Use of SMART Boards for Teaching Kindergarten

Title: Use of SMART Boards for Teaching, Learning and Assessment in Kindergarten Science.  Preston, C; Mowbray, L.  Journal of Teaching Science; v.54 n.z p. 50-53; June 2008

In this article Preston and Mowbray look at how interactive whiteboards (IWB) are used in the kindergarten class of Abbotsleigh Junior school (UK).  They discuss how IWB's  are used for kindergarten students specifically, and how they can enhance understanding and assessment in children who are yet to develop traditional literacy skills.  The lessons the authors looked at were science lessons where pictures, visual instructions or flash animation could be given via the IWB.  The children could then touch on the screen the pictured answers of questions to assess learning.  Lesson conclusions could then be reinforced by a visual overview of the lesson. These lessons were all designed to be interactive so the children could show their understanding of concepts and recall experimental procedures without the need for highly developed literacy skills. This is one of few studies on the use of IWB's in a kindergarten or early childhood environment whereas previous studies have focused on children in older classes. The conclusions of the study showed that IWB's increased the level of engagement in children as well as increased the pace in which the lessons were delievered this was done by the ease in which concepts could be explained and concrete examples could be given via the IWB. A further conclusion was that assessment could be done interactively via the IWB something that cannot be done with pens and papers. This study has it's limitations as it is not wide ranging and only focuses on the teaching of one subject, this said the authors have provided me with some good examples of the effectiveness of this technology and this was a useful article.