Technology!!

My classroom has entered the 21st century! As of this week, I have a SmartBoard! Okay, well, I dont exactly permanently have it, but I have dibs on it when other people don't need to reserve it.

For those who dont know what a smartboard is, first of all, the setup costs around 4-5 thousand dollars for the board, laptop and projector. The SmartBoard is hooked up to the laptop and the image from the screen is then projected onto the board. The fancy-pants part though is that the board functions sort of as a huge mousepad where you can touch it to click on things, pick up a "marker" and draw on the board, etc. Also, the board comes with its own software which includes templates for multiple school subjects. For example, if you go to science, you can insert a period table. For math I can insert graph paper of various sizes, circle charts, logarithmic paper, and other useful backgrounds. I can also insert shapes, perform rotations, dilations, and translations (the unit we are on in class) very easily.

The smartboard has made my teaching so much easier. Before, I would draw these sloppy axes, graph some points, and barely be able to explain to the students what I was doing because it was so inexact. Now, I can use different colors, flip between screens, erase, and best of all, draw graphs that are exact. Its wonderful

I should work for SmartTech (the people who make smartboards). I really do love it though. I dont ever want to go back to the chalkboard.