Saturday, October 1, 2011

Being SMART in the Classroom

Whew! What a week. It was jam packed full of ball games, meetings, and parent teacher conferences. With the parents that I met with at conferences this week, we discussed the normal list of topics: the student self evaluation form, L2J charts, some positives, and any concerns that we may have. What was different this year is that parents were asking me what a SMART Board was and how it helped students learn. This is where the conferences became fun for me.

I jumped up and practically ran to the board. I hooked up my computer and opened up some of the accounting notebooks that I had created this summer. Before I knew it, I had one father manipulating the accounting numbers and dragging them into debit and credit parts. The smile on his face made it evident that he was hooked!  I explained that one of my goals this year was to make my accounting class more interactive and engaging and I was using SMART Technologies to help me accomplish this.

One parent said, "What if we could have had this back when we were in accounting class!" We laughed together and dreamed for a bit. The students at Centura are truly fortunate to have a SMART Board available to them in every classroom. The teachers have the privilege of using this tool to help engage  students in his/her learning. And our parents should feel assured in knowing that their child gets to gain knowledge in a better way than we did.