The Importance of Standardized Software and Why SMART Learning Suite

Being a teacher today very much means preparing our students for the future. The world we live in has undergone major changes during the last few decades. We can't teach in the same way as we did before. We have to help our students develop competences within various areas so that they can become responsible global citizens. That is why we need good classroom technology.

My name is Gerd Söderlund and I am a Swedish-speaking Finn who have worked as a teacher for about twenty years. My students are also Finland-Swedes. I teach English and Finnish as foreign languages. My school, Cronhjelmskolan, is a junior high school located on the west coast of Finland, about 500 km from Helsinki. There are 250 students in my school.

In Finland we have very recently rewritten both the national core curricula and our local curricula. The general education in Finland is thoroughly being reformed. From now on we  focus on seven different dimensions of learning or competences as they also are referred to. These competences will help our students become independent responsible global citizens. Dimensions that pedagogy focus on are cultural competence, multiliteracy, ICT competence, working and entrepreneurship and participation, empowerment and responsibility to name but a few of them. Quite a lot of competences to be taught and learned in our classrooms! We are also supposed to integrate different school subjects with each other more than we have done before and to have more formative assessments than summative ones.

We need good tools to achieve everything our new curricula want us to achieve. That's why I am so happy to have access to SMART Technologies' hardware and software in my school, because in my opinion they are perfect for teaching and learning, especially now when our classrooms are undergoing such big changes. It is so important to be able to work with tools that really inspire both us teachers and our students.

In my classroom I have access to a SMART board and a SMART kapp 84. There are also four more SMART boards in my school. Students love the interactive qualities of the SMART board and I strongly believe that it helps a lot of my students if they can use their whole body when learning something new. I often combine iPads and mobile phones with the SMART board when we do activities made with SMART lab or SMART Response 2. There are also four teachers, including me, in Cronhjelmskolan who use SMART amp in their classes.

The pedagogical benefits of SMART Learning Suite are tremendous. You get several great tools, SMART Notebook, SMART amp, SMART Response 2 and SMART lab activities in one package! And you can combine them if you want! It has never been easier for me to create engaging and interesting lessons, lessons that I can save and use over and over again.

In Notebook I get a personal touch on my presentations with all the different pens, stamps, and all the objects I can insert in various ways. Lab enables gamification in my classroom. In only a few minutes' time I can add my own content into the gamebased activities. Can learning be more fun than this? I have two favorite lab activities: Shout It Out and Monster Quiz.

Thanks to SMART amp I can collaborate and create workspaces across time zones and country borders with other teachers in the world. The 'anywhere, anytime' access makes it simple for me to follow the students' projects and I can give them feedback at the same time if I want. My school is this fall starting up a global collaboration project called Bridging Cultures together with four schools in the US and one in Canada. My students are super excited about this!

I can't  imagine a school day without SMART hardware and software. It has become such a big part of my lessons and it makes both teaching and learning diversified in many fun and interesting ways. SMART helps me catch my students' attention in the classroom. It feels great that my students fancy SMART Learning Suite's different tools, and for me, as their teacher, it is priceless to watch them enjoying their learning process!

An Unforgettable Week with SMART Technologies in Calgary, Canada

After having returned back to Finland the other day from one of the most amazing weeks in my life as a teacher, I am slowly adjusting myself to my Finnish everyday life again. The name of this awesome week is 2016 Global SMART Exemplary Educators Summit, hosted in Calgary, Canada, July 17-22 by SMART Technologies.

I feel so grateful for having had this opportunity to participate for the second time in my life in the Global SEE Summit. It was incredible to meet some of the SMART Exemplary Educators from last year, but also to learn to know new ones. I feel like being part of one big amazing family called SMART!

We were treated as super heroes the whole week! The theme of the summit this year was "Teachers are super heroes and technology is their super power!" I have never before been so honoured as a teacher. It was very fun to engage and interact with the other super heroes. On one of the evenings we had a masquerade dinner at Calgary Zoo. I went there as Super Minnie the Mouse. We had such a fun evening there. I don't know if the people from SMART have had dinner before with Super Minnie, Santa Claus, Superwoman, Superman, Batman or Pippi Longstocking to name but a few!

It was interesting to learn about the roadmaps of SMART Education software and hardware. SMART is developing their great products to become even greater and the amazing thing is that they really want our feedback, opinions and ideas!

Since I have attended the summit once before, I was especially looking forward to the hackathon. We were divided into small groups with a number of SMART developers and we engaged in collaborative programming. This was fun and exciting. Everybody also got a monster, a cuddly toy, the same ones that you can find in the Monster Quiz in LAB in the SMART Notebook software. Who knows, the ideas that we came up with might become real in future updates from SMART!

Other highlights from this week are definitely the collaboration activities we had at beautiful Heritage Park, the Fireside Chat with SMART Executives Warren Barkley, Greg Estell and Tim Toyoshima (I was selected to ask them one of my questions!) and of course the White Hat Ceremony when we became honorary Calgarians!

During the week I was surrounded by 56 other EdTech passionate teachers from different parts of the world plus all the great people from SMART. An extra big Thank You goes to Ainhoa Marcos and Kelly Miksch for taking such good care of us!

This excellent week of professional development was well planned. I liked the fact that a lot of the activities took place at the SMART Technologies Headquarters. The hotel we stayed at, Aloft Calgary University, was very good and so was all the food that was served for us!

One more really great thing that saw daylight during this week is a new global collaboration project called Bridging Cultures that I and five other SEEs are going to have during next school year. I can't wait to go back to school and tell my students about it!

