Ready when the bell rings | PG 1

By Heather Ellwood

When fourth-grade teachers Ellen Pittman and Shelly Schwetz greet their students on the first day of school, they’ll do so knowing they have their content and resources prepared and organized. That’s because Pittman and Schwetz, who teach at Red Bridge Elementary, Center School District 58 in Kansas City, Missouri, and West School, District 35 in Glencoe, Illinois, respectively, use SMART Board™ interactive whiteboards and SMART Notebook software to plan, thumbnail and organize all their lessons.

Being organized and prepared, many teachers attest, is a vital aspect of strong teaching, especially given the rigors of the modern curriculum, and the need to meet and exceed federal and local standards. Additionally, teachers have other critical responsibilities, such as creating interactive learning opportunities and enhancing content using digital and multimedia resources. Having her lessons planned and ready to go, says Pittman, means she can concentrate her attention on her students and let the classroom session unfold smoothly.

“I think using the SMART Board interactive whiteboard has not only made me more organized, but also more deliberate in my teaching, and that’s the key for me,” she explains. She adds, “When I start my planning, I think about what it is I want my students to learn, and I make sure that I have all the pieces in place so that happens in the lesson. By putting all of my teaching resources into a SMART Notebook file, which I refer to constantly during the lesson, I stay focused on what it is I want to do. Most importantly, my pacing is deliberate and planned so that I don’t get halfway through a lesson and we run out of time.”

Easy access Both teachers create their lessons in SMART Notebook, a type of collaborative learning software, and include any document files they might need to print for their students. They also attach any images, audio or video files, and website links they might use in that lesson, as well as objectives, important questions, graphs, grids and examples. Having everything they need in one file on their laptop, ready to display on their SMART Board interactive whiteboard, means less stress and less searching for additional hard-copy resources, such as maps, posters, flash cards or manipulatives. It’s all there, ready to go.

Because Pittman and Schwetz rely on SMART Notebook to create all their lessons, they find making alterations from year to year a simple process. They can easily pull up any of their previously taught lessons and add new resources. Similarly, if they borrow digital resources and lessons from other colleagues, they do so knowing they can easily tweak and modify them to fit with their own content.

Using the flexibility of SMART Notebook software to organize and plan their lessons and workflow gives both teachers the confidence that they will be ready to hit the ground running when the first bell of the new school year rings. This is definitely a shift away from how they used to coordinate their projects – before they had SMART products in the classroom.

Ready when the bell rings

“By putting all of my teaching resources into a SMART Notebook file, which I refer to constantly during the lesson, I stay focused on what it is I want to do. Most importantly, my pacing is deliberate and planned so that I don’t get halfway through a lesson and we run out of time.”

Ellen Pittman

Fourth-grade teacher

Red Bridge Elementary

Kansas City, Missouri

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SMART Notebook is the key to teacher planning

Ready when the bell rings | PG 2

“When I first started teaching five years ago, I’d write everything I needed to remember for a lesson on index cards, and I’d refer to those cards throughout the lesson. It was a disaster if l ever lost those cards. Now that I have a SMART Board and Notebook software, I’ve taken the time to create lessons and included all the information I need to get through the content. I’m not worried I’m going to forget anything, because I have a file for it, or I have a specific resource attached to my file,” Schwetz says. She adds, “I don’t find myself in the middle of the lesson thinking, okay, what was I going to do next? I have a slide all ready with the next steps.

The great stress eliminator Pittman believes her job is now far less stressful since she started using a SMART Board. A veteran who started teaching in the 1970s, Pittman recalls the days of mimeograph machines and chalkboards. “I remember how hard it was to prepare for my lessons and how difficult it was to change lesson plans from year to year. When I started using a SMART Board, I thought I’d died and gone to Heaven.”

It’s this reduced stress for teachers that intrigues Joe Garofalo, codirector of the University of Virginia Center for Technology and Teacher Education. For the past few years, Garofalo has headed up a project that evaluates the effect of technological resources on the learning outcomes of students taught by student teachers. Although he and his colleagues expected to see good results for increased student engagement when ICT was incorporated in teaching, he didn’t foresee the impact these resources, more specifically, SMART Board interactive whiteboards, would have on the student teachers’ quality of life.

