All of the schools that I have substitute taught in have taken the money in their budget to put Smartboards or Smartboard knock offs in every classroom. Its wonderful that they have taken the initiative to try to integrate technology into their classrooms, but was this the best way? Although I can not speak for other subjects, I can say that I dont believe so for the Mathematic classrooms.
For math classes, the Smartboard does not have much more purpose than an overhead projector and a white board. There are not many purposes for math that a touch screen white board in math class. Teachers usually just use them as a white board and write on the notepad, they will show the rare math movie, or they will show pictures of graphs students may see. I do not believe that these are the best option to integrate technology into math class.
Students would benefit from using different technologies in their class than a Smartboard. A trip to the technology lab could give students a much better experience. There are many websites that show great graphs that are easily manipulated for students to experiment with. They would benefit significantly more by allowing them to explore graphs and computations on a computer than they benefit from having a Smartboard in the classroom.
Jacklyn, I do not agree with you. I believe that a smart board in a math class could be very effective for both the content and the student’s understanding. Notes could be saved on smart board for students who were absent, which is one of my most favorite features. Also, in a geometry class a teacher could make perfect shapes, rotate them, dilate them, and translate them and this is an easier way for the students to see the transition rather than drawing inaccurate shapes and taking a longer time. Additionally, sometimes when drawing something on a white board colors get over lapped and the teacher has to continuously draw a graph, with the smart board it is easier to identify.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your blog and I do not think that SmartBoards are necessary in a Mathematics classroom. While they are good sources for projection and while they can be written on, I think the classroom could manage with a regular whiteboard and projector. The money could be spent on other technologies that would serve a better purpose.
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