Whiteboards continue to evolve through SMART Board technology

The whiteboard.  

Since its introduction in the 1960s, whiteboards slowly began replacing chalkboards in classrooms around the country.

But the demand for dry erase boards exploded during the 1990s when it became a necessity for a diverse group of organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies to public schools to have them installed in their meeting rooms, classrooms and libraries.

Just before whiteboards usage and demand began to detonate, the long rectangular writing board was about to receive a technological makeover thanks to Smart Technologies when the company debuted its first series of smart boards in 1991.

SMART Boards successfully integrated the power of technology that not only helped whiteboards move forward in their evolution but also helped improve lesson plans, college lectures and business presentations.

Currently, there are over 2,300,000 SMART Boards that have been installed in businesses, schools and government institutions around the world.   Over 2,000,000 of Smart Technologies’ SMART Boards have helped and improved the educational experiences of 40 million students.

Among the countless schools that have installed the SMART Board includes St. Mary’s School in Storm Lake, Iowa.   To celebrate its 100^th school season, the Catholic school installed seven different SMART Boards in kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms to enhance their students learning.

“The SMART Boards will be an asset in the classrooms as they will increase the level of engagement for our students — even those with visual and auditory impairments or special learning needs,” St. Mary’s Computer and Business Educator Patti Demers stated in article featured in the Storm Lake Pilot Tribune,  “The access to multimedia resources will help our teachers to teach complex ideas in a fun and exciting way. Our youngest students will even be able to demonstrate their knowledge before they learn to write.”

While St. Mary’s has benefited from the usage of SMART Boards in elementary educational classrooms, the Norwell School District slowly but steadying its classrooms in all of its schools to prepare them to enter the next phase of educational learning.

“We started installation several years ago with stimulus funds,” said Norwell School Committee spokeswoman Amy Koch in an interview to the Hanover Mariner. “We’ve been adding some each year since, and with the override we will be able to finish all classrooms by the end of this calendar year.”

Despite the price to install one electronic SMART Board being $4,214, Norwell Superintendent Matt Keegan stated that the cost did not matter in order to advance the involvement and education of the school district’s students.

“SMART boards allow a teacher to not only relay information but to get students involved in the active manipulation of the ideas,” he said. “It encourages multimodal learning, incorporating visual, tactile and auditory learning into each lesson.”

SMART Boards have also shown the capabilities of collaborating with other technology including iPads in several schools across the country.

Kindergartners at Rosemont Elementary in Martinsburg, West Virginia were showing off their skills on what they have been learning on their iPads and iPod Touches while working on their classwork on one of their Smart boards.

“Smart boards are used for math, reading and our art and music teachers use them. It’s great for social studies too, to be able to pull up different current events or maps,” Rosemont Elementary principal Erica Propst said in an interview with the Journal.

 As dry erase boards are taken down from classrooms and more organizations continue to improve their technology, it is interesting to see how the whiteboard’s makeover has improved education and teaching forever.

To learn how to use a SMART Board, click here: http://youtu.be/0U05WeXPGlk