If...

If you were to ask me, how was it like to study in a rural primary school… My answer is, it was simply enjoyable. And despite of the limited facilities that we had, I believe that my friends and I had the same pleasure as you guys who had probably studied in big cities like Kl or Pj or Seremban or Ipoh or Kota Bharu or JB or Georgetown. Our school life was simple, unsophisticated, enjoyable and memorable.

Children nowadays are very fortunate. They are blessed with many useful equipments and tools which definitely have the power to enhance their learning. So, I assume that the students these days will have a better learning environment. To ensure their students to go through an effective learning process, schools now have lots more to offer rather than ‘chalk and talk’. The technological advancement does not only benefit the students, but also the teacher. Thus, when Ms. Fenny delivered her lecture on how to operate the SMART board, I couldn’t say how thankful I am as a teacher-to-be in the era where everything that used to be difficult and impossible has become easy, simple and possible.

It was all ‘chalk and talk’ when I was in my primary school. But now, with the SMART board at hand, learning can be more colourful and exciting. From my not-so-critical observation, I found that you need to have a projector and a computer in order for an interactive whiteboard to function. And if a computer is controlled by a mouse, we can touch the interactive whiteboard using our fingers to control the mouse cursor instead. As our fingers move across the whiteboard, the mouse follows. And, twice taps equal to double-click.

Later, I realized that any interactive whiteboard comes with its own software. As for SMART board, we have to install the Notebook Software. This software enables the users to design their presentation or for teachers, to design their lesson or activity. Notebook Software offers teachers the opportunity to vary their lessons. Lesson of a more interactive can be easily developed and produced using the Notebook Software. And if teachers are to use Notebook to jot down notes, the notes later can be recorded for future reference. The notes also can be converted to image or PowerPoint files and this enables teacher to send the notes to students via email.

To summarise, based on my observation and experience, these are what SMART board can do:

• Interactive presentation for large audience.
• View and navigate the Internet from the whiteboard. Surf and display websites which the entire room will be able to see.
• Students can approach the whiteboard and add their contribution to the presentation by writing directly on the whiteboard.
• Display movie files or DVD's from the PC

I believe that it can do more than these, but I think I need time to explore its entire functions.

This oh-so-canggih SMART board may be very useful to be used as a learning tool in teaching and learning process. But I strongly believe that teachers play vital role to ensure the effectiveness of integrating this tool into the lesson. Because for me, it is useless to have hundreds of ICT tools if the teachers do not exploit them to the fullest or worse still, do not even know how to manipulate them as an effective teaching tools.

Looking back, we may not have computer, we may never use VCR and perhaps the lessons were totally ‘chalk and talk’ when I was in my kampong school. But like what I’ve told you, those unsophisticated lessons were enjoyable and memorable. And if you were to question me, whether those unsophisticated lessons were effective… My answer would be a big YES. But one thing that came to my realization is that, the teachers…my teachers worked really hard to ensure the effectiveness of their unsophisticated lessons. Hence, no matter where you are, no matter what era you are at, and no matter what you have…as teachers, working hard is still a must.