Description/Experience
During seminar on Friday, November 11th, we learned all about using Smart Boards. Smart Boards, essentially are digital white boards that your computer can hook into to use as a more interactive class resource or as a hi-tech white board for content presentation. The Smart Board requires the use of its pen, which can write on the screen, and this pen doubles as the computer mouse when playing interactive educational games. Because the board is digital, you are not making permanent writings on this board, it is showing up on the screen digitially, and you can erase it as you please. The Smart Board is a multi-faceted educational resource used for both content presentation and lecture, as well as classroom interaction with educational games, etc.
Application
At Clay-Batelle, where I am doing my hours this semester, I work in a collaborative classroom with my mentor teacher. We are in a math class 2nd period, and this teacher uses the Smart Board for presenting content to the class, but she uses it more interactively when reviewing for math exams (which actually happen quite frequently). She writes out math questions from their study guide and the students come up to the board and write out the correct response. She breaks the students up into 2 teams and the students have to alternate back and forth doing the questions.
1. Learners: Transitional Math Class (variety of grades. Mainly 10th graders)
2. Learning outcomes: After using this smart board for the review, the students will have a better comprehension and understanding of the study guide, and therefore the chapter, for their exam the following day.
3. Assessment: She checks the answers after each student goes up to the Smart Board and the next student come up to fix the answer if they are wrong. She gives the winning team a piece of candy at the end of the class period.
Students have already become acquainted with the smart board (how to use the pen, erase their work if they mess up, etc.) so the teacher simply broke them up into two teams and they were able to watch their teammate work out the problem.
Reflection
Every chapter these students go through in math results in an exam. This Smart Board activity is great for students reviewing each chapter’s content because they get really excited about using this tool, and it’s affective because the students are able to work out each problem in front of the class. If they end up getting the questions wrong, they are easily erasable and the next student can come up and demonstrate what each student did wrong.
The Smart Board supports the teaching strategies in this activity because it provides an interactive area for students to work out their review questions for the exam. The students love using the Smart Board, and it’s very easy to use in this case. While it can be touchy at times, the teacher usually steps in to fix and technology glitches. Overall this tool is great for students in review situations. The students easily fix their teammates work if they’ve done something incorrectly.
The Smart Board also enhances the students’ understanding of learning the content in this review activity because it is a review of the actual content they’ve covered in class. The students are working directly with problems from their study guide which were taught in class throughout the 2 weeks before each exam. When they get something wrong, as I mentioned earlier, their peers attempt to fix it and the teacher goes over what the student did incorrectly in the first place.
Because they’re using actual problems from their book, there is a positive correlation between the material they’re working with and the understanding of it throughout this activity. I could see the students getting lost in an interactive game if the teacher plugged her computer in to Smart Board and used it that way, but the teacher actually writes out review questions that come straight from their chapter study guide. The students are able to comprehend the information because it’s being worked out directly in front of them and they see where mistakes happen in each question, as well as how they are fixed.
--Pedagogical-Content:
Review activities like this are always drill and practice. The students are applying what they have already been taught and displaying what they know to the teacher; they are essentially practicing what they have already learned. The students are learning this information thoroughly because they are working it out in front of the entire class, and their teammates fix any of the answers they get wrong. This helps them understand how to work each problem out thoroughly and correctly.
Technological-Pedagogical:
The Smart Board provides a fun piece of technology that truly helps the students learn the material of their review. Pairing the Smart Board with a math review creates a great recipe for success on the exam. The students are working interactively with each other, bouncing ideas off of their teammates, and then displaying that they understand the content by working out the problems in a competitive manner. Each student can follow along on their own study guide and actually watch as their peer works out the problem. As the student works out the problem on the Smart Board, their peers can see exactly where they went wrong if they didn’t answer the question completely. The content is displayed for the students on this large white board.
Technological Pedagogical Content:
This activity is a review with the entire class. The entire class is participating but the teacher breaks it down so one student is working on a problem at a time until it is completed. The information is worked out so thoroughly and until it is right, so the students are getting a great understanding of the information presented. As I stated earlier, the students love getting involved by using the Smart Board, so this activity provides for a great reviewing resource where the students actually learn the content material.
This is wonderful. Much better than the previous posting of iPads and Edmodo. Keep up the lovely work. I enjoy it greatly.
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