Ask the readers: Smart Boards for administrators
December 16, 2008
An Instructify reader is looking for some information on Smart Boards — she’s very interested in finding someone who could share ideas on how school administrators could use Smart Boards in their jobs. This could cover presentations at staff meetings, developing mind maps, or anything over, under and in-between that would show how administrators can integrate this technology into their jobs.
Not only is this a decent way to spice up staff meetings, but it’s also an opportunity to show that technology can enhance the ways in which schools operate. If you’ve got ideas, please share your thoughts in the comments. -BILL FERRIS
If you have a question you’d like to put to our readers, send it to instructify[at]learnnc.org.
Photo credit: Earl – What I Saw 2.0 on flickr
While I understand the desire for administrators to integrate technology into their work, I’m not sure SmartBoards (or ActivBoards or whateverboards) are the answer. What would an administrator do with a SmartBoard that he/she couldn’t do with a projector or a whiteboard?
Having watched my own administrators, it seems clear to me that something like a Tablet PC is much more effective – they are able to take better observation notes of staff, they can communicate better in small meetings, and still have largely the same abilities that they would with a SmartBoard.
I think I would find it difficult to justify an administrator-only SmartBoard as “enhancing learning.”
The administrators at my high school use the Smartboard in the conference room to collaborate on all manner of things from scheduling to professional development to composing newsletter information for the PTA. While they could just project their work and comment, without need for the Smartboard, they have found over time, that they go up to the board to markup documents; using the whiteboarding feature of the all-in-one Smartboard setup, they capture on-the-fly ideas and then in Smart Notebook re-ogranize those ideas to better suit their purposes.
The administrators are the leaders of the school and I think it is imperative that they be exposed to this technology as much as possible. In my own school, the administrative team has a conference room with a mounted LCD projector, a SMARTboard, and they all have laptops with the Notebook software installed.
I want my administrators to be comfortable walking into one of our classrooms with the SMARTboard and they should be just as effective as the teacher.
We have been working for 5 years to get SMARTboards in every classroom in our building so it makes sense at this school for the administrators to use the same technology during their meetings, staff meetings, PTA meetings, school presentations, etc.
