One thing I disagreed with in our technology class was that Smart Boards were simply a substitution for the whiteboard or chalkboard. While it is true, these Smart Boards may have been a waste of money for many school districts, I think the real tragedy lies in the lack of training provided to teachers for these smart boards. There are a whole host of new things that became available with Smart Boards. You essentially have unlimited white board space and can scroll down to add more space instead of erasing valuable learning content.
I had a great math teacher named Judson Ford that took full advantage of all that Smart Boards had to offer. Not only would he scroll down to add more notes to theorems and content, but he would use the geometric shapes available in one of the applications to show us valuable information about shapes and their relationships to different theorems and other shapes. He would stretch out shapes, layer them on top of each other, and show relationships that were not possible prior to the advent of the Smart Board.
Perhaps the coolest aspect was the ability to save notes for students who missed class. My teacher would save all class notes into a folder and pull them up at lunch time the next day for students who missed class because they were sick, had a sports game, or some other appointment. While they may have not been worth the cost for most teachers and students, I wholeheartedly believe that I benefited in ways that I could not have from a simple whiteboard or chalkboard.
It also depends on the class, but smart boards are not simply substitution for every subject. For geometry I would argue that they augmented our education, but for classes such as English or History they did very little and were perhaps a substitution. More research and more selective purchasing should have been done prior to mass buying of white boards and putting them in every classroom. They don't belong in every classroom. More training should have been given to math teachers, physics teachers, and other applied Science classes to ensure that this piece of technology that was so heavily invested in was not another waste of tax payer and district dollars. Feel free to disagree, but from my experience of taking introductory geometry without a Smart Board and then taking advanced Geometry with a s
YES YES YES! In almost every single case it's the use of technology that moves it along SAMR. For the record I did state that in K-2 and Math and Science I believe it has benefits as long as teachers like Mr. Ford utilize it in a way that makes sense for you the learner. 100% agree in this case it beyond substitute to probably modification and I'm going to guess for Mr. Ford it Redefined the way he taught. Here's the thing to remember ALL MOST EVERY TECHNOLOGY CAN REACH M OR R ON SAMR. It's not the technology that matters, it's our use of it!
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