No More After-Class Cleanups

By Donna Lukiw
The Manville News (NJ)
September 14, 2006

 

 

Third-grader Samantha Granzetto works on a problem on the new interactive "white board" at Weston School.       
Third-grader Julie Fendt was learning "place value" in math by listening to her teacher and writing down problems.

 
But she wasn't writing on paper — instead, Julie and her classmates used an electronic pen and the new Promethean Activclassroom — an electronic display used in place of chalk and black boards — in her Weston School classroom.
 
"They're really cool," Julie said. "It makes class more fun and I like that kids could come up and try them. It's high-tech."
 
The Promethean Activclassroom is an interactive teaching system using a display that almost looks like a plasma screen TV. Combined with an LCD projector mounted on the wall or ceiling (to avoid bundles of wires on the classroom floors), the board can display a teacher's notes, math problems, assignments — anything a teacher would write on a black board but without the messy chalk.
 
Activstudio, the accompanying software, provides lessons, activities, maps, backgrounds and graphics and also stores teachers lesson plans.
 
Along with the projector and board, students will use the new system for pop quizzes and vote in the classroom by using Activotes, an egg-shaped voting device that uses radio frequency signals to communicate.

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The purpose of the voting device is to assess student understanding of lessons in real time.
 
"I think it's like having the world at my fingertips," third-grade teacher Becky Fosbre said. "Hands are never down in here."
 
The students use the smart boards throughout the entire day and in every subject.
 
Julie said her class has been using the interactive classroom to practice their cursive writing, watch rocket launches on the Internet, play games while learning science and learn new words in their reading lessons.
 
”I think they're really cool because you could play games with them," third-grader Devin Gartner said. "Instead of writing it out all on paper we could just use the smart boards."
 
The district used $54,679 from a federal No Child Left Behind grant to purchase 12 of the white boards to be placed in each of the district's four schools.