Today was the big day. Teachers and principals from all over the district converged on Ocoee Middle School to participate in 4 hours of demonstrations from SMART and Promethean. Each school was tasked with the challenge to choose one system for the school.
I knew something was a little off when I pulled in ten minutes before the first presentation and saw the SMART people unloading their van. The presentation started a little late. But that wasn’t the worst of it.
Our reseller, Southern Business Machines, decided they could do the presentation on their own. They brought in a software tech to demonstrate the board. Not a good idea. The guy stumbled through his presentation. He kept forgetting to change the touch screen from pointer to pen to eraser to highlighter. After a few minutes he was sort of in a groove. But he thought the window shade effect was really cool.
Someone asked about pre-made lessons. We are, after all, teachers. We are busy. We “borrow” lesson plans. We don’t create them. So he pulled on up. It was a rather simple slide on the screen. And this is what he said (I’m paraphrasing), “I don’t really know what this lesson is about, but you can see we have them.” My hand is on a Bible. Honest.
We didn’t see the interactive writing pad or the student response system. They were talked about, but we could not see them in action. Very few teachers went to the board after the presentation to “play”. We just sort of stood around waiting for the next demonstration time.
Next up: Promethean. I had already told my principal that SMART was an easier software to use, the fact that we could use our fingers to write would negate extra costs for those teachers that lost their pens, and on and on. Whatever.
Promethean sent in their #1 trainer from Nashville. The head honcho of trainers. He let it “slip” that he had to sort of cut our meeting short so he could get to another presentation at our local university. And then he began.
One after another, the features of the Promethean board were demonstrated. Lesson plan after lesson plan was put up on the screen for math, science, social studies, and language arts. He showed how they worked along with the magic behind them. “You don’t have time to create these?” he teased. “No problem. There are literally thousands of lessons just like these on Promethean Planet.” Eyes widened. Nostrils flared. Mouths drooled.
And then, the killer finish. He brought out the clickers. We took quiz questions. Saw how they came out in instant results. He demonstrated how to export them to Excel. He even told us that you didn’t need the board to give a quiz. You can send out a pre-made quiz that kids take at their own pace on the clickers, and then just look at the scores later. Even my eyes got that lustful look in them. I wanted that technology.
Every school in our district is looking to buy interactive boards with federal stimulus dollars. This is a once in a lifetime (or a presidential term) chance. Promethean stepped up to the plate and delivered a homeroom out of the ball park. SMART wasn’t so lucky. It was a nice base hit. Nothing fancy. But the runner is still on the bases. I’m not sure if he’ll get home or not.