Buckley Goes High-Er Tech

Buckley Country Day School kicked it up several notches on the technology front this week with the installation of an interactive white board in every classroom from grades 1-8.

These 20 new SMART boards are oversized touch screens, which enable teachers and students to access and navigate their computer resources from the board by simply using their fingers the way they would use a mouse or touchpad. In addition, all the notes that are taken on the board during a class can be saved on the teachers' computer as well as on their students', thus making it more practical for one lesson to build upon another and for teachers to re-visit concepts. The students, with the teachers' lessons on their computers and the notes downloaded from the board, also have the opportunity to review material.

The software that accompanies these whiteboards has been developed by educators to provide a wealth of resources immediately available to teachers. By simply touching the board, teachers and students can access any map of any country in the world, any kind of graphing paper, a diagram of the heart (with or without labels), the periodic table, any geometrical shape, a video segment showing cell division at 440 times normal speed, the sound of any musical instrument, and much more.

Buckley Headmaster, Dr. Jean-Marc Juhel, is remarkably excited about the new opportunities awaiting Buckley stu-dents when they return in September. He says, "Information technology is transforming learning and teaching. Schools can no longer just play catch-up with the 'real world.' Instead, schools need to be at the cutting edge of information technology pedagogy so as to graduate students with relevant skills for the 21st century...this is where I envision Buckley to be."