The world of SmartBoards

Last week, I observed a high school French class as part of my World Language Methods class.  The teacher was around my age, and he used a world language teaching method I was interested in observing, so the session was very interesting to me.  The teacher has a lot of experience and had a great command of French and the class in general.  I remarked right away, however, that his entire lesson was conducted with an overhead projector, transparencies and a chalkboard.  There was a SmartBoard in the classroom, but the computer was tucked away in a corner.  When we spoke afterwards, he asked jokingly if I liked his "high tech lesson."  I asked if he ever uses the SmartBoard, and he said he doesn't really have a need for it.  

As I was driving home, I thought about our class's recent SmartBoard training session.  I thought about how I could have conducted, or even enhanced, the same lesson using the SmartBoard.  During the lesson, the class read a short story, and every once in a while the teacher wrote key grammar or vocabulary points on the board.  The teacher had a rule that the students were responsible for everything he wrote on the right side of the board.  They had to write this information in their notes.  The teacher used the left side of the board for pre-teaching concepts, and the students were not responsible for putting this information in their notes.  If he used the SmartBoard, he could automatically save the content on the right side of the board and print it out for the students' notes.  He could do the same with the pre-teaching content on the left side of the board and label it differently so this information could be in students' notes as well.  I would also have had students up at the SmartBoard rearranging parts of sentences to reinforce grammar points.  Grammar can be boring, but if learning it can be more interactive, the students may be more engaged.

As a future World Language Teacher,  I see a lot of potential for the SmartBoard.  I love the "rolling dice" tool, which I could use to choose volunteers and practice numbers.  I also liked the Anagrams, which I could use as part of a vocabulary activity.  I could have students come to the SmartBoard and match French labels to the corresponding pictures.  Finally, the infinite cloner would be very useful in grammar lessons.  I can envision cloning the labels "nom" (noun), "verbe" (verb), "objet direct" (direct object) etc. and having students label different parts of a sentence.

My classroom observation experience reinforced the fact that a SmartBoard is only as useful as the teacher is trained.  I realize I need to explore and practice within the technology as much as I can so I can use it to the fullest potential.