PLEASE NOTE - PUNCTUATION STILL DOES NOT SEEM TO BE DISPLAYING CORRECTLY IN MY REVIEWS. COME ON CIAO - SORT IT OUT!!!

Teaching in schools has been revolutionised by the use of interactive whiteboards in classrooms. These boards have been gradually replacing the standard ?dry wipe? whiteboard as the central focus point of the classroom. There are two main brands used in schools at the moment and these are the Promethean Interactive Whiteboard and the SMART board. The Promethean uses one pen as the means of interacting with the board, where as the SMART board uses four coloured pens, an ?eraser? and you can also use your finger.

I understand that this is not a product that anyone is likely to buy for their house as is main use is within schools, colleges, universities etc (having said that, businesses are now beginning to invest in interactive boards). However, if you are looking for a teaching job ? one thing you will want to consider is what teaching tools will be available to you. I have worked with both types of board and would much prefer to work in a school with SMART boards opposed to Prometheans. The reasons for this I will explain in a minute. Due to the fact that the technical ins and outs are not really going to be of much use to anyone in this review, I will first explain what the board is and then explore the advantages and pitfalls.

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What is a SMART board?

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SMART boards have existed since 1991 when the first ever interactive whiteboard was created, and today they are the leading brand. The SMART board is a touch sensitive board, which is displayed on a wall (looking similar to the old school whiteboards). You connect a computer or laptop to the smart board and whatever is on your computer screen will be projected onto the whiteboard. You can then use the SMART board simply as a large display or you can use it interactively. You can use your finger to touch the board and interact directly with what is happening on the computer. For example, you can ?tap? to click on things, drag your finger to move things etc. There are four pens docked at the base of the whiteboard, which you can pick up one at a time to write on the board in electronic ink. This can then be saved for future use or reference or can be erased using the electronic eraser, which is also docked at the base of the board. The smart board can be connected to speakers and other devices and the SMART board software offers a range of resources that can be used with the board such as a spinner, interactive dice, a timer, a clock, and hundreds of other resources specific to various curriculum areas.

This particular board can be purchased in two screen sizes ? 64 inch and 77 inch (diagonal). The projector is a short thrown projector and is attached to the board by an extended arm at the top, preventing the need for mounting it on the ceiling.

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Advantages

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Interactivity

The key purpose of the SMART board is its interactivity. It means that rather than sitting behind the computer in your classroom to demonstrate or show things on the board you can stand by it and use your finger and the pens to use it. It means that you can have interactive activities in your lesson that the children can participate in. For example ? I always start my lessons with the learning objectives hidden on the board. Either they are blocked out with colour in which case I will choose a student who is sitting sensibly to come up and use the eraser to reveal them or they are on shapes, which the student will need to use their finger to drag into the middle of the board to make them visible. Whilst this may seem like a gimmick. It works. Firstly, all the children despite the fact that they are vile teenagers want to have a go at using the board (this novelty rarely seems to wear off!) and therefore they are more likely to follow my instructions of sitting still and quietly because they want to be the chosen one! Secondly, it engages them. If I start with the learning objectives just written or displayed on the board, the pupils are not likely to bother looking at them, let alone thinking about them. Whereas if the objectives are being revealed one by one then it somehow makes them more interesting and offers the opportunity to discuss each one as it is revealed. There are so many interactive opportunities with the SMART board that I cannot mention them all here. However, another key one is using the pens to annotate. In both primary and secondary teaching I have either used the pens myself to annotate whatever is on the board or asked the children to come up and add their ideas. For example ? I had an example of a bias and unreliable internet example displayed on the board. I gave the children a couple of minutes to look at it and in small groups identify the words, images, features etc that suggested it may be bias or unreliable. I then called on person up from each group to use the pens to highlight the words they had found and to annotate the article. By the end of the activity, they were able to see everyone else?s findings as well as their own and this provided a brilliant basis for discussion.