When he observed the student teachers involved in the study, Garofalo noted that they were similar to Pittman and Schwetz when it came to planning their lessons. He refers to their planning technique as storyboarding, which is really a series of thumbnails that includes all the resources needed to teach the lesson. It includes blank pages that indicate when students are expected to respond or come up to the SMART Board, as well as graphing grids, charts and other pieces of information that keep a lesson flowing. The student teachers involved in the research said that their anxiety levels decreased, they felt in control and they had the ability to be flexible during classes. Put succinctly, SMART Notebook, the student teachers said, helped keep them on track during their teaching, thereby reducing their in-class stress levels.

Careful planning, says Schwetz, reduces her stress levels, too, because she now begins her days knowing she doesn’t have to remember every detail of her lessons. Everything she needs, she says, will be right there when she opens up her SMART Notebook files. In addition, knowing her students are engaged and energized by the SMART Board interactive whiteboard reduces any anxiety she might experience in lessons.

“I find I feel less pressure when I teach using the SMART Board. The attention and the pressure are off me and on the board. I’m no longer standing in front of 21 kids who are waiting for me to wow them. They’re focused on the board because first and foremost, it’s an interactive learning tool and they love learning with it,” she says.

“Now that I have a SMART Board and Notebook software, I’ve taken the time to create lessons and included all the information I need to get through the content. I’m not worried I’m going to forget anything, because I have a file for it, or I have a specific resource attached to my file. I don’t find myself in the middle of the lesson thinking, okay, what was I going to do next? I have a slide all ready with the next steps.”

Shelly Schwetz

Fourth-grade teacher

West School

Glencoe, Illinois

Ready when the bell rings | PG 3

Powerful planning Colleen McLain, an educational technology specialist with the Center School District 58 in Kansas City, Missouri, is responsible for training the district’s teachers on the SMART Board interactive whiteboard and for troubleshooting after training is complete. In her sessions, she encourages her teachers to use SMART Notebook software for all their planning. By giving these teachers a thorough grounding in the SMART Board interactive whiteboard, together with its software, as a truly powerful interactive teaching force, they enter their respective classrooms confident they are armed with all that the technology has to offer. And that, says McLain, has spin-off benefits.

“I think that the more confident teachers feel, the more that confidence is going to naturally flow over into their personal lives as well. I see teachers who feel they have their classroom life under control and that things are going great. They know they are reaching their learners and doing a good job, and that lessens the stress they feel in all aspects of their lives,” McLain says, echoing the key finding Garofalo and his colleagues uncovered in their research.

Although planning and creating SMART Notebook lessons can take some preparation time, both teachers believe such an investment pays huge dividends when it comes to the quality of their teaching, and they cannot imagine getting ready for the beginning of the school year any other way.

“I did spend a little more time up front building my lessons in a creative way, especially when I first got my SMART Board, but once I really got to know the software, I started thinking of every bit of content in terms of how I was going to teach it using the board and utilizing all the components of the software,” says Schwetz. She explains, “You do have to put in a little more time up front … but just knowing that, from year to year, even if the curriculum shifts or changes slightly, I can use these lessons and resources again and again really makes that work worthwhile. I’m more apt to put in the time.”

You won’t hear Pittman arguing Schwetz’s point. In fact, when she was asked to train teachers in a neighboring school district on using a SMART Board interactive whiteboard, lesson planning was at the top of her list.

“The SMART Board interactive whiteboard is more than just PowerPoint® on steroids. What I told the teachers I was training, and what I truly believe, is if teachers don’t use the SMART Board to preplan their lessons and ensure they are hitting the points they want to hit throughout their lessons, they aren’t using this particular resource to its maximum.”

Planning with SMART Notebook is a lesson Shelly Schwetz and Ellen Pittman have learned by heart. They’ve enjoyed their summer, confident that all their lesson plans and teaching resources are ready and waiting for the bell to ring and for the students to take their seats.

“I think that the more confident teachers feel, the more that confidence is going to naturally flow over into their personal lives as well. I see teachers who feel they have their classroom life under control and that things are going great. They know they are reaching their learners and doing a good job, and that lessens the stress they feel in all aspects of their lives.”

Colleen McLain,

Educational technology

specialist,

Center School District 58,

Kansas City, Missouri

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