During the summit we all shared experiences and knowledge with each other. We really enjoyed ourselves and laughed a lot together. We had many interesting discussions about lots of things and, above all, we learned new things about the innovative use of SMART products that will inspire my teaching during school years to come.

THANK YOU SMART FOR THIS AMAZING WEEK!

Benefits of Implementing Technology in the Classroom

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to magic.” This quote by Sir Arthur C. Clarke has been on my mind lately. Teachers of the 21^st century are facing considerable changes in society. Students cannot be taught in the same way as before. Schools need good technology in their classrooms, because it is the pen and paper of our time.

My journey into the technological classroom revolution started in 2007 when a SMART Board was put up in my classroom. A new way of teaching and learning saw daylight then. Last fall I started using SMART amp on iPads and PCs. At the beginning of this year my SMART Board got company, when a SMART kapp 84 was put up next to it! All these SMART tools are extremely important to my students and me.

After 20 years of teaching English and Finnish as foreign languages in Finland I know that students learn in different ways and that there in every group is one or a few students with special needs. I am a huge fan of SMART’s software, because I have so many times noticed how it helps my students to learn, stay motivated and grow as human beings. I also feel that I have become a better educator thanks to the tools I use.

SMART Notebook and LAB help me create engaging and interesting lessons. My students love to come and sit in a half circle around the SMART Board. All the game-based activities that are so easy to make and fun to use create a very positive atmosphere. When we do the activities together we get a “we-feeling” in the classroom. We have 70-minute lessons in my school, so for many students it is good that they can stretch their legs a little every time they come to the SMART Board and take part in the activities. I strongly believe that they learn better when they can use their whole body in their learning process. My favorite LAB activity is definitely Shout It Out where they can use their own mobile devices. Everybody is included in these activities, because even the quietest student is given a voice here.  

We do different kinds of projects with SMART amp. The latest one in the ninth grade has been about the 50 American states. My students love this cloudbased software, because it enables them to do research on their own, add text, pictures and videos into their workspaces and create the layout they prefer and also collaborate with others. I can sit at my computer and follow their progress and help them individually by sending messages to them. I know what every student is producing and I can also create assessments to get feedback about their learning. Several times my students have forgotten to look at the clock and not noticed that the lesson is over! Those moments are amazing for a teacher!

I could list lots of benefits for the kapp board, too. The possibility of real-time sharing of information is especially good for students with dyslexia. They can focus on listening and participating in discussions instead of copying notes. If a student is ill, I can send the link to him/her and that way share the content. My students love to come and write on the board and they think it is so cool that the text shows up on their mobile devices!

To me it is very important that the technology I use raises awareness in my students. I want them to start conversations with others, to find answers to their questions and to take action, but also to stay interested in learning new things and to get on well in school. I am so thankful that SMART Notebook, LAB, SMART amp and SMART kapp help me every schoolday with these things. 

INSPIRATIONAL CLASSROOM TECHNOLOGY AT BETT 2016

“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life, for there is in London all that life can afford.”

This was an old quote that came to my mind as I boarded the plane to go back to Finland after four amazing and incredible days at the BETT Show 2016 at the ExCel Centre in London’s Docklands. I was overwhelmed with ideas and inspiration to take back to my own school.

Being a newbie at BETT

I had heard about BETT, the world’s leading education technology event, but never experienced it in real life until now. I felt very curious to learn more about today’s innovative classroom technology, to listen to education experts and to meet teacher friends from different countries.

Focus on things that appeal to you

There were 868 exhibitors at the BETT Show. Of course it was impossible to visit all of their stands. I quickly realised that I had to choose the ones that appealed the most to me. Since I have a SMART Board and work with SMART Notebook and SMART amp, my natural number one choice was SMART Technologies at stand D80. It was so great to talk to the SMART Exemplary Educators that represented SMART there.

SMART is a company that really cares about students and teachers because they provide tools that go with the technical revolution that is changing the landscape of today’s classrooms. There is no avoiding it, classroom technology is part of our reality. We’re living in the 21^st century and as teachers we have an obligation to embrace it. We need to keep on exploring all the benefits it brings to both teachning and learning.

Walking around at this technology event

When walking around in the huge hall at BETT I realised that lots of companies around the world truly want to transform education through technology and offer students tools that help them develop skills of creativity, communication and collaboration. I saw many exhibitors selling interactive boards, but also exhibitors showing great apps to use on tablets or mobile devices in schools. There is a jungle of different types of tools out there and all of them try to enable students to become active and independent learners and thinkers. 

Things I liked at BETT

The atmosphere at BETT was very international and inviting. I loved to sit down at BETT Arena, which was the central stage for inspiration at this event, and listen to expert speakers giving the visitors their insights about education technology. Lots of tweeting going on there!

Right behind BETT Arena you could follow artists writing and painting inspirational quotes on the walls. My favourite ones that I saw there were “Technology is helping us to bridge the gap between countries” and “Change the rules, change the tools, change the future”. So true, I couldn’t agree more.

I was also excited to see that some companies focus on different types of classroom furniture. The traditional way of having desks in straight rows is giving way to more flexible learning spaces. I saw desks, tables and chairs in various shapes and colours that were easy to rearrange in the classroom depending on what type of activity you are doing at the moment.  

BETT is where a lot of discovery takes place

I really recommend a visit to the BETT Show 2017 for every teacher that is looking for inspiration as far as classroom technology is concerned. It was a unique experience and it answered all my expectations I had before I came there.