Smartboard technology

Have any of the special ed. teachers here have or ever used a smartboard in their classes or another classroom? Our 3 sixth grade classes are getting them for later in the fall, and I would like to approach our new special ed. director about writing a grant to get one for our resource room, if they are beneficial and there is software out there that would work. Please let me know what you think; feel free to add links to good web sites.

Thanks!
Jenn

Jenn:

While I was working with the high school Biology teacher this past year, I got a chance to see the smartboard being used in action, and I also had an opportunity to use it several times myself. It's nice.....and, I think as the years pass, it will become more commonplace around the country. I suppose you could think of it as a cross between a desktop and a dry erase board. In other words, you can use it to write notes just as you would with a dry erase board/chalkboard. However, as I'm sure you know, you can also access and interact with the internet and word documents. I'm probably not the best source of info for you; I'm not sure about all the sotfware involved.

If this helps.....none of our special ed rooms have them yet. I guess whether you get one or not depends on what you need. You might want to consider spending some money on other technology such as voice recognition software (i.e. types words in the computer screen as students speak....thus they don't have to type) or Kurzweil (main function is that it reads selections to students off the internet, via CD-ROM, or after they're scanned in). Wish I could be of more help! Good luck!

Dave

I've tried to figure out what I could use them for, too... but I think that's going to have to be a hands-on thing. I would amke a point to observe a classroom where somebody is using them.
I strongly suspect from what people have said and written about them (the LM_NET archives where school librarians discuss things has some good info - google "LM_NET archives" and then put "SmartBoard" into the search window and you can see what I mean), that a *lot* of people use the very basic features but that they could -- with an investment of time learning how -- be used even more interactively. So, you'd get to decide wehter or not that was your best investment of time... but then, you could go and present your brilliant ideas to otehrs and gain fame and renown, too :-)

Sue J, webmastress www.resourceroom.net

I had a smartboard in my regular education classroom last year. I used it for several things... it can be used as just a fancy white board and you can save anything you write on it as a file. You can also use it for any websites that have games and the kids can come up and use their hands as the mouse so its very hands on. It allows you to do a lot more visual and manipulative presentations then you could without one. I am moving in to a special education classroom this year and am really wishing there was one in there... and I will start pushing for one as the year goes on. One thing that I would foresee using it for right away is to do Talking Books using Power Point (here is a link to the rundown on that... http://atto.buffalo.edu/registered/Tutorials/talkingBooks/ppt_ace.pdf). I just think it would allow you to do a lot of visuals. I found when I got mine last year that I just started looking and found a lot of ways specific to the classes I was teaching to use it. I think the same would hold true for any classroom. I also believe that in time most materials you can buy will have supplements for SMART boards (or similar types of boards) as they are becoming more and more prevalent in classrooms. In fact, there are now districts in Europe that are requiring all classrooms to have them by a certain date. I see this movement as no different then those days when people were wondering if they needed computers in the classroom.

Sounds neat! Now I have a much better idea... and want to go play with it even more :-))

Sue J, webmastress www.resourceroom.net