Do Kindergarteners Love Their SmartBoards?

On Wednesday, February 8th, I had the pleasure of being the "mystery reader" in Mrs. Kerry Wetmore's kindergarten class. First, the children and I talked about feelings: what makes us happy or sad or angry, or as one young kindergartener mentioned, 'anxious is a feeling'! Then I read one of my favorite children's books, Today I Feel Silly & Other Moods that Make My Day, by Jaime Lee Curtis. We had a wonderful time together, talking about the message and looking at Laura Cornell's fabulous illustrations.
When I arrived at Mrs. Wetmore's door, the students had been in the middle of a SmartBoard lesson, taking turns dragging and dropping beginning letters into place to make the word depicted in the lesson. The ending combination was __OG, and, when the picture was a 'log', the children were eager to have a turn moving the L; then, the D to make 'dog' and the FR to make 'frog.'
After I read my story, I stayed to watch the children and Mrs. Wetmore finish their morning meeting, again using the SmartBoard. Mrs. Wetmore had three incomplete sentences on the board: "Today is ___. Yesterday was ___. Tomorrow will be ___." One student correctly dragged and dropped 'Wednesday' into place. A second student hopped up, chose 'Tuesday,' and with her finger moved that word to correctly complete her sentence. The next student chose 'Friday' to complete the last sentence -- perhaps, wishful thinking! Every child was paying attention, and together they kindly helped him put 'Friday' back and move 'Thursday' into place
What impressed me, and what I want to confirm to you, is this: every hand was up, every student wanted a turn. The power of interactive technology to engage students is undeniable. Could the students do the same activity on a worksheet by circling the word 'Wednesday' and drawing a line to the correct sentence? Sure they could! Would they be as engaged? Not likely.

I really must commend all of the various people in Orange who had a hand in bringing the SmartBoard technology into our classrooms -- from those of you who advocated for SmartBoards to those who raised money to purchase them to the BOE who recently voted to complete the project to those teachers and paraprofessionals who trained and implemented the lessons. This was a community effort and everyone deserves congratulations. The children are appreciative! I didn't need to ask them to see that they were feeling 'excited'!

Now, our next steps are purchasing the student responder systems, which allow 100% of the students to answer a question with a hand-held responder, and document cameras, which project any piece of paper or even 3-dobject onto the SmartBoard for study.

To loosely quote Bill Owens: When it comes to technology, if we're not constantly moving forward, then, without a doubt, we're moving backwards.