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| Image credit: "Writing on a Smart Board." 02/22/2001; Jay Yoh |
There are some in our school who don't use theirs at all, and it's not the folks that are just a few months or years away from retirement. Teachers who have been in the work force for ten years are shunning the dang things, and for what I feel are really unenlightened reasons:
- It's too complicated.
- I already have a data projector.
- It never does what I want it to.
- It's in my way.
- I like my regular ol' white board just fine.
This worries me for many reasons, the main one being that there has been a great deal of money spent on the things - taxpayers know that we have installed these in our classrooms. They supported the decision. It's THEIR (and I supposed a little of our own) money that is hanging on the wall not getting used. The ones who don't like or use their Smart Boards defend their position with "well, nobody ever asked me if I wanted it in my classroom."
Segue here: the room really isn't ours. We get to use it, and the stuff that's in it. We don't pay rent for it, so we can't claim proprietary rights. We really don't get to say what goes into the classroom and what doesn't when it comes to infrastructure.
The other reasons really have to do with time and energy, which I'll be the first to say is at a premium in the life of the teacher. Yes, we have to devote some time to learning a new technology while something else (planning, grading, housekeeping, bill paying, etc) gets postponed. It's frustrating, but I feel it needs to be done.
Think of it this way: the ones we teach are digital natives. They don't know a time without mobile phones, wireless computing, digital media, online access, and so on. Doesn't it stand to reason that if we weenie out on learning something that they know and can work with, it limits their learning? Would we think about showing an old film in class only on a 16 mm projector because that's they way it was meant to be shown? How about creating handouts using a hand-crank ditto-master machines? (Mmmm ... smell the pretty purple words ...) Let's bust out the overhead projector and make a slide show out of hand-drawn transparencies? Or even better, create slides of our documents using a camera and a copy stand, send the film off to the Kodak labs for processing, get them back in two weeks, and load up the carousel projector.
Or did those take a fair amount of time and energy to learn about those technologies too?
Any new technology takes time to learn and master. Take the time to do it now - it will pay off later. It paid off today for me. The copy machine in the workroom didn't process my MS Word file for copying, so I had to put the document on the Smart Board in my room. I was able to highlight the areas I wanted to emphasize, and edit the document right in front of the students. By that time, one of the lovely student office runners arrived with freshly printed material. No time wasted, and the material presented in a way familiar to the class. Winners all around.
Are you smarter than a smart board? Yes. Yes you are.
Go get em' blammers!
ReplyDeleteThey can send one of the unused Smart Boards to me, I have a document camera and a projector, but no smart board. Tell them all I hate my ol' white board.
ReplyDeleteJust because uninformed politicians or voters made a bad purchase doesn't mean you need to use a medieval device that uses bright lights to throw teaching back into the past. Listen to the teachers who think Smartboards suck. They do.
ReplyDeleteTaxpayers fund you to do what's best for kids. Using the wrong tool to help students learn is not best for kids. I have never heard or seen a single reason that using an IWB is the right thing for students and that is after deploying them to every classroom in more than two dozen schools against my wishes.
I strongly, disagree that teachers should waste their precious time learning to use these expensive, but crappy, devices. If they do it will pay off in less effective teaching. You say it paid off because the copy machine didn't work today. You could have done the same thing for several thousand less, more effectively, with just a projector and laptop and had the added value of being able to face your students while you did so. You use a photo of a kid writing up on the Smartboard. Why the heck couldn't he just use a blackboard? There's no benefit to the Smartboard.
Funny, we had two interactive whiteboard vendors present to teachers this month. They didn't even use the board to present. I see this often. Just the laptop and projector. The couple times they tried to use the board they got frustrated at its glitchiness. A common complaint of teachers as well.
I know it feels like when your district makes a purchasing error you should do what you can to justify it, but you are the pedagogical professional. You and your peers know something just ain't right about these boards. Go with your gut.
If you want to know why some of the top names in education and innovation hate Smartboards and think you should get off your colleague's backs, read
http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2011/02/gary-stager-finally-shares-why-he.html
My advice to you is to read all the articles in the above post. If you want to keep using your device, go ahead, but stop preaching to your colleagues who know better.