10 Ways to Use Your SMART Board to Improve Teacher-led Lessons

SMART Boards (and other IWBs) are often celebrated for their ability to increase student interactivity in a lesson. This is absolutely true, but in their quest for increasing the amount of time that students interact with the content on their interactive whiteboard, educators often miss one valuable asset that IWBs offer -- enhancing teacher delivery.

Teacher-led lessons still exist, either for prompting discussion, introducing a new concept or those moments that require the teacher to share concepts with their class.

Below are 10 ways that SMART Boards can enhance the teacher-led lesson:

1. Capture on-the-fly notes

• Gone are the days of accidentally erasing whiteboard content or trying to remember what ideas were created in a specific class. Previously, the teacher had to either spend time at the end of class typing the notes created on the whiteboard, or borrow a copy of a student's notes. Not so anymore -- use Ink Aware (Windows SMART Board users) to copy handwritten notes into Word documents, use the screen capture tool, or simply open a blank Notebook file to record your students' ideas.

2. Show a video

• Why not? True, best practice would state that this shouldn't be the only use of your IWB, but why get rid of it completely? You've essentially got a large flat screen TV with surround sound that beats the heck out of the old 20 inch tube TVs that squawked obnoxiously when you turned the volume up too loud.

3. Use it to model a skill

• As a Social Studies (and, by default, part-time English teacher), I dreaded the inevitable dry erase marker stains on the side of my hand when it came time to model essay writing. With your iwb, you can accomplish the same task without the mess, and save your work for later (see #1).

4. Model an experiment

• Hook up a document camera to your SMART Board and capture live video, pictures and blown-up images that you can further manipulate on the board. Everyone can easily see it without crowding around, and there are no safety issues with students handling the material prior to proper instruction.

5. Add a component of "magic"

• Again, not to be the MAIN focus of your teacher-led lessons, but one that shouldn't be brushed aside either. We all like to be entertained from time to time, and that includes our students. For those who think magic shows are only for elementary, I have 22 recent Grade 12 grads who'd argue that point. Humour and surprise elements make for memorable moments that often helped these students remember class content.

6. Conduct the lesson from one location

• Having touch screen capabilities decreases the lag-time that was previously needed to switch computer programs. Quickly jump from Notebook to Word to the Internet to a video without having to leave the front of the class. Particularly useful for classes where a 30 second delay might throw off the entire flow of the lesson and lead to fires that need to be put out at the back of the room.
  

7. Provide memorable visuals

• You'd be surprised what impact a quick visual or picture can have on students' memories. Discussing a historical figure? Show a picture of that person in the background. Reading short stories? Throw up a plot diagram image. These visuals help students when referring to the content in later lessons. And yes, this could have been accomplished with a projector, but organizing these images is easier with an IWB. Which leads me to #8...
  

8. Organize all elements of your lesson

• SMART Notebook has an attachments tab at the side of the page where you can store actual copies of all the files you'll be using in your lesson (see diagram on the left). Gone are the days of trying to recall which folder you stored that really cool video in ("Social 10"? "great videos"? "files to use later"?) Create a lesson or an entire unit with ALL the pieces embedded into your main file.

9. Page record steps in a lesson

• The page record feature in SMART Notebook can let you, as the teacher, record the content that you create on the board. It can then be saved for students to access either for review, help with homework or for those who missed a week of school for a hot-weather vacation.

10. Operate in the same medium as your students

• Nowadays, textbook and workbook publishers often provide a pdf version of the pages. Showing these on the SMART Board while your students are following along helps decrease the "where are we"? questions, and allows for you to easily point out key points. Write questions or comments that students have on this content and use the screen capture tool to save these important points for later. (again, see #1).

SMART Boards and IWBs are a great tool, but they're just that -- a tool. Their value in a class is dependent on how YOU, the expert, chooses to use them to enhance all components of your lesson. With a bit of creativity and well-thought out planning, you can easily use your IWB to provide a meaningful learning experience for your students.

If you have anything to add to this list, please feel free to add them in the comments section!

Happy whiteboarding!
Vanessa