Students embrace interactive technology that fosters engagement, love of learning

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The popular TV game show Deal or No Deal is making math fun for Grade 5 students at an inner-city north Etobicoke school thanks to interactive technology.

The ooohs! grew louder and louder as the banker's offer to North Kipling Junior Middle School student Gurleen Saini reached $122,000 before it plummeted to a mere $3,000 as the 10-year-old tested her probability of winning $1 million on a SMART Board Tuesday afternoon to an audience of more than 100 students, teachers and school administrators gathered in the library of West Glen Junior School.

"The kids just love it," teacher Michael Akenten said of his students' use of the SMART Board. Akenten downloaded the Deal or No Deal game from the Internet.

"They know they'll be putting their books in their desks and be able to touch things and move things around. They totally, totally respond to it. They look forward to coming to school."

SMART Boards are an interactive whiteboard with a touch-sensitive surface that controls a computer, and allows teachers to create interactive presentations with text, pictures and links to the Internet.

Outfitting seven schools in its cluster with two portable SMART Boards each is how Kingsview Village Junior School used part of its first $1 million under the Toronto District School Board's (TDSB) Model Schools for Inner Cities initiative.

Model Schools is a three-year project that focuses parents, teachers and the community on the needs of children inside and out of the classroom.

TDSB trustees will decide at a meeting later this month whether to fund Kingsview and the three other Phase II model schools for another year.

The cluster of seven Etobicoke schools shared their successes with the SMART Boards at West Glen Junior School earlier this week.

A sea of students dressed in green, blue, navy blue, red and yellow school T-shirts sat on West Glen's library floor waiting their turn to show off their stuff at the SMART Board.

Swish. Smash. Zap.

Kingsview Village Grade 2 students identified onomatopoeias, words that imitate the sounds they describe.

"We're studying comic books and graphic novels, but we don't teach the kids how to look at the components," teacher Gordon Shadrach said. "We focus on sound effects, and why they've chosen that word to go with that picture."

SMART Boards address the different learning styles found in a classroom with sound, pictures, and the ability for students to physically move elements like words, letters, numbers and graphics.

"It works with students' strengths to make them better learners," said Mary-Ann Cheung, lead teacher at model school Kingsview Village Junior School. "It meets the needs of different learners (visual, auditory, tactile). It helps them understand how things work. And because it's an exciting piece of technology, kids want to get up there."

Even the youngest of students is getting in on the fun.

Kindergartners from Islington Junior Middle School demonstrated their daily calendar, complete with their names, and weather graphics like a sun and a cloud.

Others students demonstrated on the whiteboards the rules of badminton serving, the rights of every child, probability, area and perimeter, habitats and a flower and seeds science unit.

Mississauga-based Advanced Presentation Products supplied the seven schools with the SMART Boards, developed by Calgary-based SMART Technologies Inc.

West Glen Junior School adopted the SMART Board technology three months ago.

Every Tuesday after school, a group of six West Glen teachers share best teaching practices, as well as brainstorming new applications for the whiteboards.

"I'm big on student engagement, student dialogue, teaching moments between kids and teachers, the interactivity," said West Glen principal Jeanette Lang. "It's a teaching tool that makes learning fun. It builds self-esteem by role modeling that mistakes are good. Mistakes are what foster learning. We create a climate that allows risk-taking and how to problem solve."

SMART Board lesson software encourages students to try again if their answer is incorrect in a safe way that builds confidence and promotes group discussion.

Special-needs students receive particular benefit from SMART Boards because they learn best from hands-on learning, Lang said.

She believes the technology could have far reaching implications for the Game Boy and iPod generation.

"It's the age we live in," Lang said. "As educators, we have to teach critical thinking and the use of creative technologies to teach kids how to use the tools available.

"It's about leveling the playing field, and providing them with choices and opportunities to prepare them for the future."