My Introduction to Smart Boards

Today I had the opportunity to attend an introductory workshop on smart boards and their place in a school classroom. Apparently, there are several brands of these interactive boards ranging from Promethean active boards to Dell interactive whiteboards to boards that are actually called SMART boards. They appear to be an interactive computer on a large screen in the front of the classroom. Some require a stylus pen that is calibrated to work on the board while newer ones only require one’s fingers. The board we used needed the pen, though much of our work was done via computers and laptops provided and simulated what we could do on a smart board.

I was grateful for the explanation about the mechanics of the smart boards, such as what to do when (not if) one gets lost, in addition to learning about some of the tools available. We looked at the main menu, main toolbox, formatting toolbar, tools, and browsers, among other things. An interesting tool was something called handwriting recognition. One would use the pen to write something on the screen and after being selected, it would turn what was written into typed text. This might be good for someone having poor handwriting, but I know children love to see their work published, and I wonder if this might diminish the importance of their contribution.

Because I have not worked with smart boards before, I was overwhelmed by all the knowledge I was presented with. The instructors were excellent, though, balancing their teaching so as to not move too fast for novices such as me, while at the same time trying not to bore those who have had prior experience. One example was when the class was shown how to use the tickertape function which allows text to roll across the screen as slow or as fast as one might want. This was something that drew the attention of all, but was really more for fun than as a teaching tool, and I didn't feel that it was imperative that I learn that function.

After the instructors presented us with the basics, they gave us some time to play around with them, including playing with some of the many images we could choose from. I found things from geometric shapes to musical notes to animals. I had fun duplicating and rotating some penguins and discovered the images also come with audio. Those in the room were hearing everything from lions roaring to babies crying, and I even heard a sick cough simulating a negative side effect of smoking. I appreciated the advice the instructors gave, however, to be careful not to get carried away by using too many tools. A teacher should use tools that help support the learning objectives, not the other way around.

One demonstration that made the class see the advantage of using an interactive board was an activity the instructors had us do. At the beginning of the class, they showed us a clip on the screen consisting of a list of words shown one at a time. A few words were read to us, others showed only pictures and some had text, audio and a picture. We were asked to pay attention to them, but after we were shown them, they told us that we would get back to them later and went on to teach us about the white boards.

Toward the end of the class they came back to the word list and asked us to write down all that we could remember. None of us remembered very many, but I felt the most important part of the exercise was when they showed us the statistics of past results. The majority of the words that people remember are the ones that have audio, written text, and an image. Research showed that about 10% remembered information they had heard; 35% remembered information they had seen, but 65% remembered what they had both seen and heard. Learning how important it is to combine oral and visual with text was a good motivator for us to learn all we could about smart boards.