By Allison Detloff, Staff Writer — Walking into your English class, you may have noticed something a little different. SMART Boards have been added to some of the English classes.
SMART Boards are interactive whiteboards that allow teachers to click on different things, just like they would with a mouse on a computer. This lets teachers be in front of the class and still interact with what they are doing online, along with being able to draw on the screen like a whiteboard.
These boards will greatly improve education. Teachers and students will be able to interact more with the lessons. This more hands-on way of learning has the ability to help, not only students, but also teachers. Students will be able to go up to the board more often and try different examples, such as correcting grammar online, using the SMART Board like a whiteboard.
Teachers will be more free to walk around and teach while still being online, as opposed to being confined behind a desk in order to change slides. Sometimes, it can be hard to hear teachers when they sit behind their desks, but with teachers out in front of the board, it will help the students to be able to hear better and hopefully pay more attention to the lesson.
SMART Boards will allow teachers to write notes to accompany their lessons. With the pull down projection screens teachers used prior, they did not have the ability to add additional notes to things such as slideshows, as they think of tools to help students learn along the way.
My only complaints with SMART Boards are their size and their placement in the classroom. Compared to the projection screens, SMART Boards are a lot smaller. They can be purchased in different sizes, but the price goes up. Many boards sit very low and in awkward places in the room. In order to keep as many of the whiteboards as possible, SMART Boards were put in places such as the very far to the left or right of the room, not in the center, sometimes making them difficult to see.
Overall, I believe that SMART Boards will be a very useful tool in English classrooms despite their size and awkward placement, which can not be changed.
[Updated Aug. 7, 2017: This article has been reformatted for consistency.]
