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This is no ordinary white board
Pryor touched a projector screen at the front of the classroom and a Web page appeared—the same page showing on his laptop computer on the desk five feet away. Pryor uses a SMART Board, an interactive touch-sensitive board that connects to a computer and acts as a computer screen. A digital projector mounted in the ceiling projects the image from Pryor's laptop onto the SMART Board screen. Pryor can move images, write in digital ink, access the Internet, run software programs, type on a keyboard displayed onscreen— anything he can do on a computer, he can do on a SMART Board. As part of the math lesson, Pryor accessed a kid-friendly website. When he asked who wanted to answer a question, hands shot up into the air. A girl came up and touched one of the three answers on the screen. In response to her correct answer, a cartoon lizard performed a martial arts move. "Overall, it's great," said Pryor, who has worked with the interactive board all five years he's been at Camarillo Heights. He's used it so often that the projector bulb, which was supposed to last 10 years, burned out prematurely and had to be replaced. The downside, he said, are the computer cords that connect the board to his laptop. But wireless connections are not an option because of security issues. The 10- and 11-year-olds worked next on algebraic equations: "Eleven times a number is 44." A student walked up to the board and paused before using a special pen to write "11N = 44" on the screen. The SMART Board is new to them, Pryor said; they didn't have one in fourth grade. But, he said, by the end of the year they'll handle the board like old pros. Five classrooms at Camarillo Heights have a SMART Board, first released by SMART Technologies in 1991, and eight boards are waiting to be installed. About 16 percent of all U.S. classrooms have an interactive white board, and more than 60 percent of them are SMART Boards, said SMART Tech's CEO Nancy Knowlton. Each of the 11 schools in the Pleasant Valley School District has at least one SMART Board, which costs about $2,100 with the wheeled stand. The district couldn't afford to buy the teaching tool, so individual schools raised the money themselves, said Jennifer Clark, director of education technology. "We would love to have them everywhere, but they're too expensive," she said. At Monte Vista Middle School, the first in the district to buy a SMART Board, Kate Fisher was teaching her sixth-grade class how the earth's tilt affects the seasons. When Fisher tapped the interactive screen, a video on the spring and autumnal equinox played. Fisher paused the video and asked when the fall equinox occurs. Hands shot up. "Sept. 21," a student answered. Using a special pen, Fisher wrote the answer directly on the stilled image of a spinning earth. The students took notes. An excited murmur went through the room when Fisher told the students to form three groups for the "Jeopardy" quiz. On the SMART Board screen the TV game show display board appeared and music played. One group leader chose "Forms of Energy" for $500. The definition: "Energy that holds atoms together in molecules." After conferring with her team, she shouted, "What is chemical energy?" Her team cheered. Fisher could display the webpage on the TV mounted in the corner behind her desk, but the screen is small and the words difficult to see. Besides, she'd be stuck at her desk using the computer, instead of at the front of the room, giving more of her attention to her students, she said. "It's pretty amazing," Fisher said of the interactive board. "The best thing is, it's more engaging." By pushing a button on the board's screen or frame, Fisher can enlarge words, pictures and other images; she can move them around the screen and even send the image to a printer. Instead of coming to work an hour early to write the day's notes on ordinary white boards, she can write the notes for her five classes as she's teaching the lessons. Her students say the board makes a difference. "It makes our learning clearer and more fun," said Jake Hunter, 11. "Way more fun," 11-year-old Clayton Doorbarroa added. The pace was moving fast in Lara Filgas' fifth-grade classroom at Santa Rosa Technology Magnet School. During language practice, a student came up to the interactive board to correct the sentence, "Please paw the movie while I get a glass of water." Writing with her finger, she circled "paw" and wrote "pause" under it. The class buzzed with anticipation when Filgas said a geography lesson was next. They hurriedly formed two teams and, one by one, identified a state by touching an area of the U. S. map projected on the SMART Board. A box on the screen tracked the teams' scores. The students in line giggled when a teammate answered correctly. Around the corner, in Jerri Lejeune's classroom, the atmosphere was more relaxed. Using the SMART Board, Lejeune showed her sixth-graders where to access a Web page with a crossword puzzle, flip cards and short quizzes to prepare for an upcoming test on ancient civilizations. The students took out their laptops and brought up the Web page. Christian Chatfield, 11, finished the crossword puzzle in five minutes. "I didn't get a single word wrong," he said. Ten-year-old Danielle Rohlfing said, "I think it's really fun, because it's interactive." Santa Rosa Technology Magnet has 10 wall-mounted SMART Boards. With it and the Internet, students have taken virtual field trips to NASA in Florida and spoken directly to scientists; toured the Grand Teton National Park and talked to park rangers; visited the site of a Japanese internment camp in Northern California and listened to former residents talk about their experiences—all without leaving the classroom. As Lejeune waited for her students to finish their work, she said, "Look at how engaged the kids are." |
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