NewsWest 9
GREENWOOD- Texting during class might not seem like a good idea in most schools, but at the Greenwood District - they encourage it. A new classroom system is changing the student and teacher interaction, even test-taking.
"They make school a lot more fun and we get to interact with everybody else," Greenwood 9th Grader, Kam Williams, said.
It's called a Promethean Board, a far cry from the days of a chalkboard.
"They're really cool," Greenwood 9th Grader, Colin Sullivan, said. "It makes class a lot easier and more fun. I have a lot more fun with these things than a chalkboard."
From math problems to the Internet, videos and science equations. The new boards reveal not only the right answer, but a new way of learning.
"They can do it as multiple choice answers, they can text where they would need to work a math problem - they can solve it, type in a numerical answer and submit it to the board so I can see who's not able to work problems correctly," Greenwood Science Teacher Karen Sullivan, said. "I used to be an overhead person, I did the powerpoint presentations with an overhead projector, but since I incorporated this into my classroom, the students are used to working with it and I don't think we could do a lesson without the board."
The boards hang in about 8 Greenwood high school classrooms and several others in the junior high and elementary campuses.
"The students who are up working at the board have a tendency to become the teacher themselves - they'll turn around and ask other students questions and help them along," Sullivan said.
The Promethean Boards are even changing the way kids take tests. Now they can key in their responses. The teacher knows who missed the question and students see a percentage of how many got it right.
"They seem to have a compulsion to always use their hands with something, so they have these items in their hands already and they're up around moving, and doing things that's going to keep them busy instead of sitting idle at a desk," Sullivan said. "I don't think I could work without it now."
