Friday, November 14, 2008

SmartBoard follies


SmartBoard professional development presentation at our little hole-in-the-wall consisted of:

District tech coordinator.
School tech dude.
Computer Teacher.
Chemistry teacher.

20 minutes passed while they tried to hook up the smart board. Comedy of errors mixed with Keystone Kops choreography.

Finally machine was up and running but Science teacher (only one who used it regularly) didn't have her files on this computer - it wasn't networked because the wireless card was fritsy.

So she showed us how to doodle on stuff and kept apologizing that she couldn't show us any of the really cool things she did with it everyday.

Computer teacher showed us the dice-rolling animation thingy. She didn't apparently have any other ideas or suggestions.

District tech has never used one except to tap to advance Powerpoint.

School tech never used it because he had admin duties.

That's it. That was the PD that wound up being PDS (pretty damn stupid) and PDI (pretty damn irritating) and PMAWOT (pretty much a waste of time).

Later, in my classroom, I read an online manual and played with the software for an hour (downloaded for free).

Guess which was more informative and useful?

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