Smart Board: An Amazing Teaching Tool

             As I reflected on my post about assistive technology and as I completed my final project, I was continually drawn to the Smart Board.  My first encounter with the technology was as a student in high school.  At the time, I was amazed at the sheer cool-ness of an interactive projection screen.  That being said, my teachers who were fortunate enough to have a Smart Board in their classroom rarely used them as more than a projection screen and saved the interactive capabilities for rare gimmick-driven occurrences.  Reflecting on the Smart Board through a pedagogical scope has both shown that my teachers missed an opportunity to enhance their lessons and informed my conclusion that Smart Boards deserve a place in almost any classroom.  The Smart Board is less of an accessory and more a valuable resource to enrich the learning environment.  Because it projects images, produces sound, and is interactive it collectively caters to visual, auditory and tactile learners.  How often can one technology provide so much?  An immediately example of the Smart Board’s application to music education that comes to mind is an adaptation of one of the technologies I referenced in my post about assistive technology.  I explained that some sort of Velcro board for placing notes on a staff would be an excellent example assistive technology.  The smart board could take this idea a step further by making the notes and staff completely digital.  This way, one could ultimately save or print whatever the student composes through this system.   I imagine that with the appropriate program, one could even have the student compose using the “drag and drop” idea and have the computer “perform” what they wrote.  This is only one example of the seemingly endless uses for this technology.