Classroom Technology - My Expectations of the BETT Show, London, January 2016

The importance of information technology

Children love technology. They enjoy using it and their excitement grows when they are with it. This is something that we teachers must take into consideration today. We are teaching in the 21st century, in a world that doesn't stand still. The needs and requirements of our students are constantly changing. We must change with them.That is why we more than ever need further training on classroom technology.

Why visit the BETT Show

It's important to learn from those who are experts on classroom technology, from people who provide solutions for today's classrooms. We also need to learn from each other. The BETT Show which is arranged every year in January at the ExCel Centre in London's Docklands is the perfect place to visit for everybody that wants to learn more about innovative classroom technology, to listen to inspirational people and to meet peers from different parts of the world.

I'm a newbie as far as the BETT Show is concerned. I've never been there before, but next month I'll have the possibility of attending this annual trade show together with six other teachers from my local school district in Larsmo, Finland.

My own IT background

I have had a SMART Board in my classroom since 2007 and I use it together with SMART Notebook or SMART amp during most lessons. I think these two different types of software offer great opportunities for interactive and collaborative lessons. I became a SMART Exemplary Educator about a year ago and I've learned lots of useful things since then. SMART's classroom technology promotes both student and teacher wellbeing at school.

What I want to learn about in London

So, I'm excited to learn even more about SMART's software, also in combination with mobile devices such as iPads and smart phones. I'm thinking about the new Lesson Activity Builder which is available in SMART Notebook 15.2 and new features in SMART amp. No wonder why SMART Technologies at Hall/Stand D 80 is going to be the number one for me on the exhibitor list!

Of course I want to attend a few seminars also. One seminar that I'd rather not miss focuses on inspiring a new generation of tech pioneers. Another one takes a look at  the modern classroom and how to balance technology, space and pedagogy. If I have enough time there, I would also like to attend a seminar that has to do with my own country, Finland. It's called Finland's Largest 1:1 Tablet Initiative.

This means a lot to me

There is one more thing that I'm really thrilled about as far as the BETT Show is concerned - to meet up with a few other SMART Exemplary Educators that became my friends about five months ago during the 2015 Global SMART Exemplary Educators Summit in Calgary, Canada. It's going to be so much fun to see these great teachers again!

I'm looking forward to getting ideas and inspiration in London. Hopefully I'll learn lots of new things about the use of information technology in education. It's great to have access to tools that enable student creativity, personalize learning and foster collaboration. I can't wait to attend the BETT Show next month!

The Impact of Visible Learning - Why It Matters

Everybody wants good results, i.e. quality, in the classroom. But what is the best way to achieve this? My 20 years as a foreign language teacher have given me a perspective that I try to implement in school. Things that I regarded as extremely important at the beginning of my teaching career are not necessarily as important today as they once were. New aspects of teaching and learning have appeared.


What is important?

The focus has for a long time been on tests, essays and other written assignments, but how do we document everything that happens individually to each student? And in what way does each student learn the things that we teachers have seen? We need to take into consideration many things that the students accomplish. Everything that happens during the lesson is significant.

Small group sizes, the amount of homework and the teacher training are all aspects that have been considered important in the learning process, but I think we need to choose new paths as far as learning and teaching are concerned.


What does visible learning mean?

Something that is visible can be seen. To me, learning is visible when my students see success. We need both visible learning and visible teaching in the classroom. Teachers need to see learning through the eyes of the students and students need to see themselves as their own teachers.


Things to focus on

As teachers we must help our students to try out new strategies to move on in the learning process. We must motivate our students and adapt our teaching to what's best for them. We have to support them and give feedback so that they can reflect upon both their results and their way of working towards them.


What do we need to do?

There is a big challenge in making learning visible to teachers and in making teaching visible to the students. We need to create an atmosphere in the classroom where students are allowed to make mistakes and where questions asked by students mean that they are curious to learn more. Response from classmates and words like collaboration and innovation are extremely important here.

Great tools to use in school

After having spent a fabulous week in Calgary, Canada, together with 76 amazing colleagues from 22 countries and fantastic people from SMART Technologies, I am more than ever convinced that SMART offers classrooms great tools for visible learning. Yesterday I installed SMART Notebook 15.1 on my classroom computer and I can't wait to start using it with my students! Another fascinating software is SMART amp, which I am also looking forward to starting using soon! I am so impressed by all the great features in SMART's software, features that are developed to maximize student achievement through collaboration, engagement, exploring and visible learning.

How SMART changed my teaching

I graduated as a language teacher of English and Finnish at the Åbo Akademi University a long time ago. That was in 1993. We did not use computers in the classroom back then, only books, the blackboard and an overhead projector. The lessons were very teacher-centered and did not contain a lot of varied activities. We did not have instant access to things taking place in our world.

The years passed by. The Internet came towards the end of the 1990s. Things started happening. All of a sudden the classroom got access to the world. This brought a completely new dimension to learning things. We started using computers every now and then as a new tool in the classroom. 

In 2007 I got a question from the principal at my school, "Would you be interested in having a new board, a SMART Board, in your classroom, because we have some extra money that could be spent on it?" "A SMART Board??  What kind of board is that?" But I was curious to know more about it, so I said "Yes!" I have never had to regret that!

After the SMART Board was installed in my language classroom, a new way of teaching and learning saw daylight. Instead of teacher-centered lessons, where the students just sat on their chairs listening, reading and writing, it was now very easy to vary the lesson activities, to collaborate with the students, to inspire them and above all to make them more active in their own learning process.

At an early stage I realised how good a tool the Notebook programme is, i.e. the software that is designed for the interactive use of the SMART Board. It is such a good programme with all the different pens, colors, shapes and pictures to insert and do lots of things with. Not to mention everything that is available for you in the Lesson Activity Toolkit, all the interactive things in the Gallery and ready-made lesson material that you can find if you log into websites like KouluOn (in Finland), Smartklubben (in Sweden) and SMART Exchange (world-wide).

During the fall of 2014 I took part in a SMART education training course in Vanda, Finland, that was arranged by a company called Aronet. I learned so many new things about my SMART, for example how to use 3D objects and add-ons like Extreme Collaboration, SMART Maestro, SMART Blocks... I have now started helping other teachers at my school to use their SMART Boards (we have a total of five boards at my school) in a more interactive way than before. It's so fun and I really enjoy my new "spare-time job"! In October I was nominated to become a SMART Exemplary Educator for Finland and in November the dream came true! I have begun to understand what a large thing SMART is world-wide and how easily you can get support from colleagues all around the world if there is something you want to know or need help with.

Today, I can't imagine a school day without the SMART Board. It has become such a big part of my lessons and it makes the learning process diversified in a very nice and interesting way.

My students like it a lot, and they think it is nice to collaborate through the SMART Board with me and the rest of the students.