I have recently been given a SmartBoard at school, which is utterly awesome. I was not formally trained, but have been working on understanding its possibilities. I have discovered that it is a wonderful was to allow swift adaptation in Language Arts teaching!
Language Arts can sometimes seem to be technologically stodgy. It still involves a decent amount of paper, reading, writing, etc. The preparation often takes a long time and can be a bit set in stone because of photocopying and materials. However, with a SmartBoard, all of that can change. Students can work on editing and creating at a moment's notice. The class can collaborate without a lot of whiteboard erasing. We can even save notes so that each class has their own differentiated set! Activities like Chalk Talk used to be a pain with 5 classes, because erasing made it difficult to continue discussing the next day, without using a lot of paper.
This has actually caused me to change my practice and I find myself to be more flexible on a daily basis. If I notice a flaw in my student's work, I can create a new note sheet on the SmartBoard immediately, allow students to come up to the board and make changes, then save those changes and add to them the next day. If I decide that the prompt the student are working on is not what http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifI want to do at the last minute, I can change it and just pop it up on the smart board. If I want to just take two minutes out http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifof my day to illustrate something on the wiki, it doesn't involve any set up, so why not? In this way, the students are getting their little questions answered, as well as their big questions.
Having this kind of tool at your fingertips allows the exact kind of teacher responsiveness that Schrum and Levin indicate is possibile with technology in general. I feel that I am better addressing the needs of my students because I feel that I can address it right in the moment. If teachers are willing to adapt to using this kind of technology, then it will allow for a lot more adaptation to our students needs!
Check it this YouTube Channel devoted to Smart classrooms :
http://www.youtube.com/user/SMARTClassrooms/featured
