Saint Mary of the Assumption School

As a child growing up in Long Island, St. Marys teacher Meghan Drielak recalls that her earliest encounter with technology occurred when her family purchased a Commodore 64, the kind of personal computer that predated navigation by mouse or touch pad and employed large floppy disks for the latest software. Her favorite game at the time, “Sticky Bear” featured “pixilated, garishly colored” characters that she played with for hours in games that introduced basic math operations. Now, as a first grade teacher, “Miss D”, as her students call her, observes that children come to school “wired for technology” and she notes that, “they know so much more than I did when I was their age.” “They’d probably wonder why I loved Sticky Bear so much,” she muses.

With the installation of a classroom SMART Board or interactive whiteboard this fall, Meghan is in her element. “I love technology; I love linking things together for students to gain a deeper understanding, to ask their own questions” and this encourages spontaneity, she says. “The smartboard aids me in teaching to the moment,” she explains, so when a student wonders if other planets have weather like Earth does,” I can also show them the swirling winds of Neptune and the massive thunder storms that occur on Saturn and Venus on the internet.” The technology is also great for planning instruction. “I often use the smartboard as my word wall for writing assignments; I like it because I can organize the words by topic and save them to my computer for later use or, if a student is absent, I can send the work home via email to help make up missed work”.

Just as she honed math basic skills in her days with Sticky Bear, “Miss D’s” students are captivated by activities that allow them to add, subtract, or skip count on a number line and create geometric patterns by moving shapes, but with the added dimension of using a SMART Board “magic pen”, a feature similar to the mouse pad on her laptop. During math or reading lesson students can use the board to manipulate words or symbols and that physicality she thinks, helps to retain new concepts more easily. This interactive approach also reinforces learning when it engages students in or an educational game of jeopardy or invites them to explore the Solar System through activities in the children’s corner at the NASA website.

St Mary’s recent SMART Board acquisition came about through a matching grant from the Catholic School Foundation. And while it may not be easy to accurately predict the next great leap in educational technology, for Meghan Drielak’s first graders, their smartboard serves as an exciting vehicle as they step into the wider world of life long learning.