Smart Boards

Throughout my internship I was lucky enough to have access to a Smart Board. For those of you who do not know what this is, a Smart Board is like a white board that is connected to a computer and has a lot of technology in it, so that you can use it for a number of things (not the greatest description...but that's about what I know!!)

So, what I used the Smart Board for was my Math classes. It was really neat because it allowed me to pull up cartesian planes (grids) and made it much faster to graph something for the kids. It also gave my students the opportunity to come and do some of their own. Since it was faster, it gave the lesson a nice flow to it, and kept the students from getting distracted...after all it's graphing and MOST students seem to REALLY dislike this topic!!!

Now, not only could I bring up these graphs but I could do a lot of the lesson (notes, examples) already and just pull them up onto the screen as I liked. Here comes the really cool part...with 4 special "markers" you can write on the board and highlight anything that you like! So when I brought up a graph, for instance, I could highlight a specific area for the kids, or I we could find the slope together and the kids could watch me and follow.
You can also bring up any image from any document and are able to write on the screen, so when I used winplot on the internet, I could use the Smart Board to highlight things and then talk with the kids.

All in all, I think it is an awesome tool, and if any one ends up having one in their school I suggest you at least try it out...it's really cool and the kids just LOVED it!!