SMART Boards: The Classroom Tool of Today and the Future

First, there was the chalkboard. Then, the revolutionary whiteboard came along! Now? The SMART board! Just as the whiteboard ran out most chalkboards across the nation, I believe that this interactive new tool is going to eventually make its same mark in the classroom.

So what is a SMART board? View this video to learn more:

What a fabulous thing for teachers to be equipped with! With all of the new technologies that students are surrounded with, whiteboards are sure to soon be a boring old memory of the past. Why not get updated? The SMART board allows teachers to engage students in a number of fun activities and is completely interactive. That means students can come up to the board and write, move, resize, click, type, rotate, etc. just with the touch of a pen or finger. How neat is that? Also, you can transfer things that you and your class have created from the computer to the board and back again. Can you say that about a chalk or white board?

Just today in my field experience for Methods of Teaching Early Literacy, I walked into a classroom where the SMART board was being used. Children collaborated and created a list of words that reminded them of spring. The teacher could add and erase ideas from the board with the pen tray features, and could even save it to her computer. Across the hall, I heard another teacher doing an interactive math game on her SMART board. It was much like a computer game, but the screen is large enough so that all of the students can see and participate. And the teacher and students can control everything with the pointer.

With all of the great functions that the SMART board offers, I find it hard to believe that we won't be seeing more and more of them in the future. The possibilities are endless!

The above image was used with permission from Wikimedia Commons (commons.wikimedia.org)