SMARTBoards

SMARTBOARDS Steve Mackenzie ETEC 511 Franc Feng June 17, 2012

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Essentially, SMARTBoards, or interactive white boards, are touch screens utilizing the affordances of the web and projection technology. Beyond enabling users to manipulate text and images with their fingers, they allow teachers and students to make notes on the board using digital ink that can be written over various media presentations and saved for later review in email, the web, or print. SMARTBoards also include accompanying presentation tools for learning like digital protractors and various templates, images and multimedia. With these affordances, Smart technologies claim that SMARTBoards encourage student engagement and interaction crucial to learning theories like constructivism, active learning and whole class teaching that enables focussed group activity (Smart Technologies Inc., 2006). In a nutshell, they believe it promotes dynamic interaction between the students, the board and the teacher; in my classroom, I have had a slightly different experience. Walk into one of my classes and you will probably see a student at the SMARTBoard while the others watch and tag along like sheep. The student is writing, touching making things appear and disappear at a touch of a finger; its magical and mesmerizing. I work hard to fill my classes full of novelty with pop up questions and answers, videos, and simulations that I write on and record for students review. Notice the height of the pendulum swing, I say, as I draw a line from the ground to its max height on the video. When will the pendulum stop, I ask, taking

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predictions and writing them over the running video before fast forwarding to the end to discover the real world answer. It is so interactive, this magical board, the center of our universe. Despite my awe with SMARTBoards, I wonder why Japan, with its highest scores in Math, dont have classrooms like mine; in truth, their boards couldnt be farther from the center of their universe. In their classrooms, a single problem is written on the board while small groups of students in facing desks collaborate (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999). Meanwhile, the teacher wanders amongst the groups, watching, asking Socratic-like questions and interacting with students interacting with each other. When solutions are reached, students describe their thinking processes to the class from their desks; Students dont go to the board to write out algorithms. I struggle with the feeling that this magical and novel SMARTBoard is turning me away from the student-centered constructivist learning model so championed and proven by the Japanese. Smart technologies tell me that SMARTBoards can create student-student interaction but I fail to see how touch and review affordances can improve collaboration despite their multiple examples pertaining to the novelty and wow factor, the magic of ones fingers, the ability to feel and outline shapes and words and experience writing and erasing text, the ability to focus on the board rather than the computer screen, and its fast-pace (Smart Technologies Inc., 2006). I cant escape the thought that I am missing something and obviously failing to see how the SMARTBoard can foster student interaction. This makes it even more disturbing that Im training my colleagues how to use their SMARTBoards. Moreover, the record function of these SMARTboards actually leads to disengagement of my students. They think they can review the class later and chat with their friends now, but later

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never comes. This means that on Monday morning, 12 students show up in my room wanting just in time teaching to complete homework, for a lesson they will never see, just so they can pass the quiz. Ironically, schools are pumping themselves full of SMARTBoards, or magic walls at a time when educational experts are shifting away from traditional teaching models of the sage on the stage towards a more passive guide on the side that encourages students to socially and actively construct their own meaning through projects and discussion. References Smart Technologies Inc. (2006). Interactive whiteboards and learning: improving student learning outcomes and streamlining lesson planning [White paper]. Retrieved 10 June 2012 from http://downloads01.smarttech.com/media/research/whitepapers/int_whiteboard_research_ whitepaper_update.pdf Stigler, J. W. and Hiebert, J. (1999). The teaching gap: Best ideas from the worlds teachers for improving education in the classroom. New York: Free Press.