Students love learning with computerized 'whiteboards'

By Hannah Sampson 
Miami Herald
October 18, 2007  

 

 

 

 Photo by Emily Michot/Miami Herald

Gia Arena, 6, a first-grader at Fox Trail Elementary in Davie, uses a special pen on the computerized Activboard to move a picture into the correct letter group.

It's spelling time for a group of first-graders at Fox Trail Elementary School in Davie, but pencils and paper are nowhere in sight.

Instead, the 6-year-olds gather at their classroom's computerized whiteboard, dragging pictures into groups by tracing a high-tech ''pen'' across the surface. If they don't know the word, they tap the image to hear a recording of their teacher pronouncing it.

That's when they spell.

''All you do is press the pencil, and you pick your color and you write it,'' said Gia Arena, 6, one of a generation of students who will never suffer the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard.

As schools nationwide outfit classrooms with new technology to reach kids raised on computers and video games, they are embracing interactive whiteboards that can search the Internet, measure angles with a virtual protractor and turn language arts into a bridge-building activity.

''It's engaging the students. It's exciting. It brings them into the learning,'' said Linda Chuckman, principal of Fox Trail, 1250 Nob Hill Rd. She asked the school's PTSA to raise enough money for all classrooms to have a board. "What you can do with this is truly limitless.''

The boards, connected to a computer and projector, allow teachers to surf the Web in front of the whole class to illustrate a lesson -- playing video clips of science experiments, for example, or finding a map to show exactly where a battle took place for a history class.

Worldwide, more than 1.2 million computerized boards are installed, mostly in kindergarten through 12th grade classrooms, according to Decision Tree Consulting, a market-research company based in England. By 2011, that number is expected to be 5.3 million.

In the United States, sales of interactive whiteboards have soared since 2000, when a little more than 14,200 were sold. DTC estimates that by the end of this year, more than 148,000 boards will be sold nationwide.

In South Florida, the computerized boards are being used in hundreds of classrooms. About 1,200 are being used in 160 schools in Broward County. The interactive whiteboards are also being used in Miami-Dade's 34 new schools and new school additions, many of them in inner-city neighborhoods. Some of the district's older schools also have purchased the boards.

Interest in the boards has exploded during the past three years, said Jeanine Gendron, the Broward public school district's director of instructional technology.

UP TO $1,500 EACH

Schools can use their own funds, apply for a grant or raise money through parent groups, as Fox Trail Elementary did. South Florida schools use boards manufactured by Promethean, SMART Technologies and Interwrite Learning. At sizes that range from a few feet wide by a couple feet high to seven feet wide by four feet high, they can easily cost $1,000 to $1,500 each, and a package of accessories boosts the price even higher.

All that money is good for nothing if educators don't use the tools to their full potential, according to a school technology expert.

''There is a downside possible, and that would be if teachers use this high-tech, expensive SMART Board the way they would use a noninteractive whiteboard. It's a waste of money,'' said Kara Dawson, an associate professor of educational technology at the University of Florida. "One of the things that leads to learning is engagement and motivation.''

Sara Brodsky, a fifth-grade teacher at South Hialeah Elementary School, 265 E. Fifth St., has found that to be true.

''They think it's just like a huge video game,'' Brodsky said. "It's fun for them. They can't wait to get up and press the board or write on the board. It's great how enthusiastic they are, opposed to the old whiteboard and pen.''

SAVING LESSONS

Educators can use a host of tools to set timers, cover answers and color-code notes. Several websites offer learning games and lesson plans that instructors can incorporate. And if a lesson is successful, the teacher can save every step to use in the future.

''It's much easier to be attracted to it, 'cause it's more fun,'' said Fox Trail fifth-grader Jamie Greenberger.

Donna Sacco's first-graders at Broward Estates Elementary, 411 NW 35th Ave., Lauderhill, have wireless devices that they can use to answer a question in class. Their responses let Sacco know right away which kids understand the subject and which are struggling.

''These children need to have something in their hands in order to learn,'' Sacco said. "They cannot be lectured to. We are away from that stage where you stand up in front of a classroom and you lecture.''

Earlier this school year, second-grade teacher Kim Jurczak was leading students at Fox Trail through a math lesson disguised as a baseball game. When they answered a question correctly on the board, their baseball player went up to bat.

''Now that I have it, I don't remember what I did without it,'' Jurczak said. "It changed the way I taught.''

Larry Treadwell, a history teacher at Fort Lauderdale High School, 1600 NE Fourth Ave., has used an Activboard, made by Promethean, since February. Now he teaches other educators how to use them.

''It has become such an integral part of everything that I do that, to me, if I don't have that, it's like losing my right arm,'' Treadwell said.

He said the board allows him to create maps that move, or go online immediately to find an example if a student asks a question.

''I refer to this group of kids as the MTV generation,'' he said. "They want to be entertained. A good teacher is an actor on a stage for 180 days.''