Currently, there is some talk in my university concerning a change in our lecture rooms from blackboards to smartboards (or other alternatives, such as a smart podium). For that reason, I'm interested in the following:
- Do you have experience in teaching math using smartboards, as opposed to blackboards? Good/bad/…
- Do you have (second-hand) experience in teaching non-math courses using smartboards?
- Is the size of the group of students relevant for deciding to upgrade to smartboards?
- What is the general preference of students in this matter?
- Are there interesting alternatives (other than blackboards or smartboards)? Also alternatives which do not yet exist may be posted, if reasonably feasible.
I decided to post the question here, as I can imagine that similar discussions are being held at other institutions (and the outcome may have a profound influence on how we teach math in the near or distant future).
[Some more background: the specific lecture room we are talking about at my university has a capacity of 450 students; it is currently equipped with 9 big black boards (in rows of 3), all of which can be shown simultaneously as the room is quite high. There is also a beamer which can be used if one lowers the 3 blackboards in the middle, leaving 6 others for simultaneous use with the beamer. A typical course in this room is for 250 up to 450 engineering students – so not for mathematicians]
Best Answer
I have taught on smartboard, and I was very happy with the outcome.
Warning:
There were a lot of tools that I only learned to master after 3 months of using. So you can only fully appreciate the smartboard once you've seen its full strength.
Here are some examples of stuff you can do:
• You can select a piece of text and drag it somewhere.
• You can select a piece of text and shrink it so that it fits in a corner.
• You can copy paste.
• You can go back to a previous page.
• You can prepare something (e.g. a graph) in advance.
• Open an internet page and write on top of it: e.g. suppose the page contains some formulas, then you can circle a formula in red to emphasize it.
These little things can be of great use. Say you don't want to erase an important definition. Then you shrink it to a corner, and go on writing in the middle. In that way, the definition always remains visible.
Also, you can easily save each class as a file, and make it available to the students.
Overall, I think that:
- A good teacher can improve his teaching by using a smartboard.
- For bad teacher, a smartboard can make things even worse.
At any rate, there is a learning process, which lasts at least several months before one gets used to the technology, and before one really understands all the possibilities of the smartboard.