Smart Board? Let me just pull this plug...ain't so smart now, is ya?

I try to be a resourceful teacher, one of those dynamos who can just whip out a lesson plan in five minutes if need be.  One of those teachers who never get rattled when something doesn't work, who always have a contingency plan for their contingency plan.  You know, a smart teacher.

That ain't me.

I tend to put a lot (i.e. too many) of my eggs in the technological basket when it comes to lesson planning and resources.  I use my Smart Board for almost everything.  I do all my presentations in Keynote or Notebook, and I never print back-up copies.  Ever.  I try to help students figure out iMovie, Garageband, Edmodo, and various other marvels of the modern world.

I other words, I am a teaching cyborg.  Well, maybe more like a parasite.  I suck all the life out of technology and give nothing back.

And what do I do when my plans go to hell, when my presentation software crashes, or my computer is simply running gaddawful slow and the kids are getting restless?

I go right to hell with it.  I crash, I slow down, I sweat and turn red and stutter out little conciliatory phrases about being patient while I fiddle with the starboard stabilizing allertuder, or what have you, as I try desperately to overcome my utter inability to fix a funky computer.

Oops.

I can't help it.  The power of these tools is too great.  A document camera is still a little piece of magic to me.  It displays anything on the board.  Anything at all.  My face?  On the board.  My chicken scratch notes that my students are supposed to copy?  On the board.  What a wonderful thing.

The idea that there are so few limitations to what can be done with this technology is a little daunting, but it also allows for so much creativity in not only my work, but in the students' work, as well.  For example, I recently had students doing a vocabulary project where they were tasked with teaching the rest of the class some words that they thought were worth knowing (swear words weren't allowed, thankfully).  I had students using the document camera to correct a worksheet they assigned to the class.  I had students doing formative assessment using their words on the Smart Board with Notebook software.  They inherently knew that they had no limitations.  It wasn't just pencil and paper.  They could use almost anything to teach their words.

Some of them assigned crosswords.  Don't worry, I threw stuff at them.

So yes, I am too focused on technology.  I rely on it.  I live and breathe and die by it, in the classroom.  I just can't in good conscience pretend that I can be as effective without it.  I would rather wait to do a lesson with my beloved technological partners (Ol' Smartie, Doc, and Surso (that's surround sound...duh)) than teach it traditionally.

Well, maybe we should call the old, pencil-and-paper way the "classical" teaching method, now.