July 12- seventh blog post

Today we learned about Smartboards. I have been curious to learn more about this technology as it was just starting to come out when I took my maternity leave and so, I have little experience with it in a classroom. Our teacher in the am class uses one, but she hasn't really shown us how it works and it seems like she fights with it a lot.  Even after today's lesson,  the Smartboard still looks kind of complicated to me; I think I would need a fairly hands-on tutorial to really figure it out. I am really hoping I will have access to one in my new school. It really seems like a clever device- but only if used properly. I could see how a teacher could simply make use of it as a glorified overhead projector.  To me, that is a little sad, considering how many creative ways the Smartboard might also be used for student interaction and creative problem solving.  I really thought the 'clickers' were fun- and could envision using this tool in a number of ways, for example to make grammar study more fun or to do a survey of student opinions on a particular topic. I think this would also be practical for a teacher who works in a multi-level class- as it allows students to be working on different activities at once. I would use the 'clickers' to do a learning style profile of my students at the beginning of the year.