Saving a trace

Once you have used the SMART board interactively, you can keep a record of the work that has taken place by saving it. For example, if you have used a PowerPoint presentation that has then been annotated by pupils using the interactive pens ? you can then save this and it can be retrieved for future use. I have on many occasions used the Notebook software, which comes with the SMART board to create a mind map of pupils ideas of what the success criteria should be for a certain activity or project. I have then saved this as we move on to the next activity but have been able to open it up again in the next lesson or at the end of the lesson to allow pupils to evaluate their work against the success criteria that they came up with in the first place. The SMART board software also enables you to take a snapshot ?photo? of something on the board and put it into the notebook software. For example; if you had been working with the whole class looking at a particular website or document and wanted to put part or all of it into the notebook software to edit/annotate etc then rather than faffing around with copying and pasting and cropping you can choose the bit you want and use the photo tool to copy it into the notebook software.

Multiple pages

This is another feature of the SMART board that would be impossible with the traditional dry wipe whiteboards. You can have multiple pages on the go and flick between them. In the same way that you would have various applications and pages open on your computer and would move between them, the SMART board allows you to do this but on a larger scale. Which means that you do not have to erase everything that you have just put on the board before you can move on to the next thing. You can have everything you need for the lesson minimised at the bottom of the screen and move between them easily and quickly during the lesson.

Large display

Although teachers can be criticised for using their interactive whiteboards just as a display device without making full use of their interactivity, you cant take away the fact that they are an incredibly useful display device!! On the basis that they are large and usually positioned at the front of the classroom for all to see, you can show presentations, videos, images on a large scale. I often have a Youtube clip relevant to the lesson or topic playing as pupils walk into my lesson and sit down, this gets them focused straight away and tends to engage them and preventing throwing things around and crawling under the desks (scarily I am still talking about secondary school children here!). In addition to videos, optical illusions are great to put up on the board. Even if they are not particularly relevant to the lesson, it can work well as a means of getting the pupils thinking and focused. PowerPoint presentations work very well on the SMART board as everyone can see them and this is one of the reasons why SMART boards are used in businesses.
Obviously if the image or video you are using is of poor quality, then it will look pixelated on the board but generally, the display is very good.

Normal whiteboard features

Whilst you have all the interactivity and other exciting features of the SMART board, it can still have the same function as the traditional dry wipe whiteboards. You can use the pens to write on it and the eraser to rub bits out. Therefore, although there a couple of potential pitfalls here which I will discuss in a minute, you do not lose the ability to just quickly write things up on the board?such as the names of children who are being particularly vile!!

In built tools

As I mentioned earlier on in this review ? the SMART board comes with a wide range of inbuilt tools and resources. There are packages available for both primary and secondary schools and these contain on screen and interactive resources that will be useful in the different subject areas. For example ? for mathematics there are various graph tools that you can quickly access, you can flip a virtual coin, spin a coloured spinner or roll virtual dice to explore probability. For science, there are images for annotation such as plants, or parts of the human body. You can also create circuits by dragging on components. There are so many tools available and every time there is a new software update, there are more for you to use! The one I use most frequently is the onscreen timer. When I set the children off on an activity, I put the timer on the board showing a countdown of the amount of time they have left. An alarm will then sound when the time is up. This can help structure the lesson and remind pupils that they need to speed up. A count up timer can also be useful if the class are being noisy and will not shut up. Putting a timer on the board and pointing out that this is the time they owe me from their break/lunchtime can be very effective in getting them quiet.

The Remote

You can control the SMART board interactively or by your computer/laptop but they also come with a remote, which has some extra features. Obviously it is used to turn the smart board on and off but it can also be used to freeze the screen, so if you want something displaying on the board but need to check your lesson plan or your emails on the computer that is connected to the board then you can freeze the screen to stop them seeing what is on your computer screen. I found this useful recently when I wanted the task displayed on the board to prevent 100 questions of what they had to do! But at the same time, I needed to use the computer to call up a pupil at a time to Bluetooth the images they needed to the network. Freezing the screen meant that I could do both easily. In addition to freezing, you can also use the remote to put up a blank screen (useful when you want them to focus on you and not the board).

