Technology edging blackboard from schools

It wasn’t all too long ago that blackboards were the main teaching tools used by teachers. Now it appears technology has taken over the classroom and the classic chalkboard seems to be getting the boot. Most students also remember projector machines being brought into classrooms, a novelty for all. Now not more than 15 years later Promethean boards are replacing them both.

At $3,845.70 each, these teaching boards must be some kind of extraordinary tool, which is in fact the common belief among teachers and students.

“Prometheans promote teacher collaboration by enabling them to share ideas they come up with,” said Colony High School Math teacher Jeff Bowker.

The boards are connected to teachers’ computers, allowing for a much bigger and useful screen with which to teach. Math classes often find graphing tools beneficial to teaching, along with the ability to project graphing calculators for entire classes to see.

“The interactive graphs and tools are also much simpler than chalkboards,” said Bowker.

Other classes make use of the convenient screens for notes and the pen feature that allows users to write on virtually anything that the computer projects. This makes viewing documents much easier at the class level, allowing for highlighting and note taking. These documents, or “flipcharts,” can then be saved and accessed at later dates, unlike chalkboards where anything accomplished in a day must be rewritten or preciously saved for future lessons.

Teachers all over the district have begun using these fancy teaching devices, from elementary schools to high schools.

“They have opened up a whole new world,” claimed French teacher Ginny Boyd. “We are able to pull the Internet up, show cultural articles and play music, which really helps in a foreign language class.”

However, despite the grandness of these boards, as with all technological advances there are some faults with the machines. Promethean boards are prone to freezing up, which causes large class disruptions. Due to the dependence on computer connections, if a teacher’s connection goes down or a desktop freezes, all plans will be halted, rendering the Promethean board useless. So when they start to cause problems, teachers have to re-plan lessons the old-school way. Although this is possible with chalkboards still in classrooms, when a teacher spends his or her time planning out lessons relying solely on the board, faults become a major disadvantage for classes.

Yet with more teachers being granted these luxurious instruments each day, the benefiting factors appear to be drastically overpowering the faults. Pioneer Peak currently has a board in every classroom. Colony high and middle schools are also nearing this total.

So, as Colony High School dressed “futuristically” for its most recent spirit day, the community can only wonder what else does technology have in store for Valley students? With today’s middle school students still remembering the projectors in class, Promethean boards are only just the start of a future of advanced technology in education.

Kayla Anderson is a sophomore at Colony High School.