On board with SMART Boards in East Rockaway

Gone are the days of dirtying your clothes with chalk prints — schools can now use state-of-the-art SMART Boards right at their fingertips.

These interactive whiteboards are causing quite a stir among students at Centre and Rhame Avenue Elementary Schools. Joining the “smart” revolution, teachers and administrators are dazzled by the new technology. “It brings learning alive,” said Mary Arapas, a second-grade teacher at Centre. “A whole new world is open to you. Every day, there is more and more to learn and I don’t know how we ever taught without it.”

Developed by SMART technologies, the whiteboard acts as a large touch screen for students and teachers. A projector is used to display a computer’s desktop image on the board, which accepts touch input from a finger, digital pen or other solid object. The board specifically works just like a computer mouse detecting each person’s contact and responding to it. Users can access the Internet, different learning software to do a host of things from taking notes to playing games, among other features. Whether going over a vocabulary lesson, reading, or solving a math problem, students are able to scroll around the page, move or drag an item on screen or choose an answer just by touching the board — a new phenomenon that administrators feel is a positive upgrade for the classroom.

“It is a tool to enhance our curriculum and teach concepts with a different approach,” said Lori DeVarso, a 5th-grade teacher at Rhame. “I find that the SMART Board keeps the students engaged.” At Rhame, there are SMART Boards in about half of the classrooms, said principal Laura Guggino. The boards are setup in special area classrooms like the library and in some support teachers’ rooms.