SMART BOARD REFLECTION - MAY 2010

SMART BOARD PROJECT REFLECTION



This year has most definitely been an on-going professional development opportunity for me.


With the SMART board, I have been able to enhance my teaching and thereby increase engagement of the students. At first it was somewhat challenging learning how to use some of the SMART tools and software. I had to spend quite a bit of time navigating the different functions. However as time went on, I felt more and more comfortable using different features. Some of these tools have included: using the interactive tools for math when teaching volume; creating links to websites that connect with our lesson; engaging the students in using the writing tools to edit sentences and paragraphs when teaching grammar and punctuation in Daily Oral Language; and of course multiple choice quizzes via the SMART board. Although it would be easy to make every lesson about the technology, I see the main purpose of the SMART board as to enhance teaching and learning.


In addition to learning about some great tools for teaching with the SMART board, I have become a little more aware of other ways I can integrate technology in the classroom. To enhance home and school communication, I created a classroom blog. This blog can be found at http://www.stewiessmartthoughts.blogspot.com/

and it is updated almost every day.

On the blog, I posted homework, important dates, cool learning related websites, assignments, notes, videos to enhance learning via youtube, as well as, student created blogs or responses. Students were still expected to use agendas, but the blog gave them a chance to check what they missed when they were away – and it also gave parents the opportunity to see some of things we were doing in the classroom. I have also started to use other great sites for posting visual responses and “virtual posters” through edu.glogster.com. This site allows me to create a classroom account (similar to edublogs) for students. Later I linked the eduglobster account to my blog so that students and parents could access it more easily. This project was fantastic for allowing students to learn how to create interactive virtual posters which were able to hold embedded videos, images or photos as well as lengthly text documents. One of the benefits of the site is that I had access to everything and it was private to only our school community. With the SMART Board, we were able to view the "glogs" as a class and students could present their work.

Many of the technological applications I chose to use this year enhanced learning in a meaningful way. Many of the ways I used the SMART board included the Notebook softwear, but other on-lines programs that I was able to access via the Internet. In many ways, I feel as though has given me the motivation to constantly look for more "21st century" ways of engaging students in the classroom. I am constantly looking for ways to teach "the basics" in a way that reaches the "technologically minded" students of this generation. Already there are a few teachers who are assigned to Deshaye, that are interested in using some of the on-line programs next year. Hopefully this will be the first step in including more teachers in our "Technological Learning Community".

Overall, it was great year. I really appreciated the opportunity to have a SMART Board this year, and I look forward to continuing to plan lessons for next year.

Jennifer Stewart-Mitchell
Deshaye Catholic School
Grade 7/8