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Pitfalls

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Whiteboard markers

Normal dry wipe whiteboard markers CANNOT be used on interactive whiteboards. This is something that can be easily forgotten and if you write on an interactive board in real marker pen then you have just very quickly damaged an expensive item! It can be irritating not being able to write using real pen on the boards as whilst the electronic pens are useful, for actual writing, they can be hard to get used to and I know that my handwriting in normal whiteboard markers is much much better than in electronic ink! Most interactive whiteboards come with a very blatant bold sign above them reminding people not to write on them in pen but inevitably it still happens and they get damaged.

One pen at a time

You can only use one pen at a time with the SMART board otherwise the board which can be irritating as it would be useful if more than one child could write on different parts of the board at the same time!

Stolen pens

The electronic pens and the eraser are all docked at the base of the whiteboard and there is nothing to stop the little darlings wandering off with them. The board cannot be used properly if one of these pens has been stolen and replacements are not cheap. They are so easy to walk off with that you find yourself having to be on high alert to make sure no one has pocketed one without you looking. I guess that having them somehow attached by wire to the board would be restrictive but in particularly challenging secondary schools and even in primary schools, the risk of these pens being taken by a little sod that thinks its funny is just too high! The same applies to the remote control. These seem to be always going missing in schools that I have been in and cost around £60 to replace so it would be useful if there were some way of bolting them down!

Calibration

Each time you use the SMART board you should calibrate the screen to make sure the touch sensitivity is at its best. This simply involves tapping the crosses as they appear on the screen and only takes a few minutes. However, it is a hassle and if you are short, it is even more of a hassle! I tend not to bother and I don?t write on my boards much anymore although if you haven?t calibrated it or if the board has decided to just have a freak out then you can be using the pen to write but the writing can appear miles away from where you are touching the pen to the board! This is something that SMART board need to perfect as it does hinder you when writing on the board and means that for writing, the SMART board still does not quite compare to a traditional whiteboard.

Height, position and space

Particularly in primary schools, the placing of interactive whiteboards at a height where they can be seen from all desks can present issues where the children are unable to reach them when called up to demonstrate something and so they are unable to gain full advantage of the potential interactivity. The SMART board needs to be high enough that it can be seen and therefore many schools have put in place a small platform in front of the board to overcome the problem although this is extra money and takes up some space and for primary school children they will generally still be too short to reach the top of the board.

Projector bulb failure

As you would expect, the projector bulbs will die every now and again. The problem is ? if your lesson is heavily reliant on using the SMART board and the bulb dies then you are screwed. You cannot quickly change it like you would a light bulb and will need to very quickly think of a backup plan for that lesson! From that point until a technician gets round to fitting a new bulb your SMART board will be totally useless to you and will just get in the way as you can even write on it.

You need to practise

The first time I used a SMART board I was able to grasp the basic concept of using it as a display tool but writing on it is harder than it looks and so is using in interactively as a teacher. Children will come up to the board and be able to use it for simple actions but as a teacher, you will need to learn more techniques. I found that it was essential to spend at least a few hours playing with the board when no one else is around to properly get to grips with it. Otherwise, you will not use it to its full potential and it can be quite daunting having to use a tool in front of a whole class when you are not confident with it.

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To Summarise

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Interactive whiteboards, such as the SMART board have had a dramatic impact on ?the classroom? as a learning environment. Since their introduction into both primary and secondary classrooms, they have in many cases become the main focus of the room and are often heavily relied upon as a presentation device as well as a teaching tool for whole class activities. SMART boards have been found to be particularly well used for whole class literacy or numeracy activities as they can be used by the teacher or the pupils for a wide range of activities. An example of which is the whole class editing of a text during literacy. The SMART board software available includes a good range of tools to aid teaching and the size of the board proves successful for presenting to the whole class. Research has indicated that pupils generally enjoy using the interactive whiteboard and find it motivating. However, there are issues regarding teacher confidence and competence in using the board successfully as well as practical issues such as children being unable to reach the board.

As ICT is my specialist subject area, I make good use of the SMART board during teaching and find it equally useful in both primary and secondary teaching. There are some features and problems that need to be sorted out but the SMART board is still and incredibly useful teaching and learning tool.