Edina Teacher Using SMART Boards to Reach Students

When Rosie Rink first started teaching at , she was a little surprised to not see a SMART Board hanging in her classroom.

"I came from a district that had them in every room," Rink recalled. "I guess I just expected to find the same thing here."

That expectation spurred Rink to help write a grant to put several of the boards in the school, which now boasts more close to 30 boards. She said the device has completely changed the way she teaches her third-grade class, allowing educators to get through more curriculum in the same amount of time because "everything is right at our fingertips."

"Instead of sitting on the ground and showing them how to count money, it's all up on the board for them to follow along," Rink said. "It feels like they're learning a lot more quickly because of that." 

SMART Boards—manufactured by Calgary-based SMART Technologies—are interactive whiteboards which allow users to use their hands for navigation and input rather than markers. SMART is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the popular whiteboard, with more than 1.6 million K-12 classrooms around the world using the technology.

Rink is one of 50 educators invited by SMART to take part in a summit this July at the company's headquarters. The summit will feature advanced training sessions, collaborating project planning, networking and a glimpse at some of the company's new technology. Rink attended a similar summit two years ago. 

"I learned to do things like embed videos, which is a lot harder than it sounds," Rink said.

Rink said the board engages her class on a kinesthetic, tactile level—something typically difficult to accomplish in a subject like math. While teaching a math class about coordinate grids, the board allowed students to drag and drop stars at specific points on a chart with the simple wave of a hand.

"This is usually a pretty hard concept for them to understand," she said.

The school district has every K-5 math and language arts lesson on a central server, accessible from any SMART Board. Teachers can simply pull up a day's lesson and begin class instead of having to write everything out by hand. If the class is having difficulty with a particular lesson, Rink is able to create a video explaining the lesson and email it to parents for additional study.

On more than one occasion, Rink has heard from parents whose children went home and asked if they could get their own SMART Board.

"I guess it would be a fun tool to have in a home, but I don't know of any parents who have purchased them," Rink said with a laugh. "I just love that their reaction was 'I want one.'"

Third-grader Lenny said he is grateful for the boards, as his old school district didn't have any.

"The teacher always had to write down everyone on the whiteboard, so it was hard waiting so much," Lenny said.

Classmate Nate said the device has made things easier starting at kindergarten, "even though we didn't learn much."

"It was harder on the whiteboards because you didn't have the highlighted stuff," Nate said. "It helps us see the words better."

The SMART Boards make sense, Rink said, in a society increasingly evolving to incorporate technology into every facet of our lives.

"(Kids) go home and they're on computer games, video games and Wiis," she said. "This is kind of reaching into their world."