On the cutting edge: St. Mary’s goes high tech

If education is the key to the future, technology is the chain on which it hinges.

At St. Mary’s School in Sheboygan Falls, the latest in high-tech education has arrived in the form of two interactive SMART Boards.

The newly arrived boards are presently in use in Tamara Cotter’s middle-school classroom and Mary Gruber’s third and fourth-grade classroom.

Cotter is responsible for brining one of the boards to St. Mary’s, by winning a recent writing contest sponsored by computer and visual aid-company United Visual.

“At the end of last year, I entered an essay contest, and first prize was a SMART Board,” Cotter said. “I wrote an essay on the kind of impact the use of SMART Boards would make in improving the level of education in my middle-school classroom, as well as all grade levels in our school.

“There was one winner in Wisconsin, and it turned out to be me,” she said. “It is so exciting to have this great learning instrument to work with every day.”

Thanks to a highly successful fundraising effort, the school raised enough money to purchase a second SMART Board for use during the 2009-10 school year.

Cotter said the SMART Board provides endless educational opportunities.

“This is such an important thing for our school,” Cotter said. “It brings our level of teaching and learning to a whole new level.

“It is pretty rare for a school of our size to have such high-tech educational tools like this in our classrooms,” she said.

The multi-purpose, interactive SMART Board stimulates learning by offering lessons, Internet access, games, videos, virtual displays and in-depth visual presentations at the touch of a fingertip.

“It has pre-programmed lessons, games, videos, graphics and demonstrations for all subject areas and all grade levels,” Cotter said. “Since I normally develop my own lessons, the board allows me to program in my ideas and present them to the kids in the hands-on, high-tech format.

“I use the SMART Board all day, everyday,” she said. “It has become a vital part of our school day. We still have books and a regular approach to learning, but this has been a great way for us to expand our educational offerings.”

Examples of SMART Board capabilities include an interactive frog dissection in which students can explore the inner works of a frog, mess free, by simply touching a prompt on the screen.

Math lessons allow students to measure angles and make calculations directly on the SMART Board screen, while quiz games allow students to brush up on their English and social studies knowledge, prior to a test.

“The kids all love it,” Cotter said. “It has brought many of them alive and given them increased motivation to learn.

“Using this educational method, I have been getting 100-percent participation from my students, which is pretty amazing,” she said.

In the third and fourth-grade classroom, Gruber said the SMART Board is used often to present interactive videos and engage students in writing exercises.

“We do so many things with it,” she said. “It is hard to really list all the things we do.

“It is a great way for my students to improve their writing and reading skills in a highly engaging manner.”

Cotter, who has completed training sessions on how to use the SMART Boards, said all grade levels can learn from the boards.

“This is not just for middle school students or third and fourth-graders,” she said. “It is very kid-friendly, so kindergartners on up are able to use and learn with it.”

By having the latest in education technology, all students, teachers and staff at St. Mary’s School are the beneficiaries.

“Simply by having these amazing SMART Boards here, our entire school has taken a big leap in all phases of education,” Cotter said. “This is the wave of the future, and I’m really glad that we are riding it.”