smart board
Why Are Smart Boards So Interesting?
A few months ago, I happened to be in a recently constructed middle school in Ohio, and I noticed that sitting in the corner was a smart board. I had to wonder, with a whiteboard, several computers, and a digital projector in the classroom, why did the school need to have this additional tool; especially with all the funding issues that we are having in our educational system?
In my position, I had often heard superintendents and principals advocating that they wanted additional smart board interactive technology in their classrooms as part of their new construction budget. Of course architects, engineers, and construction managers have their own ideas about how the money should be spent, but why is this type of technology so important to today’s school administrators?
Then I remembered something I heard in college a few years back. It’s not the teacher’s job to spoon feed everything to a student, but to motivate the student to learn on their own. I remember when I was younger that computers and technology were very interesting to me and captured my attention for longer spans than a teacher standing at a chalkboard. But spending money on technology just for the sake of having technology may not make sense to a board of education, or those who oversee the use of state funds. Can new technologies such as smart boards with student response systems actually create a positive change in the classroom?
Statistics aside, let’s just think for a moment. Kids love to play video games and text one another on their cellphones. My son, who’s very new to technology, already loves playing video games and typing on my computer keyboard. Given the choice, wouldn’t we all like to view a power point presentation instead of just listening to someone talk at a chalkboard? Of course, because we think in pictures and pictures allow us to retain information more easily.
In a recent study posted on the Smarttech.com website, and conducted by a Middle School Math Teacher at the Pickens county Middle School in Georgia, effectiveness of teaching (in the form of test results) was compared in classes with and without smart board technologies. The standardized testing scores were compared from one year to the next for several classes, and higher gains in average scores were recorded for those classrooms that used smart board technologies. Also, there were more students experiencing gains in their scores in the smart board classrooms (which is to say that the traditional classrooms had more students experiencing a drop in their standardized test scores). This study’s result shows just how important smart board use can be for districts who depend on federal funding that is now based largely upon the result of standardized testing.
I’ve also heard, however, that smart boards can be a distraction; particularly when teachers are unfamiliar with how to use the technology. Clearly the effectiveness of this tool depends on teacher training, and the classroom environment, and simply placing a high-priced labrinth in the corner of a classroom and calling it a “high-tech classroom” is not going to help students learn. Using the Smart Board tool correctly can make learning more effective and fun for students and teachers alike, and that’s very interesting.
What is a Smartboard or Electronic Whiteboard?
The SMART Board is an interactive whiteboard that turns your computer and data projector into a powerful tool for teaching and presenting. With the computer image projected on the Board, simply use your finger and press on the large touch-sensitive surface to control the computer. This allows your students or employees to do presentations from the front of the room instead of having to be at the computer.
Using one of the pens from the SMART Pen Tray, you just write on the board and the touch-sensitive screen tells the computer what color pen you are using and your notes are projected onto the screen in the correct color. You can save these notes on the computer or send them to your printer to be given out as a study aid. These are just a couple of the many uses for this wonderful tool.
The SMART Board is an interactive whiteboard. Using the SMART Board, you can:
” Save notes written on the Board to a computer file
” Use your finger to press on the Board to control Windows and Macintosh applications and
other multimedia materials projected onto the Board’s touch-sensitive surface.
You can
then write over top of your applications and save the annotations to a computer file.
The notes and annotated images can be printed from a computer printer, e-mailed, posted to a network, copied and pasted into other applications or saved as an HTML file. SMART Board Software, included with every SMART Board, dramatically enhances group collaboration. Smartboards are perfect for schools and meeting rooms or any application that needs visual communication or collaboration over the internet. Imagine a workspace where communication flows freely between individuals and groups – whether you’re in the office or thousands of miles away. Collaborate with colleagues or clients by creating a conference session that takes seconds to set up – and you can do it all from your own office, saving valuable travel costs and time.
How does the SMART Board work?
