Teaching today's youth is challenging. While some students require visual aids, others may be auditory learners. Either way, it is the teacher's duty to educate students the best way they can.
This means utilizing the ever-changing technology to the their advantage. The classroom is not only chalkboards and erasers, it is a place of vast technological advances geared toward helping every student.
One popular technological tool among teachers is ActiveSlate, which features multiple interactive desktops, digital Promethean pens, whiteboards and projectors that can enhance any teacher's lesson plan.
Summit High School teacher Michael Rubio said using ActiveSlate technology "provides a way for even the most reluctant student to use a Promethean Pen and participate from his or her desk in the same way anyone could walking up to the board." By using this interactive technology, Rubio's class becomes a positive environment that "mixes up modalities of learning without using extra resources or time to do so, making learning more efficient and effective at the same time," he said. ActiveSlate's technology can be explored at www.support.prometheanworld.com.
Similarly, Smart Slate technology supplies teachers with smartboards and tablets that are geared for a hands-on learning experience. This is vastly different from the classroom technology of more than a decade ago.
"When I began teaching over 15 years ago, there were three computers in my classroom, one on my desk and two nonworking ones on a small group table in the back of the classroom," said third grade teacher Cedric Walker, who said that his classroom at Glover Elementary now features a "massive, wall-mounted, interactive smartboard that students use daily to engage in hands-on learning activities."
Smart Slate also features Smart ink technology, which makes writing on the interactive boards easier for students and teachers. Smart Slate features can be seen at www.home.smarttech.com/en.
Additionally, e-books are growing popular in the classroom. At Glover Elementary, "all of the textbook adoptions are online and interactive," Walker said. Using e-books can help students focus on a certain chapter or subject they are struggling with and gives them to opportunity to tell their teacher what exactly they need extra help with.
As technology continues to advance, so do teachers. Whether it is using smartboards or Promethean pens, it is certain that technology plays a major part in how to teach students.
While the classroom has changed, it is apparent that the passion for teaching has not. Technology in the classroom creates an interactive world where both teachers and students can learn from each other.