A long time ago, a teacher’s best friend was their trusty chalkboard.

Alas, there came a time when it was time for this old school tool to step aside and let the new guy take over, and chalkboards became an endangered species after whiteboards branded them obsolete.

But history tends to repeat itself, and now it’s time for the whiteboards to meet their superior: The SMARTBoard.

Students returning from winter break were surprised to find the big gadgets taking up space on the whiteboard.

For social studies teacher Lori Flippin, the SMARTBoard is nothing new. She has been teaching with a SMARTBoard since 2006. However, she did not request it be there like most teachers have now. The SMARTBoard just happened to be in the room when Flippin moved in.

“The first month or two, I took it down because I was too intimidated,” Flippin said. “I went, ‘Forget it. I’d rather just have the whiteboard to use.’”

While she was at first caught off guard by the SMARTBoard, it didn’t take Flippin long to adapt.
“I thought, ‘Oh come on, I can learn this,’ so I put it back up [and] taught myself how to use it,” Flippin said.

About seven school years after the OG SMARTBoards debuted, they’re beginning to multiply. Now the school is home to 20 SMARTBoards, occupying math, social studies, science and English classrooms. Even an engineering classroom houses one of these $1,600 pieces of equipment.

That’s right. These fancy gizmos are $1,600 a pop. A bit of basic mathematics shows a total of $32,000 has been spent on SMARTBoards.

“It is a wonderful teaching tool, but [is it] necessary? No,” Flippin said
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The school may not have needed the SMARTBoards, but the benefits they provide don’t seem to have any downsides besides the cost. Tracy Murray is another teacher reaping the benefits of this addition to her room.

“Necessary I think is probably an excessive word, but I think it can be quite helpful,” said Tracy Murray, another social studies at Lawrence High who agrees that SMARTBoards are not needed, but are extremely helpful nonetheless.

Flippin’s SMARTBoard is put to use everyday, so it’s not going to waste.

“For other teachers, where their boards [are not set up in] close proximity to their desks, it saves them quite a bit of steps.” Flippin said.

Saving teachers a short walk is not the only thing SMARTBoards are doing.

“It’s actually encouraged me to be more creative with thinking about how I can approach lessons,” Murray said.

SMARTBoards are giving teachers new and different paths to take, bringing teaching further into the 21st century.

With the SMARTBoard, teachers are able to advance PowerPoints to the next slide by simply tapping the projection. Teachers can work anything on their computer through the SMARTBoard, saving the time it would normally take to sit back down at the computer and potentially lose the class’s attention. This way, teachers can stay up front and keep the lesson moving.

“Its presence has made students interested, and they start to tell me things that they know it can do, and so they kind of get that anticipation and excitement,” Murray said.

So just having the SMARTBoard in the room helps to keep students eyes up and their ears open.
“I’m sure I don’t use it to its full ability, because I know there’s a lot more stuff on there I don’t use because I don’t know how to,” Flippin said.

There are tutorials to come that will explain how to use the SMARTBoards to their full potential. The SMARTBoard might just be a glimpse into the future of education.