Smart Board Technology!

With the increasing demands on teachers to integrate technology into classrooms, what better way to do it than with a smart board? The smart board  is an interactive board that allows teachers to engage students in a new, fun and exciting way. With SMART Boards, students become more attentive and active learners in class. SMART Boards allow visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners to be more focused and engaged on the lesson that is being taught. The use of smart boards in the classroom allows teachers to meet the National Educational Technology Standards and appeals heavily on the Native learners in today's society. Below I'm going to make a list of all of the ways smart board technology can be used in the classroom: 

• Save lessons to present to students who were absent
• Create video files to teach a software application, a lesson, or as a review to be posted to the server or web. Example- How to create a graph in Excel or hoe to burn a projects to cds
• Use the built in maps to teach continents, oceans, countries, or states and capitals.
• Present presentations created by student or teacher
• Have students create e-folios including samples of their work and narration
• Digital storytelling
• Teach whole group computer or keyboarding skills
• Brainstorming
• Take notes directly into PowerPoint presentations
• Reinforce skills by using on-line interactive web sites
• Creating a project calendar
• Teach editing skills using editing marks
• Use in the 6 trait writing process
• Use highlighter tool to highlight nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.
• Use it with Kidspiration or Inspiration
• Teaching students how to navigate the Internet
• Illustrate and write a book as a class. Use the record feature to narrate the text.
• Use the Interwrite software to create lessons in advance at home or at school. Then save them for future use or to be shared with other teachers
• Diagramming activities
• Teaching steps to a math problem.
• Have students share projects during Parent/Teacher/Student conferences
• Graphics and charts with ESL learners and special ed students.
• Teaching vocabulary
• Electronic Word Wall
• End each day by having students write one thing that they learned

The amount of ways one can integrate a smart board into the classroom seems endless!  I did some research and found that the cheapest smart board can be purchased for about $1,000 and get as expensive as $6,000! Smart board technology doesn't come cheap, however, there are many teachers that will tell you how worth it they are.  


Below I'm going to post a few links of personal anecdotal accounts of how smart board technology have improved teaching and learning in these teachers classrooms: 
Dr. Mary Ann Bell
Bobbi Adrian
Check it out

Last but not least I want to show you video on smart boards and how this 5th grade teacher uses a smart board in her classroom :) Enjoy