The Teacher Becomes the Student (Blog #7)

A few years back my county received a number of Promethean Activboards and designated them to Special Education classrooms. The rest were give to teachers who could write a proposal on how they would use the boards and how they would be able to track their usefulness. I was currently piloting single gender education classes and had a system set up that would compare end of year results to the mixed gender counterparts. I was awarded one of the Activboards and it was installed within the first nine weeks of school. Our county set up a series of online training classes as well as face to face training offered through the University of Georgia. I enjoyed the training and learned quite a bit about their uses. When I first had the Activboard installed I treated it like my new baby and didn’t want anyone else to touch it. I did however understand that to get the most out of the new technology I had to place it in the hands of my students. For a few weeks we spent time just clicking on what we could find and learning what the technology had to offer. With this and the online training my students and I were gaining a lot more confidence in what we could do. While I was developing interactive presentations and lessons I was challenging students to come up with ideas and ways we could use the board within classroom activities. I was amazed and impressed with their creativity. I quickly learned that this was their turf. They were not as intimidated of the technology as I was. In many cases they became the trainers and I was the student. This has shaped the way that I currently integrate any new technology into my classes. I like to see what my students can do with new technology and I learn from them.