Tonight, Michael and I discussed our personal preferences of using Smartboards in our classrooms or not. I LOOOOVVVEEEE using my Smartboard, and it was pretty difficult to go back to teaching in Spain with chalkboards (ugh, I had forgotten how awful the dust is!). If you don't know, Smartboards are electronic whiteboards that are interactive! I like to create interactive anchor charts that can be reset every period, instead of creating brand new paper ones. I create a paper anchor chart with my last class and will reference the anchor chart during lessons with my other classes. Plus, I'm not the best artist so downloading pictures from the internet to use for the digital anchor chart is great! And then I just print it! Wahoo!
Michael, on the other hand, likes to use whiteboards. During his classes, discussions of opinions of events in history evolve to form a final conclusion to which the students then compare with their own lives. He records all of these thoughts and important points on the whiteboards in his classroom that expand both lengths of his room. How I'd love to be a fly on the wall to observe his students reflecting and forming educated opinions! I'm sure it's very interesting to look back over these notes and review the thought processes of the students. All to be erased for the next period! This ensures that the students in the next period will experience the same "revelations" to then come up with their own conclusions. I love it!
We both agreed that one method is not better than the other, except that it mainly depends on a teacher's preference and "how his/her brain works." I prefer an interactive, kinesthetic board, while he may prefer one that is more visual, where the whole lesson can be seen. I like it, I love it!
No comments:
Post a Comment