I’m lucky enough to have a Smartboard – or ‘tableau magique’ as it’s called in French – in my primary French classroom. Unfortunately, it frequently acts up during key moments in lessons. Maybe it was dropped on its head as a baby smartboard or  too many boys have been poking it and wiping boogers on it, but I sincerely wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve touched one spot of the board and it registers on another spot halfway across the board. The boys and I have taken to calling it ‘le tableau stupide’ and I’ve limited its use to displaying PDFs, playing movies, and showing Youtube clips.

Enter the ELMO. It’s essentially a downward-facing video camera that records what you’re doing with a prop, model or worksheet in real-time. Here’s a link to an explanatory webpage:

http://www.elmoglobal.com/en/html/tour/01.aspx

I used it to take up a worksheet that involved matching French words to their translations and the boys had no trouble following along. However, I can see it having many more practical applications. Instead of creating all sorts of slides on Notebook and worrying about the board malfunctioning, I can cut out cards for matching activities and get boys to manipulate them with the added excitement of their hands being ‘on TV’. Similarly, they can have their work displayed and I can zoom in on certain details I’d like the whole class to see. I hear it can even be linked to a computer so that images can be saved. It seems the sky is the limit with this little gem, though unlike the Sesame Street character, it isn’t ticklish.

Meet ELMO

 

2 thoughts on “ELMO – 1 Smartboard – 0

  1. Yes! You are hitting on something very key: the technology we implement in our classrooms has to be reliable in order for it to be effective.

    I have found the Smartboard and Mac relationship tricky to navigate at best (I was told by an IT integrator at my school that Smart Notebook is not designed for Macs, which explains a lot). The document camera is a handy tool for sure. I’ve also seen some teachers rocking the overhead project too! There are some things that time, I guess, just won’t change!

  2. Thanks for your comment Celeste. Ironically enough, shortly after posting this, the IT superhero at my school assumed control of my computer, called up the SmartBoard people in Calgary and got them to fix the problem by reinstalling the software on my MacBook Pro. This time it worked! However, I still think the ELMO is great for taking up student work and showing the class what their peers can do.

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