SMART Boards in the Social Studies Classroom

After browsing many other blogs about technology in the classroom, I noticed that a lot of people were writing about smart boards in the perspective content areas. Many people have wrote about how beneficial smart boards are in math, English, and music. I was surprised how many people were talking about smart boards. This probably surprised me because in my whole twelve years of public education, I never came in contact with a smart board.

Well, I did. Once. In middle school we had to spend the day in a different classroom because the automatic feeder on our trout aquarium fell in the tank and fried all the fish over the weekend (which you can imagine did not smell well). This classroom had a smart board, but it was obvious that it wasn’t used often. It was on the back-board of the classroom and there were books stacked in front of it. My teacher made reference to it, but never turned it on or used it. So after reading so many blog posts about it, I was intrigued.

I watched a few YouTube videos, I can only say now that I hope to have a smart board in my future classroom. This is a true piece of technology in the way in which is takes multiple piece of machinery and puts it into one. It is similar to a projector because it, well, projects an image from a computer. But it is also similar to an overhead, where a teacher could write on the transparency. Unlike just writing on the whiteboard over the projection, writing on the smart board is interactive and the user can save the creation. I really like the idea of student-created forms that can be revisited by the students later. For example, if there is a brainstorming event or something similar during a lesson, students can come up and write their ideas of the smart board. The creation can be saved and sent out to students, or just tucked away by the teacher for future use.  For social studies, a smart board would be great because it would be easy to pull up maps and primary sources for all students to see. Also, for classrooms that may only have one or two computers, this is a great way to maximize the use of technology in lessons. However, if a classroom has only a few computers, it may be unlikely that they can afford a smart board.