Excuse Me, But Do You Have SMART Boards, School Division?

I came to an interesting conclusion today.

I don't know if I would ever feel entirely right teaching in a school division where there weren't SMART Boards. Have I ever talked about how awesome SMART Boards are and how much I want one in my personal residence? I feel like this is a potential blog topic that has not been delved into much before, and I don't really care to troll through my archives and discover the truth of it.

I first encountered SMART Boards here at Brandon University in my first term of classes here and thought they were intimidating as all heck. I was extremely wary to try it out at first. I tried writing something on it, and it somehow came out even more illegibly than my usual handwriting. Very odd indeed, for anyone who knows what my usual horrid chicken scratch looks like. But I persevered a little and started using it in a basic way in my first placement. Hey, it sure beat an overhead!

But I wasn't using it all that deeply.

In my second placement, I was placed with a teacher who was the 'tech expert' at his school, a man who could actually teach me things about using technology, as opposed to looking mildly apologetic as they asked me for help. SMART Boards were used quite heavily in that class, both for teacher presentation and student work. I got to run SMART Board quizzes, which were fun, even if they were a little technically demanding (and sometimes fussy as to whether they worked or not).

In my third placement, not all the software options that were present in the first class were actually there, but I still found plenty of uses for the SMART Board. There was actually one little tool that hadn't been present in my second placement, a document camera, which I found a pretty handy little device. Sometimes it's just nice to directly interface with an print document and the document camera filled that need quite nicely.

I've got very used to SMART Boards in my educational life.

Would I work in a teaching job without one? Well, yes. Of course. But you bet that I'd be pushing for it when budget time came around each year ...

"What's Mr. Keen want in his classroom this year?"

"A SMART Board, Mr. Chalmers*."

"Ughhh. Not again. Give him some more of those weird dice. Maybe that'll keep him quiet for another term."

I'm sorry, Mr. Chalmers, but I want my SMART Board, and I want it now. 

*= Not a real person.