Technology Reflection: Instructional Use of Smart Boards

Description/Experience

During last Friday’s technology seminar, Mr. Graham demonstrated how Smart Boards could be used effectively in the classroom. He showed us various ways to incorporate Smart Boards into lessons and also included additional technologies and resources such as Mobi boards, which is a mobile interactive whiteboard, and portaportal.com, which is a site that allows you to store and rank links to sites that you may find applicable to the classroom.

Up until this semester, I had never really seen Smart Boards used for anything more than presenting material via PowerPoint. My high school didn’t have Smart Boards and the ones that I had seen around campus where never really used. The presentation by Mr. Graham helped to broaden my idea of how Smart Boards can be utilized in the classroom.

Application

Because I have never had much experience with Smart Boards or the features that come with them, I am still a bit shaky regarding how to work them properly. In fact, I think the first grade students in my classroom probably have a better understanding of how to operate the Smart Board in the classroom than I do!

Currently, my students are working on identifying nouns in sentences. One of the seatwork pages that they did today asked them to circle the nouns in each sentence and then write the nouns under the correct title (people, places, things, animals). I think that we could use the Smart Board to supplement this activity by using the Smart Notebook to get all students actively participating and engaged. I could write sentences on the Notebook and then have students tell me which words in those sentences were nouns. Once a noun was properly identified, I would drag it off to the side. After all of the nouns have been picked out of the sentences, I would create labels for each type of noun (people, places, things, animals). I would then call on students to come up to the board and drag a noun to the proper list. At the end of this activity, students would hopefully show an increased understanding of the topic.

Lesson Timeline:

• It may be helpful to first review what a noun is with students so that the concept is fresh in their minds.
• Ask students to provide some sentences containing nouns, then select a few as well as a few that have already been prepared and write them on the Smart Board.
• Ask students to identify the nouns in the sentence and once a noun has been identified, drag it off to the side so that students know that it has already been identified. This will comprise a “noun box” of sorts for the students to sort from.
• Make a header each for people, places, things and animals. Next have students come up and drag a noun to the appropriate list. For example, students would drag the word “cat” to the animal list and the word “fan” to the things list.
• This activity should help students identify and properly categorize nouns. At the end of the activity, have the students list two nouns (that were not used during the activity) for each category.

Reflection

--Pedagogical-Content:

By reviewing the concept before starting the lesson, the students’ memories would be refreshed. Additionally, when the students practice the concept as a group, they are presented with the opportunity to help each other understand. So, if a student doesn’t understand why the word “school” belongs in the places category, another student may be able to explain that it’s because a school is somewhere that you can visit.

            The students still seem to be enthralled by the Smart Board, so I think that they may be motivated to participate (at least a little) by the opportunity to use the technology. Also, this activity would require that the students be able to distinguish what a noun is, which is why I would review the material before the activity began.

--Technological-Pedagogical:

The use of the Smart Board in this activity supports the collaborative learning strategy that I applied during the lesson. The Smart Board becomes sort of the “water cooler” around which everyone gathers and shares their ideas and knowledge on the subject. By using the Smart Board, student participation would increase, as would the amount of time students spend actively engaged in learning.

Since we would be working together as a class, the classroom management strategies that are usually employed would probably need to be altered. I would need to find a way to ensure that the students that already had a firm grasp on the subject don’t just shout out the answers and dominate the activity. Additionally, I would probably need to impress upon the students the importance of hand-raising to help maintain control over the lesson. This may mean not allow students that simply shouted out answers or came up to the board without being called on to use the board until they were able to sit in their seat quietly and raise their hands.

--Technological Pedagogical Content:

By using the Smart Board to practice identifying and categorizing nouns, the students become actively engaged in the lesson and it provides them with an alternative way to review the material beyond the standard worksheet. This technology allows all of the students to truly learn together by becoming the center of the lesson around which the students exchange ideas and help each other to understand the material. Aside from the motivational aspects, using the Smart Board for this activity can lead students to practice working together as a group and aids them in learning to be cooperative.