We’ve come a long way since teachers in the classroom used blackboards and chalk to write out lessons for high schoolers and college students. Many instructors have moved beyond the dry erase board as well. Today, teachers and professors are using interactive whiteboards called SMART Boards alongside other lecture delivery tools such as PowerPoint presentations and online course material.

(Photo: kjarrett)

What Exactly Are SMART Boards?

SMART boards are interactive whiteboard products produced by a company called SMART Technologies and the first of their kind to allow teachers and students to access computer applications using touch control in an educational setting. The idea is essentially a traditional whiteboard combined with a computer, according to SMART Technologies. The hardware involved is essentially a widescreen and a projector.

What Can It Do?

One of the SMART board’s coolest capabilities is that teachers can actually write notes in digital ink while delivering a lesson, and then save their work to the computer. In other words, your lessons aren’t lost to all eternity when you erase them. Instead, they can be saved and even posted online in digital files for students to access at a later date (which is great for slower note-takers). SMART Boards are great for college instructors and professors who prefer the spontaneity of what comes into their head as they lecture to canned or pre-prepared PowerPoint slides. It’s also great for professors who enjoy PowerPoint, but desire more versatile technology. Students can also go up to the SMART Board and write out complicated calculus or trigonometry problems as they would on a traditional whiteboard.

SMART Boards also allow for click-and-drag activities (your finger guides the cursor just like a mouse), touch-screen educational games for younger students, and can also be used to deliver interactive PowerPoint presentations in higher education settings. For instance, professors can use the Smart Magic Pen tool to jot quick notes or arrows on their slide that will disappear in a few seconds like a weatherman’s arrows do. Teachers can also access interactive educational websites to show educational material to their students on the board.

Finally, any Word or PDF documents can be dragged from a computer to the Smart board screen, where they are converted to an image file and teachers can then mark up and highlight that document as much as possible while teaching. For instance, if a professor is breaking down a paragraph of literature and wants to highlight all the areas where the writer uses a certain type of imagery, he could circle those areas on the screen to point them out to the whole class, and easily erase them at will. These are just a few of the SMART Boards many capabilities.

Do They Improve Student Learning?

At TechBoston Academy, an experimental school in Boston’s inner city, incorporating technology in the classroom such as SMART Boards and training teachers to use them in new ways has helped break a cycle of failure, according to a recent CNN article. At this school full of at-risk youth, a whopping 95 percent are routinely accepted into college, the article noted. Another article in the RockFord Independent indicated that one of the reasons SMART Boardswere so effective was because they helped increase student engagement by letting the students get involved with the technology by going up and manipulating the board themselves.

In Conclusion

SMART Boards are deemed a “tool of the future” by many who work in educational technology. However, barriers exist because not every college and school district can afford the technology, meaning grants would have to kick off progress for many institutions. Also, teachers and instructors would need to be thoroughly trained on the many uses of this technology. That being said, SMART Boards have already proven to make a positive impact on the educational experience that could transform teaching as we know it.

This guest contribution was submitted by Jamie Davis, who specializes in writing about masters degree. Questions and comments can be sent to: davis.jamie17@gmail.com.