How Smart Boards Help Us Learn
By: The Education Growth Summit
Tags: Children, Tegs, Learning, Smart Boards, Education

Recent years have seen an increasing demand for Smartboards in schools due to its interactive and engaging nature. They enable multiple students to add their inputs using touch simultaneously or by connecting additional devices wirelessly. Smart boards benefit the classroom with access to unlimited information via the internet, which is filtered by the teacher to suit the class and its learning objectives. Digital classrooms have been found to increase attention and reduce absenteeism among students and here’s why.

The Language of Technology

There is no doubt that the younger generation is highly driven by technology. Even in classrooms, senior students often find it convenient to take notes on laptops, make online submissions and prefer downloading e-books over taking notes on paper and buying physical textbooks. Keeping in mind how technology attracts even children below 10 years of age, using the available technologies could be advantageous as it is a language every child today understands. Smart boards utilize a child’s natural affinity to hi-tech and impart knowledge in fun and interesting ways. It incorporates writing, drawing and a form of play which engages and challenges students.

Smart Boards as a Visual Aid

Smart boards make use of interactive videos and images that present visual information in compact and fun ways. Visual learning is an effective method because visual stimuli are processed by our brains 60,000 times faster than text. Numerous studies on memory have found that images leave a lasting imprint on people, which helps them to recall information more accurately but also to retain the information over longer periods of time. Thus, audio-visual aids grab the attention by incorporating music, voice modulation and graphics, thereby maintaining the students’ interest and curiosity to learn.

Caters to Each Child’s Requirement

The students in every class are characterized by individual differences. While some students are quick in grasping concepts, others may find it hard to concentrate during a lecture and would require additional support. These smart boards use different forms of media, which impacts the child’s sensory inputs and allow each child to interact with it at different levels. Teachers can track the performance of each student and give personal feedback even for classroom activities as the entire data gets saved on the computer.

Low Maintenance

While the initial cost of purchase or set up may be high, smart boards require less maintenance when compared to blackboards. There are no hassles of buying a regular supply of chalks or dusters, and the boards do not require daily cleaning. One is simply required to touch the screen in order to interact with the modules.

Smart boards have benefited classroom teaching by increasing student engagement and created a learning environment where students learn through interacting with each other. Studies show that using smart boards increase comprehension skills, improve test scores and equip students with skills essential in today’s technology-dominated world. They are thus a useful teaching tool with several benefits for young learners.

Written by: Devika Bharany, Team TEGS