Three years ago, I worked in Caldwell County. Caldwell is a small district, and I was surprised to find my classroom outfitted with a digital projector and a brand new laptop. It was my first experience with what I’d call toys in education, and I couldn’t wait to figure out some new, cool ways to use them. My goal is to not only ensure student learning, but to also capture their genuine interest and enthusiasm.
Other teachers drooled over these new technological tools with DVD’s in hand, looking forward to widescreen showings of documentaries, films, and shorts. Eh, not a lot of imagination, but it’d work. I wanted to go a step farther though. There was a young guy down the hall who brought his Playstation II on teacher workdays. Innovative and a lot of fun -but it wasn’t getting any student learning done. We played some pretty mean WWII flight simulations though.
As is often the case, my laziness sparked genius. Necessity is the mother of invention, and I figured out quickly that I didn’t need to lower that darn screen over my white dry erase board every time I used the projector. One time, with the screen still up and the projector shining on the slick surface of the board, I couldn’t find my laser pointer when I needed to point out an error in grammar. So, I grabbed a marker and stepped into the world of interactive projector editing. I wrote right on the board on top of the projected paragraph. It was genius. Within five or ten minutes, there were two teams of students, one with a blue marker, and another with a red marker. Each team took turns sending delegates to the board to edit a mistake-riddled paragraph written quickly in Word on the laptop. Kids were interested, they were interacting, and they were learning.
I looked into my collection of educational software to see what else I could find to use on this, what I now call, the ghetto smartboard, and I quickly discovered that the discs that come with Glencoe textbooks have almost every worksheet and book exercise in pdf format. Suddenly, these worksheets had new life and purpose. I had scoffed at worksheets in the past, disdaining worksheet-filled classes as inept busy-work centers. But now the worksheets became interactive games where students eagerly wrote answers on the board, stumbling into learning opportunity after learning opportunity.
A year and a half later, I saw a smartboard for the first time. It looked like a good idea, but I didn’t really think there was much it could do that I couldn’t do with my laptop and projector. The ghetto smartboard is more fun, because students can write directly on it. For some reason, students love writing on the board with those dry erase markers. Using the ghetto smartboard is cheap, which is great for principals who want their teachers to be innovative but don’t have the cash for more expensive smartboards. And, most importantly, it aids in student learning.
Hope that helps put something new in your toolbox,
-Shu
