VANCOUVER — At David Livingstone Elementary School in East Vancouver, the classrooms are buzzing. In Heidi Cyr's kindergarten class, arms wave in the air as the five-year-olds vie for the chance to count pictures of animals and put them into groups. Across the hall, Grade 7 student Christine Yap is giving a presentation on Louis Braille, while upstairs, nine-year-old Evan Pharoah-Gurr is retelling the story of the hare and the tortoise.
It may sound like an average school day, but lessons at David Livingstone are anything but traditional. Principal David Brook is proud to call it a "21st-century school" and the Vancouver School Board seems to agree, having recently named it a District Technology Inquiry School. It is the hub for SMART technology in Vancouver: Touch-sensitive, interactive whiteboards that connect to computers and digital projectors are in every classroom.
The SMART board replaces the chalk- or whiteboard and can be written on in the same way as a traditional teaching aid. But at the flick of a switch it is connected to a computer and becomes interactive, with the teacher able to pull up graphics and charts from a database, search the Internet and make use of video streaming to bring a subject to life.
Called up to answer a question, students can drag information around the screen, their hand effectively acting as a mouse. They can also work on a project at home, bring in their memory stick, plug it in and give a Power Point presentation to the rest of the class.
On the touch-sensitive SMART board in Monica Fong’s classroom, students can use their hand as a mouse to move information on the screen. (LYLE STAFFORD FOR THE GLOBE AND MAIL)
According to teachers at Livingstone, the boards are revolutionizing the way they teach. "Kids today are different," says Grades 6/7 teacher Dorothy Watkins. "When it comes to technology, it's the way they are wired. They are comfortable with coming to the front of the class and not afraid to get something wrong - it's a completely different attitude to working on a chalkboard."
Benefits for students with learning disabilities are also beginning to emerge. "This is the first time we can actually access what they understand," explains Rebecca Robbins, Livingstone's resources teacher. "The technology is giving them a tool to show what they know without the barrier of requiring them to write it down."
The introduction of the boards began in 2002 when the school applied to the SMARTer Kids Foundation and were given two boards to be used in Grade 5 classrooms. "The deal was that at the end of the school year, the boards must be passed to Grade 6," explains Mr. Brook. "But one Grade 5 teacher couldn't bear to give her board up, and she begged the parents' association to buy another one."
Another three boards were added when teachers voted to use the 2005 strike savings to expand the program. "Then we started to see what could be done with them in the primary classrooms," adds Mr. Brook. Encouraged that even the youngest students were benefiting, he found a grant offered by SMART Technologies to schools leading their district in use of the boards. "I discovered we could buy up to six more boards at $900 each, which is half price."
That's when he went back to the parents: "We needed $13- $14,000 to have a board in every classroom and the library."
The money the association proffered came from its $5,500 gaming fund, $3,100 left over from a pre-election grant and regular fundraising activities.
Though funding for technology is the province's responsibility, and some other parent associations adhere to that distinction, the Livingstone association prefers to take a more pragmatic approach. "This is an East Van school," says Mike Chow, chairman of the association. "Should we play a political game, or should we give our kids the advantage now?"
Just what that advantage may be is the subject of a three-year study by Gaalen Erickson of the department of curriculum studies in University of British Columbia's faculty of education. Still in its initial stages, the study is gathering data and developing methods by which the teaching staff can record outcomes in the classroom.
"It's a difficult kind of study to undertake," Prof. Erickson says. "Most measures of student outcomes are standardized tests, and while this may well improve reading and math, that's not necessarily the most important area that can be enhanced by this technology. It is difficult to document deeper types of learning."
Livingstone is the first school in British Columbia to have the boards in each classroom - and they are not stopping there. "As of January, SMART recognized what we are doing here and donated another four boards which will go in our resources rooms, the music and staff rooms by the end of the year," Mr. Brook says.
"I read Thomas L. Friedman's The World Is Flat and it freaked me out," says the principal. "I realized what our kids are up against and that we had to gain an edge. I think we now have a more well-rounded program than some of the private schools out there and that's who we're competing with."
23
