SMART Board

At my teaching practice school all classrooms are equipped with SMART Boards. A smart board is a large interactive whiteboard that is connected to a computer and a projector (either with cables or wireless). When the computer is connected, a picture of the desktop appears at the board. Since most computers have internet access, the smart boards can be used online too.

When purchasing a SMART Board, usually there’s a training course included. However, it is quite basic (in my opinion) so you really need to take some extra time to explore all different features. Otherwise, it easily happens that the smart board is mostly used for watching movies or video clips online (which is quite often the case in many classrooms). The smart board can be used in so many other ways though! The board is a large touch screen and by using (artificial) pens the pupils can write and draw directly on the board. It is great to use for mind mapping, since the teacher can print it out and then hand it out to the class. It is also possible to save the document the class is working with and then go back and continue to work with it next lesson.

 

Photo credit: Kathy Cassidy, Creative Commons http://www.flickr.com/photos/kathycassidy/

Using a smart board when teaching English can give the teacher an opportunity to explore a fun and creative tool together with the pupils. Making lesson-plans, exercises and games on your own can be quite time consuming though. I’ve come across some exercises at www.lektion.se that were actually really good, they were easy to download and use. On the SMART Board webpage there’s something called “SMART Exchange” which is an international webpage where teachers from all over the world upload and share lesson plans, activities, and different exercises. And it’s not only for English teachers, you can find a lot of different subjects there. Although I have not used that page myself it looks like something worth checking out.   

A new feature I just heard of is “SMART Extreme Collaboration” where the pupils can share photos and other work by using their computer, tablets or smart phones, and it’s all wireless. They upload it through an app and it comes up on the smart board. I think it’s a great way to encourage the pupils to work together and share their work as well. They can all contribute to each other’s learning. 

Here’s a video clip from a school in Sweden that has been working with “SMART Extreme Collaboration”. I would definitely like to try that out with my 6^th graders when teaching English. They would be thrilled to use their phones in class :) 

/Anna