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GINA KINSLOW
Tools
District finishes SMART Board installs
Teachers find them useful
EDMONTON — Jack Shive didn’t think he would be able to use a SMART Board in his art classes when school administrators first talked about installing one in his classroom.
He has since found the technology extremely useful.
“I love it,” he said.
A SMART Board is an interactive teaching tool that works similar to a computer, but also behaves like a film projector.
Teachers can not only pull up information from various newspapers and periodicals via the Internet, but they can also show students films with it and show Power Point presentations. They can also write on the SMART Boards just like they would if they were using a dry erase board.
Shive, who teaches art at Metcalfe County High School, has found that he can use the board to teach his students about perspective.
“I can do my vertical lines one color and do my horizontal lines a color and show them (how it’s done),” he said. “I can use different types of lines that were in the drawing program to demonstrate what the lines are supposed to do and different things like that. That really helped.”
Shive primarily uses the SMART Board in his humanities classes, which is when he teaches students about the various art periods and the artists from each period.
On Thursday, he used the board to teach his students about the Grant Woods’ 1930s painting “American Gothic” and to prepare them for an open response question.
Shive was one of the last teachers in the Metcalfe County School System to receive a SMART Board. According to Patricia Hurt, superintendent, the boards have now been installed in classrooms throughout the school district.
District officials made it a priority to have the new technology installed in every classroom in the district three years ago, Hurt said.
The use of SMART Boards in the classroom are tools for student engagement, she said.
“Teachers can enhance the learning and make it more interesting and appealing for students in the classroom,” she said.
One of the first teachers in the district to receive a board was Scott Roach, who also teaches at MCHS.
“I use it, I would say, almost every day,” he said. “There are very few times that I don’t use it.”
Roach uses the technology to save notes for students who may be absent from class and for demonstrations on various subjects.
He can also use it to save documents that he may use again in the same class the following year.
“Once (a document) is created, I can keep it for next year and adapt it,” he said.
The SMART Board provides him with more time to teach by eliminating the amount of time he would spend repeatedly creating documents for his classes.
Roach also allows his students to use the SMART Board, which helps keep them interested in class, he said.
The 120 SMART Board installation cost the district an estimated $300,000 over a three-year period.
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