It uses resistive technology, which means there is a small air gap between two sheets of resistive material inside the board. When you press on the Board with your finger or an ordinary dry-erase marker, a contact point is registered and its coordinates correspond to the same area on the computer screen. Because the SMART Board is based on resistive technology, it does not require a special stylus or pen to perform mouse or pen functions at the Board, only pressure on the Board’s surface.
Electronic whiteboards allow users to interact and touch the board to control any computer application, create and write notes, draw diagrams and illustrate ideas. One can focus by highlighting key information with electronic ink and also capture images, notes or updates and save, print or e-mail notes. Using an interactive whiteboard helps you to simplify and work naturally at the Board with familiar, easy-to-use tools.
SMART Board – Pros and Cons of Using a Digital, Interactive Whiteboard (In the Classroom)
We used a smart board to teach with in the computer lab at school. Essentially, a SMART board turns your digital projector / LCD Projector image into an interactive whiteboard that you can write on.
The SMART Board itself is a touch-sensitive giant screen that is connected to your computer. You use your digital projector to display your computer screen onto the SMART board and the software allows you to touch and interact with your computer.
As more and more school boards and teachers are investing in data projectors, it begs the question whether SMART Boards are a good investment. After all, an intuitive touch interface plus the ability to write on digital documents (with digital ink) would help us to move beyond blackboards, flip chart paper, and overhead projectors.
Pros
With the SMART Board, you can control any application through the touch board. So instead of working from behind the computer keyboard, you (or your students) can be at the front of the classroom physically interacting with the display. You can use any of the 4 colours of markers or the eraser to write in digital ink over applications, web pages, or moving video. The SMART board still works if you lose the pens. (There are 4 coloured pen holders and one eraser. When you lift the pen out of the slot, it selects the colour or the eraser. When you touch the screen, it uses the selected color or the eraser.) Like other digital ink software applications, you can save your work into a notebook file, and you can convert handwriting into text. Cons
Hard to write. The biggest disappointment with the digital ink comes from the fact that a SMART Board is a front-mounted projection screen. This means that your data projector is set up in front of the screen (like an overhead projector). Which means that when you stand in between the projector and the screen, you cast a shadow on the screen… right where you are trying to write. Sure, it was cool to interact with programs by touching the screen, but, it was hard to write notes because you were constantly blocking the image. Hard to write neatly. To be perfectly honest, it was a little disappointing how our handwriting turned out on the SMART Board. Better than our experiences with the other digital pens (i.e. the i-pen), but the handwriting was still large, blocky, and messy. One of the things you have to train yourself to do is to not lean up against the SMART Board. When you write on a blackboard or white board, you typically rest the edge of your palm on the board. If you do that on a touch screen, the cursor jumps to your palm and it doesn’t work out. You have to train yourself to just write using the tip of the pen. The marker worked fine if we wanted to underline or circle key ideas, but if you wanted to edit or revise a 12 point, double-spaced Word Document, you’d have a hard time getting the control required. You still have to move back and forth from the keyboard to the screen. We could start up our web browser by touching the SMART board, but when it came time to enter in the website address, we had to go back to the desk to type in the URL. Expensive. The Total Cost of Ownership of a SMART Board can be prohibitive for the classroom teacher. Retail cost of a 77? (195.6cm) front-projection SMART Board Interactive whiteboard is $1399 (USD) with a grant from the SMARTer Kids Foundation of Canada. (www.SmarterKids.org) You need to supply your own data projector. A new, decent projector will cost around $500 – $1000. The SMART Board is just a giant touch pad. Your need to provide your own projector to display the image onto the smart board. (Software, connection cables, and stand are included.) You may want to upgrade to a wireless connection ($199 USD) to eliminate the cables and the tripping hazards in the classroom. The screen image and the SMART Board touch screen may get knocked out of alignment. This means that when you try to click a button, the mouse pointer appears a few inches to the side. You’ll have to realign your hardware which would interrupt the lesson.