Confessions of a SmartBoard Junkie

Ah yes,

to all my students out there. This post is dedicated to you:

The SmartBoard. That magnificent piece of scientific wizadry which i hope by now has touched your lives quite significantly.

I shall not bore you with long-winded tales of who invented the smartboard, when it came out, etc.. suffice to say, it was designed by some NASA dudes.

But what i will do is to talk about the SmartBoard, in all its cool, funky, educational glory.

Lets take a look at what we have now, in our classrooms in schools and in colleges. What we see is a lot of Blackboards, whiteboards and in private colleges, an influx of overhead projectors.

Nothing wrong of course with these archaic methods of getting the message across but after one has been touched (or HAS touched) the SmartBoard, these outdated methods just seem plain boring.

To illustrate my point:

I see my lecturer scribbling on the whiteboard, but why does he have to rub it off? Cant he open a new page? Move the writing around? Its gone forever!! Never to be seen again!! YikeS!

What is my lecturer doing? Why is he hunched over the OHP? Whats that? He is trying to scribble something on the slides. Oh, i see the words coming out... damn, they are permanent... he can't even move it around... and my eyes hurt...bother.

Oh, he's brought his laptop and projector today. Hmmm....techy... After wrestling with the wires and controls, we finally get a picture, only to be treated to a boring, static powerpoint presentation.

Learning today sucks.

I blame my lack of enjoyment on the SmartBoard really.

If it had not been for the SmartBoard, i would have not really noticed how BORING conventional methods are.

I find it strange that words can't be moved, pictures can't be added and websites can't be linked.....

But that's just me.

A SmartBoard junkie.

*sigh*