ROGERS — Looking like a television show that features cuttingedge technology, three third graders approach a large screen and use their hands to move around the objects projected there.

There’s nothing tentative about their actions. They know which name matches which shape and they know they can move those shapes by simply putting their small hand on the image and dragging. After nine weeks with Smart Boards, third graders are used to the technology.

Each classroom at Tillery Elementary School now has a Smart Board as part of a pilot project, math facilitator Joy Wolfe said. She’s been training the teachers to use the devices and believes the pilot will be so successful that every classroom in the district will someday have its own Smart Board.

They look like a white dry erase board and teachers can write on them with markers, but each board is connected to an overhead projector and a computer.

There are so many ways to use the boards that training teachers is a long process.

There are hundreds of Smart Board lessons for every topic, Wolf said. She reviews them, “tweaks” them to match Arkansas standards, then sends links to the teachers.

The lessons are interactive, so students can come to the board and move objects or solve problems. And they love it.

“It’s been tremendously useful,” third-grade teacher Angela Nebling said. “It benefits all kinds of learners.”

“We love it. We can’t help it,” student Eduardo Contreras explained.

“You can’t move things around in your math book,” Ashley Sumner added.

“Kids who say they hate math are successful for the first time,” fourth-grade teacher Brooke Price said.

They look forward to their math lessons. “There are so many ways to use it, they won’t see the same lesson twice.”

Usually only one student at a time is at the board, but teachers can print out problems and copy them, so the rest of the class can work them on paper while they watch their classmate at the board. Price has her students working in small groups, so they can discuss what they’ll do at the board when it’s their turn.

“We love sharks,” Price said, demonstrating a math lesson in which a correct answer is rewarded with a dolphin jumping a small boat. An incorrect answer brings up an image of a large shark biting a chunk out of the boat.

“Anything that gets them up out of their chairs is useful,” Price said.

Watching her students solve a problem at the board is a great assessment tool, Nebling said. She can see exactly where each individual student needs extra work without grading 25 quizzes.

It goes the other way, too. When test scores showed some fourth graders didn’t understand a Venn diagram, Wolfe found a lesson online that allowed students to group like objects into the connected circles. She believes it’s the hands-on aspect of the program that helps students remember the lesson.

Another lesson gave students real photographsand a virtual highlighter.

They were asked to find the lines and the segments in a photo of train tracks. Notonly did her students show her the difference between a line and a segment on the screen, Price said, when sheturned off the computer, the students found segments all around the classroom. They were that excited, she said.

Everything the teacher does on the computer can be projected onto the screen and every change the teacher or the students make to the screen can be saved on the computer. That means that if one student misses a lesson, whether they’re out sick or just out of the room, they can watch the entire lesson later.

Teacher and students can also use the software at home, developing presentations that can be shown to the class.

Wolfe worked with SmartBoards for years when she taught at a school district in the Washington, D.C., area.

The novelty doesn’t wear off, she promised. She helped research other districts before the School Board approved the pilot project. All the districts that use Smart Boards agree the devices are more than just a novelty, they’re an investment.

This year only two elementary schools have Smart Boards. Wolfe divides her time between them. But she believes the pilot will be so successful every student in the district will work on Smart Boards within the next few years.

Scholars, Pages 8 on 11/04/2009

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