Peer Review

SMARTBOARD: SMART Technology Resources

Material Detail page

Reviewed:: Apr 13, 2020 by Teacher Education

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:

A very extensive and comprehensive list of Smartboard interactive resources for use in the classroom inlcuding guides, lesssons, newletter, downloads, templates and much more. The beginning of the site has numerous resources that could be used at any level. Scrolling down we are provided with a more focused approach to is K-8 and high school science, math, social studies, and language resources.

Type of Material:

Collection

Recommended Uses:

Smartboards are used in a classroom setting but they can be either teacher or student centered, ideally some combination of the two but typically with the whole class involved in viewing or participating in an activity.

Smartboard materials/lessons can be printed with highlights and added text to make useful handouts/notes for students.

Technical Requirements:

Smartboard or 3M Interactive Whiteboard is the primary focus of this submission, however, this website also includes a wide variety of tech resources that can be used with a browser.

Identify Major Learning Goals:

Purpose of this site is to provide comprehensive list of K-12 resources to be used with "Smartboard" technology.

Target Student Population:

Middle School, High School, Grade School but really any situation where a Smartboard is on hand.

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

There is a learning curve with Smartboards. Whether you are an early adopter, just very persistent, or love how technology enhances your class, you will want to take some time to learn the basics, then start simple.

After that, do not be afraid to learn along with your students as they often pick up on "how to" very quickly and they will be eager to try all of the many features.

Content Quality

Rating:
Strengths:: Content of this website is comprehensive list of resources, across all disciplines, for K-12 students. List is extensive.
Concerns:: There are too many links on the page to check them all, but since the site has not been updated since 2017, expect that many will be broken and some resources may not be of high quality.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:

Strengths:

Since a Smartboard allows teachers and students to control the computer through touching the screen-the whiteboard screen with a finger, a special pen, a pointer rather than the computer screen, the number of activities that can include hands-on participation is greatly increased. This means ideas for activities to use with a Smartboard in the classroom are invaluable and this collection is huge!

The posted list is outstanding in the quantity of resources listed: very thorough and comprehensive across all disciplines.

Concerns:

Finding the resources useful for you will take some time. Be ready to wade through the huge collection to find them though because once you have two or three good ideas, it is enough.

This site is no longer as effective as it may have been in past years: many of the links for listed resources are no longer active.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:

Strengths:

List is extensive; categories of resources are clearly organized.

There is a consistent layout of tables and links to the information. Expect to scroll and eyeball what you might find useful.

Concerns:

The site could be designed differently for easier navigation and visual design. Expect to find various text and background colors that could certainly be improved.

Layout is very "busy" due to large amount of information posted. (See details in "issues" section, below.)

Other Issues and Comments:

This website was first created in 2009; updated on 1/23/2017. In testing the links, we found the following:

At the top of the webpage, in the section titled "NEW SITES," only 1 of the 8 listed is still active.
We randomly sampled 10 links listed in the "Math" section: only 1 of the 10 was still active.

Given the sheer quantity of links posted on this site, we did find several high-quality materials available (although none of them were specifically designed for Smartboards, as the website purports to provide).

Our CONCERNS are two-fold:

The educator/user is likely to quickly become frustrated by the many broken links.
Smartboard technology itself is being discontinued by many educational institutions as the technology is prone to problems and repairs are expensive.

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