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Deepak Kapoor, a teacher with a dozen years under his belt, had never used a SMART Board before he started teaching at Gregorio Luperon High School for Math and Science. Now he can’t teach without it.
He’s not alone.
“Initially, five years ago, you’d have found teachers who said ‘I’m fine, [chalkboards have] always worked for me,’” said Celine Azoulay-Lewin, the technology innovation manager for the city’s Department of Education.
Since 2005 the white, touch sensitive plastic boards have been taking the place of traditional chalk boards in New York City schools. Students can play educational games on them, using their hands to move objects on the board, teachers can include hyperlinks in their lessons and have students tap them to open a page onto the Internet. This is not your dad’s chalkboard.
Teachers like the SMART Boards, and believe they lead students to pay more attention to lessons. The boards cost anywhere between $1,200 to $10,000, depending on the size and accessories – many times the cost of chalkboards, which cost less than $600 apiece. Studies of the new boards have found that students pay attention longer when being taught on the new boards, but whether grades actually improve is up for debate.
An 18-week study by Early Childhood Special Education Teacher Jennifer Clark, and University of Nebraska-Omaha’s Dr. Philip Nordness, found that elementary students spent 81 percent of their time paying attention to a lesson on a SMART Board versus 53 percent without one. However the researchers found only modest gains in students’ grades during the study.
An Ohio teacher’s study of her third graders’ standardized tests, posted on the SMART company’s Web page, paints a different picture. Students who had annual paper and pencil exercises to increase their math scores saw little results, but after a year of instruction on a SMART Board she saw significant improvement. After a year of math using the new board all of the students passed, two students scored as “advanced” while three were rated as “accelerated.”
In New York City, the boards were first bought for individual schools with funds from City Council members. To make the technology more available to every school, Azoulay-Lewin has 21 active Title IID grants, money specifically allocated by the state to help low-income students become technologically literate.
The boards are more interactive and more entertaining and perhaps belong in a world where students email their homework to a teacher instead of handing in sheets of paper, or create book reports in Microsoft Powerpoint instead of three-ring binders.
“Science … it needs a lot of activities and a lot of fun or you lose [the students],” Kapoor, a physics and AP calculus teacher said. “[SMART Boards are] very convenient, and students, because it’s more interactive, they like it better than the traditional chalk-and-talk method.”
In a recent interview, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein said teachers of the future would bear little resemblance in their methods and tools to teachers of today because of technology.
Gregorio Luperon history teacher Saulio Tuero said the technology has already re-invented his job.
Before, if a teacher wanted to show a movie, they’d have to sign out a television and VCR or DVD player, and wheel the equipment on a cart to their classroom.
Not anymore. As part of his lessons Tuero projected the World War I movie “Paths of Glory” from a DVD onto the SMART Board. “I’m able to stop it, turn it down, write on the board and turn it back on,” Tuero said. Soon, he said, he expects to be able to order it right online.
It makes it easier to teach, and to learn, he said. “It’s so much cleaner, so much easier. It’s cleaner in terms of delivery of instruction – there’s fewer obstacles.”
Principal Juan Villar said the technology in his school is helping his students, many who are immigrants, become computer literate.
“Some of them have not seen a computer before,” he said.
Editor’s Note: This article was developed through the New York Community Media Alliance’s Ethnic and Community Media Press Fellowship – Developing an Education Beat.
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