TEWKSBURY - Why would Brenda Regan’s 6th grade math class be dissecting a frog at the beginning of class last Friday and how did they do it without metal dissecting tools, frog dissection kits, or any kind of mess?
The answer is an incredible technology being implemented into Tewksbury classrooms. Regan’s classroom is outfitted with a SMART Board System, from SMART Technologies. It is three-component system of an interactive whiteboard, a projector that is mounted to the ceiling, and the teacher’s computer, to which the projector and the whiteboard are linked. As the projector puts an image of the computer screen up onto the whiteboard, the teacher or students can touch the whiteboard with a finger and control the computer as if they were using a mouse.
But this Board does so much more. Pick up a stylus pen from the tray on the Board and use it or your finger to write on the Board. Change your handwriting to text and play with size, font, color, repetition – the possibilities are endless! And this is how Regan’s class came to perform a virtual dissection of a frog on their SMART Board system. The students were engaged and having fun with the dissection, while they were also learning to use the Board.
At any opportunity to use the Board, kids are excited and many hands go up when a volunteer is needed at the Board. Regan said that this excitement is not a novelty. She said the kids last year were just as enthralled by it at the end of the year. The excitement never ends because there is always something new to do on it. “It’s engaging, it’s different, and it’s interactive,” said Regan.
Regan explains that if she sent a notebook home and told kids to create math lessons to share with the class, there would be a lot of eye rolling and comments like “oh great, she gave me more work,” but with the SMART Board system, kids are eager to go home and install the software and create lessons from home. It reinforces the lessons for the student and at the same time they create lessons that their class and future classes can use to learn math.
Not only will the student-created lessons serve as a resource for future classes, but anything that is written on the Board can be saved in a file or printed out. Students can bring in thumb drives and take home files to continue to review or practice material and a student who is absent can catch up on the materials from missed lessons.
The Board changes the way teachers traditionally teach. “It revolutionizes teaching a little because I don’t have to be in front of the class in your way,” Regan told students as she moved to teach from the back of the room and used her Bluetooth enabled slate to control the board from a distance. Students no longer have to look at the back of a teacher who is trying to write on a chalkboard. Regan can see all of the students, and the students focus on the material presented in front of them. There is even a magnifier tool that can be used to enlarge parts of the screen so that text can be read from across the room. The slate can be passed around, so even students that are not physically able to get to the board can use it from their seats.
Describing the technology as “contagious,” Regan said that once a teacher in a subject area has piloted the SMART Board in their classroom for a year, others that see the excitement want one in their room too. Lessons that are created by teachers and students can be shared and there is free access to more lessons on the SMART Technologies website for the life of the Board.
Regan won a grant in 2006 from SMART Technologies that included a SMART Board System, training for her in Canada so that she could learn the system and learn to train other teachers, and a trip for 2 teachers and 8 students for 8 days to Canada for intensive training also. Now the district is building on that to train more teachers and students and to implement more systems throughout the schools.
Superintendent McGrath and the School Committee are fully supportive of efforts to bring in more SMART Boards for the classrooms. At their August 29th meeting they discussed the necessity of giving consideration to hiring individuals who have the skills to keep up with the technology we are bringing into the schools. They mentioned revisiting this issue as they get into the budget process for next year.
In e-mail to the Crier, School Committee Chairman Keith Rauseo provided the multi-faceted reasoning behind the district’s enthusiastic response to SMART Board technology, “SMART Boards are terrific tools because they bring a new level of hands-on interaction and student participation within instruction. They are new and different, so they generate a natural boost of excitement among students and teachers. Even more importantly, they allow teachers to save and share lessons. Bringing the lesson right up and working through it immediately, or bringing up a tried-and-true lesson developed by a colleague, saves teachers time from writing everything over and over on a standard board, and this allows teachers more time for instruction. Several teachers are strong advocates of the technology and are already using it everyday. The administration is excited about it and working on plans to acquire more boards over time. We all think they will have a great effect on the overall quality of instruction.”
The Schools Need Your Help
There are nearly 20 of these systems currently throughout the school district. PAC fundraising and private and corporate donations have provided most of these SMART Board systems. Regan said that a classroom could be fully set up with the SMART Board equipment for a cost of $2000 to $2500. Any business or resident interested in making a contribution toward the purchase of one of these systems is encouraged to contact a school or the Superintendent’s office and specify that the donation is for a SMART Board purchase.
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