SMART board article...

I chose to read the article titled "Interactive Whiteboards Enhance Project Based Learning" by H. Ellwood. I found this article very inspiring as a future teacher. It gave examples of quite a few teachers who are using interactive white boards in their classrooms with a lot of success.

I learned about project based learning from this article. This is something that I haven't really thought much about being that I didn't learn this way. I think this is such a great idea. It basically means that teachers use interactive tools such as the SMART board for the students to prepare and present projects on/with. This approach to teaching puts the learning in the hands of the students. Instead of a teacher standing up and lecturing, it allows the teacher to make class more interesting to students by becoming more of a teacher-facilitator.

One major way for teachers to accomplish this is to be open to incorporating these new interactive methods into their lesson plans. So as a teacher, I need to realize that though I didn't necessarily learn in this manner, it doesn't mean that I cannot teach this way. I need to keep in mind that the children that I will be teaching have grown up in a completely different world that I and that they are a lot more technological savvy than I was at their age. I have a lot to learn. One quote from the article that I will always remember is, "What will we discover today?" This is what Patricia Deibert, a teacher, asks herself every morning when she steps into her classroom. Everyday there is the opportunity for me to teach my students and for my students to teach me.