SMART

Ok, so I'm not a Luddite after all.  Phew!  The expensive piece of nonfunctioning electronic art (aka the SMARTboard) that was hanging off to the side in my classroom was moved this week to a more central location, hooked up properly and is now fully operational.  It's kind of like a giant iPad.  Kind of.  I had a quick tutorial by the tech guy and experimented with the board after school.   The next day:

• students took their own attendance by writing a checkmark by their name
• math drill scores were taken up and averaged and the math lesson utilized the board
• reading connections were written on screen and made online at a touch of, well, the screen
• a graphic organizer was filled in on the SMARTboard and the resulting paragraph written beside it on the chalkboard (great use of space!)
• online multiplication and other math games were played during a rainy indoor recess

Only two days in we have barely begun utilizing the SMARTboard to its fullest potential.  Yet the neat thing is that the SMARTboard in my classroom is already generating out of the box thinking.  Just hours into the first day of using it, a student suggested/asked, "Wouldn't it be cool if when we do our attendance on the board we just email it to the office?"  Yep, it would be.