Digital whiteboards

• By ELLYN COUVILLION
• Advocate Ascension staff writer
• Published: Jul 2, 2009

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DONALDSONVILLE — Members of the Ascension Parish School Board got to be students again last month.

At a demonstration of classroom technology, they learned a little bit about the electronic wizardry that teachers are using in the classroom these days to enhance learning for their students.

“They hear us talk about our technology efforts and improvements to increase technology in the classroom,” Patrice Pujol, assistant superintendent, said, of the School Board members.

She said that the technology demonstration, held June 23 at the B.C. Alwes auditorium in Donaldsonville, was a chance to show the board members the technology in action. 

Much of the demonstration focused on interactive electronic whiteboards.

One education Web site, http://teachers.net, defines such a whiteboard as a “presentation device that interfaces with a computer.”

“The computer images are displayed on the board, by a digital projector, where they can be seen and manipulated,” according to the Web site.

Interactive whiteboards are, in short, a far cry from the traditional whiteboard and its erasable markers and the even more traditional blackboard.

Samantha Romeo, a teacher at Pecan Grove Primary School in Gonzales, demonstrated the kind of electronic whiteboard, the Promethean, being used in primary classrooms. With a touch of an electronic pen, Romeo was able to move math problems about, find answers and move the hands of clocks.

A piggy bank, part of the visuals of a math problem about counting money, could even “oink.”

“They really like to have sound to it,” Romeo said of her primary students.

The interactive whiteboards being used in middle schools and high schools are different models, called SMART Boards, said Jake Ragusa,  director of information services and technology with the School Board.

These boards can be engaged with just a touch of the hand — which is one reason they’re not in the primary classrooms, he said.