to continue with the lesson, and not have to stop
to see if students wrote all the vocabulary words down. The second feature that
I found interesting was the ability to save a lesson and refer back to it the
next day. This does save time, when a teacher does not have to write everything
on the whiteboard again.
I don’t have a whiteboard in my classroom; I only have a
projector and an ELMO. Both the projector and the ELMO work well in the classroom.
I try to incorporate as much interaction with the projector and the whiteboard
as possible. For example, I will project worksheets onto the projector using
the whiteboard, and we will do it together as a class. I let the students come
to the whiteboard and write down the answers. It is apparent that technology is
being used in the classroom more and more each year. Students get computer time
during specials and as a reading center. Even though, they are not using
different software’s on the computer for reading, they are still becoming familiar
with a computer and how it works.
I hope to get a SMART board in my classroom soon. They are
many ways that a SMART board can be used for student engagement and classroom management.
I know I can easily find training for the SMART board online and through other
teachers that have the SMART board in their classroom. I got a different
perspective from researching the SMART board online than I did witnessing a
teacher use it in her classroom. When you are able to see first- hand how the
SMART board technology changes learning by engaging students, it is more
impacting than reading about it.
