Smartboards

We finished installing our second interactive whiteboard yesterday afternoon in our grade one classroom and it is amazing to see the excitement it creates.  By 8:45 this morning many staff and students were already crowding into the classroom to see it (and this is our second one!).  Our grade one teacher has used the board for one whole day at this point and I had an opportunity to review her day with her.  In short she was even more excited at the end of the day as clearly was already looking at the interactive nature of the technology and that it was not simply a really cool chalkboard.

For anyone that is interested we chose to install the model that has the arm attached to the wall directly above the board the the projector that is only a few feet away.  Our first board is the more traditional set up with the projector hanging from the ceiling about 10 feet away.  This newer style is certainly nice.  Because the projector is mounted so close to the board the person using the device is less likely to step into the projectors beam.  In addition to that there is a control panel mounted on the wall right next to the board that allows the user to connect and easily switch between a number of devices such as a vcr and dvd.