Best Practices
Evaluating Your
SMART Board Skills Do you have a SMART Board in your classroom or computer lab? Are you a novice user or a proficient user? We have created a rubric that you can use to look at your skills and see where you fall on the continuum. You can use the rubric to plan how to improve your use of the SMART Board. The rubric looks at a variety of topics including basic care. It is important to keep sharp objects away from the SMART Board and to have students and teachers take good care of the SMART Board. We have had the most success when the teacher empowers the students in the classroom to take full responsibility for proper care of the SMART Board. I have heard of stories when a substitute comes in and the students stop the sub from writing on the SMART Board with a pen. The students want to use the SMART Board in their classroom and they protect it from misuse. In addition, the bulbs for the projectors are expensive; they cost approximately $200 to $300 per bulb. Be sure to turn off the projector when you are not using it for 15 minutes of longer. We have seen that initially the teacher uses the SMART Board for demonstrations. The goal with the SMART Board is for teachers to create interactive lessons so that students use the SMART Board. Students should be the primary users of the SMART Board and should design presentations for use on the SMART Board. We want teachers and students using the SMART Board. Many teachers use the SMART Board for providing directions, DOL, United Streaming videos, PowerPoint presentations, scanned worksheets and bell work exercises. I was in the classroom of John Fife and Joan Vandertie from Cross Middle school and they, along with Dee Fife, use the attendance feature in Easy Grade Pro and display the seating chart on the SMART Board and the students walk in and mark themselves as present. These are great ways to use the SMART Board, but we need to go beyond these and use interactive web sites, flash tools, interactive PowerPoint presentations and online manipulatives. In addition, the teacher should use the SMART Board for higher level thinking activities that involve student collaboration, creativity and problem solving. The SMART Board has a powerful recording feature that allows you to record what is presented on the screen. You can change the screen size that is recorded; the smaller the screen size the smaller the file size. Teachers use this feature to demonstrate a concept that students are having difficulty with and they post it to their web page or make it available on the classroom computer for students to review. This is also useful for students who were absent; they can watch the recording and learn the key concepts without you having to reteach them in person. In addition, some teachers are using this recording feature when they have a substitute and they aren’t sure the substitute will know how to teach a specific concept, strategy or topic. For example, some substitutes might not know about the strategies in Every Day Math or complex theories in science and math and they show examples on the SMART Board and record their movements on the SMART Board and narration explaining what they are doing and why. The students then watch the Smart Recording with the substitute and learning still happens when the teachers is absent and the substitute learns as well! Finally, we are trying to create a bank of SMART Board Lessons created by Amphitheater Teachers. We want you to share your lessons so that others can use them or modify them to meet their needs. You can share your lessons at http://www.amphi.com/departments/technology/whiteboard/amphilessons/ So, check out the rubric and determine where you fall today and create a plan for where you’d like to be for second semester. The rubric can be found near the top of the District Interactive White Board Resource page at http://www.amphi.com/departments/technology/whiteboard/lessonplans.html Get Smarter with your SMART Board! |
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