Doing It Old School

My students have adjusted more quickly than I to the loss of the SMARTboard in my classroom.  Boy, I miss that huge piece of technology now just hanging there on the wall, taking up valuable chalkboard space.  Sigh.

My week after the much needed March break did not start well.  I walked into my classroom as usual, laden with my laptop bag, my teaching bag and my camera bag, ready to take on the day.  I turned on the SMARTboard (SB), opened up and turned on the laptop and went about my business.  Yet I sensed something was not right in my room (I think it was the lack of noise from the board's projector that alerted me).  I looked at my SB and noticed it was not on, the power button glowing red (it should have been green).  Huh.  I got up, went over and pressed the power button.  Now a pulsing red light.  Great.  No idea how to fix the problem.  All my lesson plans on the SB just go out the window and I now have thirty minutes to revamp all the plans for the day.

And my day (and week) went downhill from there.

It took a while for me to adjust to going back to what my students call "old school teaching", or the pre-SMARTboard era.  It's amazing how technology shapes the way we accomplish our tasks, the way we teach, interact, communicate and even think.  I'm now juggling a digital projector and laptop, overhead projector, pulldown screens, chalkboard and chart paper all to communicate ideas that until recently I used just one piece of technology to do so.  I miss the interaction with the SMARTboard.  And with all the chalk I'm using, my sinuses are acting up again (my chalk box is still quite full this year). 

I don't know if and when the board will be replaced (a techie came to check it out, but had no immediate solutions), so I need to be matter of fact about the whole situation and continue doing my job to the best of my ability (however much more work the situation creates).  Besides, it's amusing for my students when I touch the pull down screen by accident, muscle memory working overtime thinking it's an interactive screen.  A good laugh goes a long way in my classroom.

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.