Daniel Hanson (high school Spanish teacher)

Posted on 11/13/09

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(I don't know if this is the right chatboard to post this
message. There are a few tech chatboards.)

Katherine,

Your description of your SmartBoard makes me wonder again
whether I should be looking for a LCD projector or a
SmartBoard for my classroom *WHEN*/*IF* I can find a grant
or something. My school district is having extreme money
problems this year. I posed the question a couple of years
ago when some of the math teachers at my school started
using SmartBoards. They look really cool and I love the
interactive part of them. I can totally see how great they
would be for equations in Math and in Science classes. But
some people argued that LCD projectors were better for the
FL classroom (Bill Heller and some others).

Here are the pros and cons I can think of at the moment:

LCD: Big screen, can show movies, PowerPoint presentations;
NOT interactive, can't write notes on the screen and maybe
save them for future reference, bulbs are expensive to
replace

SmartBoard: Screen may be smaller for viewing, LCD might(?)
be able to show more programs, don't know what the
replacement supplies cost; great for danging and
interactive stuff; can save writing on the board (and I
think I could do presentations that go step by step on the
screen so students can see the process).

What would your advice be (or anyone's advice)? (I fully
admit that I'm envious of your SmartBoard and what you are
able to do with it.)

I dream of creating interview PowerPoints to teach
vocabulary in authentic contexts with lots of visual and
oral stimuli. I would be able to incorporate videoclips as
well as microphone clips into the presentations to create
vocabulary development activities instead of using the
textbook materials so heavily. (And I don't have to keep
using my voice to present the vocabulary 5 times per day.)

(Now the problem is trying to find money to get a LCD
projector or a SmartBoard....)

Thanks for sharing,

Daniel Hanson
High School Spanish Instructor/Teacher
Modesto, California, USA

On Fri, 13 Nov 2009 06:14:27 -0500, Katherine Resch
wrote:
>We use the Smart Notebook software, which is designed to
pair with the Smart
>Board. It also includes a great gallery of interactive
items (like the timer
>someone mentioned, and I just did an activity using a
virtual paper doll for
>clothing items), and a great teacher's resource to share
with the Smart
>Board community.
>
>Katherine

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