Sharing Lessons, a SMART Solution
One district in Georgia is using SMART Learning Suite to enhance their education goals and share lessons amongst students, teachers and parents. A bonus of the tech is that it can incorporate content in PDF or PowerPoint form, so teachers do not need to redo their projects to match a new formatting system. Lessons are shared using Microsoft Sharepoint and SMART Exchange, putting a copy of the lesson in the hands of every student.
Who: Bobby Brian Lewis, Instructional Technology Coach
Where: Bibb County School District, GA
What: Sharing Lessons using SMART Learning Suite
In an attempt to become a SMART Notebook District, we are in the process of training over 3,000 teachers in the tech. We are training teachers through three sessions per school, then requiring them to create artifacts to demonstrate what they have learned in the training program. They then upload their artifact to SMART Exchange (a place to share and locate resources for SMART) to help educators in our district and beyond. To include the whole school community, we held a Showcase Day for students, principals, and teachers to share their progress and artifacts with each other online, using SMART Learning Suite.
Positive Results
This helped our students by provided a digital copy that could be viewed at home 24/7. We now can upload any pdf, power point, or SMART Notebook file to SMART Learning Suite Online and then share a digital copy to students, parents, and other teachers. This puts any paper document in the hands of all stakeholders with a digital copy that can be used 24/7. SMART Learning Suite is a great way to provide personalized learning to ALL students.
The Biggest Challenge
Our biggest challenge is having to time to train teachers with their busy schedules, but in the long run we are able to show them that SMART learning Suite can save them time. Our Instructional Technology department was able to share SMART Learning suite this past June with Principals, District coaches and assistant principals at our Leadership conference. We were able to show and share how Smart learning suite could be used. Buy-in was almost immediate because students, parents ,and teachers have a digital resource that can be viewed by all.
Finding Funding
Right now the SMART Learning Suite is free. We purchased a license for various software used.
Pro Tip
The best tip is to always bring the students in on the discussion for implementing anything. With this in mind, we trained a group of students on the tech so they can be on-the-ground support in the classroom for educators and other students.
Tech Used in the Classroom
- SMART notebook
- SMART learning suite
- Microsoft Sharepoint
- SMART Exchange
- Clear Touch Interactive Display
- iPad
