SMARTBOARD JOURNEY -MAY

I used my PD day today and it was awesome.  The only glitch I had was that I had to re-do my blog as my original blog with eduperience is no more.  I learned a valuable lesson though,  always save your blogs as a word document first then post!  I didn't save my big long reflection from December in a word document and no matter how hard I try to access it, I cannot see it.  What is so frustrating is that I know the exact title and so when I type that into a search engine it comes up but of course when I click on it, it doesn't show me what I posted.  Oh well, a lesson learned indeed.  So I feel my blog is a bit incomplete without my December reflection!  My reflection on my first year with the SMARTboard is still to come! 

SMART BOARD JOURNEY- FEBRUARY SMART BOARD PERCEPTIONS

Parents have been very receptive about the SMART board. During Education week, we had an afternoon open house where parents could pop in and see their child in action at school. I choose to use the SMART board so that parents had an opportunity to see how it works. I had many positive comments about how engaged the students were. Parents have said it would be great to see this in every classroom.




Students really enjoy using the SMART board in the classroom. They like to "brag" a little to other students in other classrooms that we have a SMART board in their classroom. I find that students are very eager to come up to the front and use the SMART board (even the shy ones). It is a great motivating tool for the students.



I have found that the SMART board has been influential in all areas but especially in Language Arts and Mathematics. It is so helpful to bring up manipulatives on the SMART board and all students can see them on the board and they can come up and manipulate them. We just finished an angles unit in math and I found it so useful to be able to show how to use a protractor on the SMART board and manoeuver and manipulate it. All the students did very well on the test and I attribute that to the help of the SMART board.



I have found that the teacher laptop, data projector, SMART board and student cart of laptops have increased accessibility. Before to drag out the SMART board, set it up orient the board, make sure the students didn't move the data projector or the cart for a 45 minute lesson was a lot of work. It would take at least 20 minutes to get everything set up and then sometimes that didn't even work. NOW, it is so easy to bring something up because technology is always right there. I love the laptop carts as well. It is so nice to book out the cart and have all of my students together in one area instead of running around to the various classrooms to help them out.