The Wonders of Interactive Whiteboards: No Cutting-Edge Classroom Is Complete without One

BENJAMIN HAZZARD remembers the first time he saw an interactive whiteboard. His seventh-graders had been chattering as usual, joking around, not paying much attention to anything except their own adolescent obsessions and amusements. Then an IT consultant walked into the room with a Smart Board www.smarttech.com). Hazzard had no idea what it was. The consultant wrote Hello, on the board and then converted his script to text. The class fell silent, awed. Soon, even the most obstreperous students were politely raising their hands, waiting patiently to step up to this magical new device and try it out. Hazzard thought, Whatever this is, is good. Good indeed. Today, 40 out of the 53 schools in Hazzard's former district, the Lambton Kent District School Board in Ontario, Canada, have interactive whiteboards. And Hazzard, now an educational consultant, says teachers, seeing their students more engaged than ever, are clamoring for more. Grades have gone up; suspensions have gone down. At one point, Devine Street Public School, where Hazzard used to teach, actually had more suspensions than students. But this past year, it had only 20. And the learning community has widened: Hazzard shares whiteboard lessons with 1,500 teachers on his own podcasts (www.dtoo.com/smart. Does all the credit go to the boards? Hazzard says, It isn't about the boards; it's about the learning that is happening. The boards are a conduit to the curriculum. Jen Phillips would surely echo that sentiment. Phillips teaches sixth-grade math and science at Euclid Middle School in Littleton, CO. She's worked with Smart Boards for four years and was the key mover behind the effort to equip every classroom in the school with an interactive whiteboard. She uses one to show her students deep-sea photography when they're studying oceanography; to draw shapes and identify angles when they're studying trigonometry; and to import virtually anything from the Internet and to edit and manipulate Phillips has also seen students blossom, not only as a result of learning more efficiently, but also from helping teach classes and even train teachers in the technology. It's created a unique partnership between teachers and students, she says. Developed by Smart Technologies, the Smart Board is one of several interactive whiteboards on the market today. What can you do with it? For starters, you can write, erase, and perform mouse functions with your finger, a pen, or anything with a maneuverable, firm surface. You can write in digital ink over applications, Web sites, and videos. You can capture your work or save your notes directly into different software applications. In the latest version, 9.5, you can even download the software onto a PC. That means teachers can create and prepare lessons at home, and students can review lessons and do work at home. Another good thing is that Smart Boards--interactive whiteboards in general--are relatively easy to use. Testament to that is found in Kellie Gaffney's classroom at Liberty Elementary School in Flower Mound, TX. Gaffney taught her students--kindergarteners--how to calibrate the board. Gaffney uses her Smart Board every day, for literature, for phonics, even for tutoring. Her assessment scores are continually rising. And her students are now so savvy, they pretend they're the teacher. They can use it on their own, she says. They want to go do it. 'An Appliance in the Classroom' One major player the interactive whiteboard world is the Numonics Corporation (www.numonics.com). Numonics was a pioneer in such technologies as a pencentric whiteboard: The teacher touches the board surface with an electronic pen, and all program functions are transferred to the pen. Numonics brought in teachers to identify online resource files that were then incorporated into the product. The company licensed a clip-art library with about 3,000 images and incorporated that into its product as well. …

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