Starting fresh with SMART
Listellick Primary School opened the doors to its new school in February 2023, moving from an old three-building rural school into a state-of-the-art building for its 200 students. With the new build came the need for refreshed technology in every classroom.
Principal Annette Dineen was at the forefront of the technology selection for the new classrooms. Along with her team, Dineen decided that every single classroom would get a SMART Board. Now, teachers have come to love and expect this level of technological interactivity and ease of use.
“The teachers just love those SMART Boards,” Dineen said. “For their planning for their teaching, they use it every day. It makes their teaching lives easier, and it helps with their well-being which is very important.”
School secretary and IT lead Paula Sweeney said that they chose SMART because of what they had learned in the past about the importance of a product lasting for the long haul.
“We chose SMART Boards because of the product longevity. We did have a lot of outlay on projectors and lamps [before], so it's been a very positive change for us.
Teachers love options - lots of options
Rachael Donnellan, a 5th class teacher at the school, says that it's the variety of options that SMART offers her that makes her use it every day. SMART Ink has proven to be a go-to for her.
“We use the SMART Ink feature a lot in our classroom. For example, let's say in English, we'd have a page of the book up on the screen, you can write over it, highlight it, and the kids love it.”
Special education teacher Micheál O’Sullivan is also impressed with the range of activities he can present to his students in any given lesson.
“Sometimes, I invite children to come to the board to take part in the activity. It might be a drag-and-drop activity. It might be a matching activity. It might be a numbering or ordering activity. There's loads of different activities you can use with the children using the SMART Notebook.”
O’Sullivan values the way that his SMART Board allows the driver of learning to switch from himself to his students.
“It's not a case of me presenting the children. It's a case of children engaging with the lessons that I prepared.”
“The most important thing for us here in Listellick, for the teachers and myself, is that we instill a love of learning in the children.”
~Annette Dineen - Principal
Learn more about how SMART is transforming the teaching learning experience with innovative EdTech.