Smartboards are a relatively new concept for me as a pre-service educator. I was introduced to them for the first time last year while I was volunteering in a first grade classroom. The Smartboard absolutely amazed me! Students were doing 'calendar' on it by recording the date, the weather, working with money, and more. The board seemed to enhance their education because it made something previously boring really fun for these students. They all wanted to participate and manipulate the board!
I did a little research on Smartboards because I know it is possible that they will be a part of my future classroom. I found out that this technology was invented in 1991! This surprised me because they have only been introduced to classrooms recently. The board was created by a company called Smarttech and was originally intended for business purposes. Soon, though, we realized the impact that these boards could have on education!
If I have a Smartboard in my future elementary classroom (and I hope I do), I plan to use it to make the following tasks easier:
- Attendance
- Calendar
- Lunch
- Working with coins/dollars in math
- Social studies interactive maps
- Revising during language arts
- Showing student work
- Modeling concepts
- Introducing a new project
(Picture source)
There are several more ways in which a Smartboard can be integrated into a classroom. The point, however, is that technology like this can really enhance education. One teacher stated, in an article I found, that the Smartboard "made education come alive" for the students. As a result, the Smartboard demonstrates the powerful impact one piece of technology can have on our students' learning!
