Saturday, August 15, 2009

Interactive White Boards

Hola (hi in Spanish).

Interactive whiteboards which I know better as ‘smart boards’ have been in both of the schools I have completed practicum at. But am I any better off than a friend of mine who hasn’t had access to one in either of her prac years I couldn’t tell you.

Neither of my classroom teachers (as brilliant as they are) have embraced the technology much or taught me anything amazing using them. They have both used the ‘smart board’ to play music and DVDs and the occasional interactive games on it but I had not seen power point presentations on it until the week I did mine. I have not seen avatars or links to internet programs such as Google Earth on it so I will set myself the challenge and attempt to do that myself.

I wonder if we should be learning more about ‘smart boards’ and its various features and functions in our university lectures? Should the lecturers be teaching us using the technology we will be using in the classroom? Could we better prepared if we have played with them before stepping foot in the classroom?

Another friend (I don’t want to use names on here but they know who they are) recently returned from her holidays in another state and had visited a school there. She had the opportunity to sit in on classes where the teacher used the ‘smart board’ all day long and incorporated it into everything they did in one way or another. It was her who gave me the idea of getting students to sign in on the ‘smart board’ as it was the way the teacher she observed started her student’s day. My friend said the teachers there all got a program/CD rom to download on to their computers so they had everything at their fingertips and were able to embrace ‘smart boards’ and all their capabilities. I think that would be a wonderful thing to access as a pre service teacher so that people like myself who aren’t tech savvy (hey I only got a laptop a few months ago!) could practice and play with it before going into the classroom and attempting the whole trial and error thing in front of students and mentor teachers.

Adios (bye in Spanish).

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