Smart boards make learning fun and exciting for your students. It turns boring lessons into engaging and interactive lessons. Smartboards are super helpful for teachers, too!
Instead of a boring old blackboard, teachers get a fancy new screen, like a giant tablet. This lets them make lessons fun with pictures, videos, and games. They can also use the internet and conduct regular classes in a new way with technology.
This blog will show you how to use this tool to create an interactive learning session for your students. We will also show you step-by-step instructions on how to use the smart board. Let’s begin.
What is a Smart Board?
Smart Board, as know as interactive whiteboard, transforms the presentation and consumption of information in classrooms. These boards are large, touch-sensitive displays. They serve various purposes, including:
- Displaying presentations, documents, and websites
- Writing and drawing on the screen with a stylus or finger
- Annotating documents and images
- Saving and sharing work
- Collaborating with others in real-time
Smart boards are a great tool that can be used to improve engagement, learning, and productivity.
Take a teacher, for instance. They can use a smart board to show a presentation, jot down notes to clarify things, and save the lesson for later. Smart boards are also handy for group work. Students can team up on tasks right on the screen. That’s why smart boards are a great buy for classrooms.
Importance of smartboards in modern classrooms
Here’s why smart boards are an essential tool:
- Increased Student Engagement: Smart boards can revolutionize traditional lessons by converting them into dynamic, interactive experiences. By integrating engaging visuals, interactive games, and real-time polls, students are drawn into the material, leading to increased engagement and improved information retention.
- Enhanced Lesson Delivery: Smart boards allow teachers to deliver lessons more dynamically. They can easily incorporate multimedia elements. Smart boards also help in collaboration with students in real-time. This makes learning more fun and exciting.
- Improved Understanding: When teachers use smart boards, they can create lessons that suit different ways of learning. Some students learn best when they see things, so the pictures and videos on the smart board help them. Others like to do things with their hands, so that they can join in with interactive activities. This can help all the students understand the lessons better.
Benefits of Using Smart Boards for Teaching
Here are the benefits of using smart boards for teaching:
- Making students more inquisitive: Smart boards turn the classroom into an engaging and interactive environment. Here, students can explore topics in new and exciting ways. This can motivate them to learn more.
- Encouraging two-way classroom engagement: Smart boards allow teachers to incorporate interactive activities into their lessons easily. This can help students be engaged and focused. This also provides valuable opportunities for formative assessment.
- Higher motivation: When students are interested and involved in what they’re learning, they’re more likely to want to do well. Smart boards can make learning more fun. This can help students want to do their best.
- Simplifying lesson planning and delivery: Smart boards come with a variety of in-built tools and resources. This makes lesson planning and delivery more accessible for teachers.
- Improving classroom management: Smart boards can help teachers to keep students focused during lessons.
- Saving time: By making it easier to plan and teach lessons, smart boards help teachers save time.
- Making teaching more effective: Using smart boards can make lessons better for students. Teachers can use them to make lessons that students like and learn from.
Steps to Use the Smart Board for Teaching
Here are the general steps to use a smart board for teaching:
Before Class
- Turn on the equipment: This usually involves powering on the board and the computer connected to it.
- Log in (if required): Some smart boards require you to log in to the software using a username and password.
- Calibrate the board (if needed): Calibration ensures your touches and pen strokes line up correctly on the screen. There’s usually a button combination or on-screen prompt to initiate calibration.
- Launch the interactive whiteboard software: This program will create and interact with your lesson content on the board.
Using the Board
- Choose your tools: Smart boards usually allow you to use digital pens to write or draw in different colors on the screen. You can also use a keyboard that appears on the screen and move around things you’ve put on the board.
- Create or open your lesson content: You can write directly on the board. You can also use pre-made templates or open files you’ve created previously.
- Interact with your content: You can move objects around and highlight or annotate them. You can also use the other features offered by the software.
- Connect to other devices (optional): Some smart boards let you link up your laptop or other gadgets to show their screens on the board.
Additional Tips to Effectively Use the Smart Board
- Familiarize yourself with the specific features of your school’s smart board software beforehand.
- Practice using the board before your lesson to avoid technical difficulties during class time.
- Remember, the smart board is a tool to enhance your teaching, not replace it. Focus on interaction and student participation.
Tips for Effective Smartboard Usage
Here are some tips for effective smartboard usage:
- Use the smartboard like a regular blackboard, but with the advantage of being able to write without erasing anything.
- Use games, quizzes, videos, music, presentations, and other educational materials to make your classes more fun. Show virtual experiments, videos, and images to create a more hands-on learning experience for your students.
- Use online resources to teach your students about things from all over the world. You can find videos, books, websites, and other materials from subject experts.
- Let your students work together on the smartboard to help them learn from each other.
- Save your lessons so you can refer back to them later.
- You can use the smartboard in whatever way works best for you, such as using the touchscreen, connecting your device to mirror the board, using a stylus or remote, or connecting a wireless keyboard and mouse.
Conclusion
Smartboards can make learning fun and engaging! They let you show pictures, videos, games, and even websites on the big screen, making lessons more enjoyable for students. And they even let students work together. But you need more than just a smart board in your class! You need to know how to use it. You can play around with the features to learn or take a class to understand how the smart board works.
Senses Electronics offers training and support for teachers using their smart interactive panels. When you buy a Sense board, experts will visit your school to train your teachers. You can have multiple training sessions with these experts for free over three years. This allows you to learn and teach your students effectively.
You can also schedule a free demo of the Sense board to understand how it can improve teaching in your classroom fully.
