Why Use SMART Boards?

This time our intrepid tech contributor, high school sophomore April Ferguson, explains the many benefits of SMART Boards, especially for students with learning differences.

All over the country SMART Boards are being installed in many classrooms.  A SMART board is an interactive whiteboard that is used mostly in educational settings. The first interactive whiteboard was manufactured by SMART Technologies Inc. in 1991. They enable students to literally interact with the information being taught to them.

SMART boards were invented to get the classroom motivated, to learn the content of the subject in a way that is different than your traditional method of teaching. In classrooms throughout the world, educators may have a difficult time getting all their students motivated to the tasks at hand but with the SMART board, they will be able to take advantage of the multi- sensory approach. This can make lessons more entertaining for the students.

The SMART board can benefit any kind of learner. It may help the student if they are a visual, kinesthetic or tactile learner. It may also benefit deaf and hearing-impaired visually impaired and other special needs students. The student can recall the material presented to them on a SMART board by using their senses of sight, sound, and touch, as opposed to the traditional method of the teacher dictating the information to student.

An example of this type of learning could be a student with short-term memory issues that uses color-coding with words to emphasize phonetic values and make the lesson more useful in recalling and repeating materials taught to them.

When using the whiteboard, you can capitalize on your sense of sight by viewing each letter, which is presented in a different color, for example, when a 1st grade student is learning to spell cat. The whiteboard puts each letter in a different color and the students can use their sense of touch by tracing the words with their fingers which they are attempting to spell. The information then travels directly to the brain, as opposed to the traditional method of a teacher just sounding out the word over and over, and then telling the student to spell the word.

The deaf and hearing-impaired learners rely on visual learning, using the interactive whiteboard facilitates the presentation of visual material with the use of sigh language simultaneously in front of students.  Finally, hearing is important when using this modern approach because it can annunciate different sounds, for example, what does a cow say? The answer of course, is “moo.”

Visual learners benefit by utilizing the “document camera” feature that, makes a picture of what the teacher has just written down and can send straight to a printer. This becomes useful because the student does not need to multi-task, listening to the teacher and taking notes. This is less stressful on the student, as well as the teacher, as they don’t have to slow down the class so the student can copy down the notes.

A kinesthetic or tactile learner typically may have a difficult time to engaging in traditional classroom activities that involve more visuals. The SMART board comes in to play when reinforcing learning though exercises involving touch, movement and space on the interactive whiteboard.

Visually impaired students use what little eyesight they have to manipulate the object and the large text on the whiteboard’s big surface and participate in computer-based learning in ways that would not be possible on a normal chalkboard.

According to the SMART Technologies website, “for over 20 years SMART has been helping educators reach their goals of improving student engagement, increasing academic achievement and making schools more globally competitive. Today we are global leader in the interactive whiteboard product category, with more then 40 million students and teachers in over 175 countries using SMART products,” (smarttech.com).

This shows that the SMART board, is utilized in American schools, in an effort to catch up to the three top academically achieving countries in the world:  Finland, Hong Kong and Canada. Out of the 57 countries that were compared, America is in the middle of the pack and the Smart Board will hopeful help American students catch up (greatschools.org).

A 4th grade Elementary school student In Phoenix, AZ from Madison Elementary stated, “I think that the SMART board is so awesome I like it a lot,” (CNN.com). Even elementary students can comprehend how to use the SMART board and its applications, proving, with properly trained educators, the SMART board can be beneficial.

 

49 responses to “Why Use SMART Boards?”

  1. Mary says:

    Well done, April! You make a good points about the lessons being easier to remember for students with memory issues as well as freeing up their time to concentrate, rather than note-taking, with the ‘print screen” function. I can see where this would help many people, but particularly students with learning disabilities to master the material faster and more thoroughly.

  2. Isabell says:

    Just what exactly seriously moved you to compose “Why Use SMART Boards?

    : Learning Diversity” kegofwisdom ?
    Itruly loved the blog post! Thank you -Mozelle

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