smartboard review

Prior to the presentation last class, I had never seen a smartboard before. What I gathered from the presentation is that essentially it is a large touchscreen monitor with specific software aimed at educators. I think this is a great way to increase motivation in the class and to keep the class interesting. There are an infinite number of things you could incorporate into lessons using the smartboard. I feel that the ability to instantly save everything you write, in terms of notes on the board, is in it self revolutionary. Plus it incorporates the computer with your board, so with the internet comes even more posabilities. I already went back to play with the smartboard, and to play checkers. :). I have really enjoyed thinking of ways to utalize the smartboard in lessons. It also is a great way to make lessons more accessable to students of different abilities, it utalized many different forms of media and touch, the hands on aspect alone should help students learn.

For our groups actual lesson, we came up with a comprehensive lesson on the frog. starting with the life cycle and then looking at anatomy. We utilized many of the smartboad components and features. We made the lesson interactive and utilized many of the multimedia features. The main focus of the lesson, is the "hands on" dissection that can be done using froguts.com. This allows students to touch and explore the anatomy of the frog with out having the real life frog in front of them. With out loosing the experience of the frog dissection all together. there are many ways to expand our lesson to fit any classrooms needs, and in of itself the lesson accomodates for students of different abilities, because it utilized so many mediums.