Digital natives enjoy learning with interactive SMART products
CALGARY, Alberta --- June 26, 2009 --- SMART Technologies announces that educators in three schools in the United States are reporting a significant increase in student engagement following the installation of SMART products in their classrooms. Educators in the Oak Park Unified School District and Arroyo Elementary in Tustin Unified School District, both in Southern California, and Woodstock High of Cherokee County School District in Georgia have discovered that their students are actively engaged by the interactive delivery of lesson materials and enjoy the learning process more. Students who had shown little interest in subject matter have become eager to use the SMART Board™ interactive whiteboard in class. Teachers have also noticed increased enthusiasm among their math and science students.
In September 2007, Oak Park Unified School District in Oak Park, California, introduced SMART Board interactive whiteboards and SMART Response (formerly Senteo™) interactive response systems to 43 pilot classrooms. Due to the success of the pilot program, the district added an additional 64 SMART Board interactive whiteboards the following school year. A 2008 survey, which sought to evaluate the experience of teachers during their first year of the program, revealed that 91 percent of teachers believed their students enjoyed the learning process more, and that 94 percent felt their students were more engaged in learning. Educators at Arroyo Elementary in Santa Ana, California, report that SMART Board interactive whiteboards have transformed their classrooms into dynamic and collaborative learning environments and students are now actively engaged and highly motivated. Teachers collaborate to design and share classroom lessons created in SMART Notebook software and have found that a single lesson is capable of reaching a significant range of students who have diverse needs and learning styles. At Woodstock High School in Woodstock, Georgia, teachers are reporting a dramatic increase in student enthusiasm following the introduction of SMART Board interactive whiteboards to math classrooms. Students who had previously lacked interest in mathematics and physics are excited about the prospect of using the technology to solve math problems and broadcast the results of their graphing calculators.
“SMART understands the importance of addressing the learning needs of the digital natives inhabiting classrooms across the nation,” says Jane Mintz, director of education technology at Oak Park Unified School District. “The students enjoy being part of the teaching, and I can say without reservation that our teachers would never part with their SMART products.”
“My days are so exciting now,” says Kelly Burke, advanced placement physics teacher at Woodstock High School. “Students who were never excited about math are clamoring to use the SMART Board to work on a problem.”
“Today’s classrooms require high-quality education technology products to engage and educate digital natives,” says Nancy Knowlton, SMART’s CEO. “These educators are confirming that SMART products continue to be critical components of student-centered learning environments.”
