The first blackboard used in a school was in Philadelphia in 1809. Early blackboards were made from pine lumber and covered with a mixture of egg white and carbon from charred potatoes. Teachers and students wrote with chunks of chalk and erased with cloth rags!
We have come a long way since and have been blessed with new and useful technologies that help make our learning experience an engaging one, where more time is spent on learning & less on the technicalities of maintaining a smooth learning environment, in other words, zero downtime.
Like most things invented in 1809, the blackboard is out of fashion. Funny thing is that it was very much in fashion 15-20 years ago. The past two decades have seen the teachers medium of interacting with students evolve from being an 8 x 4 foot black object glued to the wall to a clean white screen, no more than an inch and half thick. Classrooms are no longer covered in chalk dust, erasing chalk covered boards for the teacher is out of fashion and faking asthma to get out of it is no longer necessary. Students are finally safe from the piercing shrill crystallized chalk makes when coming in contact with the blackboard. The introduction of this new technology revitalized class teaching with the traditional blackboard and replaced it with a new focal point. However, the whiteboards today aren’t your average ‘oh watch me write and erase with such ease’ whiteboards, but are actually smart boards. Yes, they’re intelligent. They’re interactive, hit them and they hit back – metaphorically speaking of course.
Over the past few years the smart board has proved to be a valuable learning tool, it is, as a colleague of mine so eloquently put, ‘a force to be reckoned with’. With the help of the interactive whiteboard your average instructor is transformed into a master of the arts; science, history, geography, not to mention story telling. For the duration of the class the instructor is a wizard, a wizard wielding a wand and making sense of the pictures, landscapes and text the smart board magically projects onto the screen.
How does this work you ask? A computer image is projected onto the smart board screen surface where teachers simply touch to access and control any computer program. When a pen is selected from the ‘smart’ pen tray, Instructors are able to write over the top of the projected images of applications, pictures, stories etc and highlight information with electronic ink using the pen or their finger. Annotations can be edited, saved and printed for distribution to students – It’s as simple as that!
Teaching elementary school using a smart board is probably the most fun an instructor can have. One can use educational software or games. For instance, if you have Storybook Weaver on your computer (a software especially designed for interactive smart boards) all you have to do is start it up and wait for the image to display on your smart board after which you can then group write a story, let students come up and pick the background and pictures, add text along the way, the possibilities are endless! You can also teach basic word processing and other skills using Microsoft Office taking full advantage of the interactivity of your smart board.
The smart board has facilitated the use of distance learning in high-schools and colleges and has proved extremely helpful amongst students with limited motor skills. It’s easy interfacing with other peripherals such as computers, projectors, & hand-held pc’s has enabled the smart board to overcome compatibility issues and in turn it has become a house hold name.
The smart board is an excellent tool for the constructivist educator and most importantly it’s a kid magnet! The smart board is an excellent tool for the constructivist educator and most importantly it’s a kid magnet!
