Active ActivBoard Use at Cedar River

This is Patty Stillmaker’s second year teaching math with an ActivBoard in her classroom. Now that she has become more familiar and comfortable with it, her goal is to incorporate more active learning strategies to get her students working at the board regularly. In fact, she is one of the district TTTLs, designing the professional development classes for the newest ActivBoard software.

Students are frequent users of the ActivBoard in Patty’s classroom. Anytime she can put active learning strategies into her lessons she does. At first, letting go of control over her ActivBoard was scary for Patty. But moving toward a more student-centered classroom has been very rewarding. Not only does it free her up to work with students individually, but it helps to get students excited about math. She has seen her students’ engagement level rise as they jockey to “show off” at the board.

Patty and other Cedar River math teachers went even further and had the Activboard software installed onto the computers in the labs at Cedar River. Now students are able to create simple flip charts to review, teach math concepts to others, and demonstrate their learning. This integration of technology has given Patty a chance to teach math concepts in new ways.

The ActivBoard is but one of many ways that we can amplify our teaching through technology. Patty's experience is a great example of why we are all very thankful to the voters and the school district for investing in our students by acquiring classroom technology tools.