An Effective Implementation: Empowering Teachers to Design Technology-Enriched Lessons

A SMART Customer Story from Elizabeth Area School District

Teachers and School

Bear Creek School, Elizabethtown, PA
Lori Carrasco, 4th Grade Teacher
Ashley Fultz, 5th Grade Teacher
Rebecca Bair, 4th Grade Teacher
Danielle O’Haren, 6th Grade Teacher
Todd Davis, 5th Grade Teacher

Challenge

Teachers were struggling to find ways to integrate District supported technology tools into their instruction.

SMART Solution

SMART Board® 800 series
SMART Learning Suite

Results

Increased:

• Visual Learner Engagement
• Creative & Critical Thinking
• Differentiated Instruction
• Active Student Involvement
• Collaboration Among Classmates
• Global Communication & Collaboration
• Participation in Education Outside of School

“My daughter and I watched the video last night and she picked the strategy she felt most comfortable with. Thank you for this!”
— Elizabethtown Parent

Motivation: To Increase Effective Technology Use

The Elizabethtown Area School District in Pennsylvania is proud to be an award-winning public school system. Located 20 miles from Harrisburg and Lancaster, the district educates 3,900 students via 500 full and part-time faculty, support staff and administrators in the district’s five elementary schools, one middle school and one high school. Their curriculum is structured to provide opportunities that enable all students to graduate ready to live, learn and thrive in a global community. It is developed, analyzed and renewed on an ongoing basis to provide optimal learning experiences for all students.

They are committed to using technology as a tool in their classrooms to support student learning. Whether it is supporting academic proficiency plans, improving communication or boosting learning experiences, technology plays a critical role in the delivery of instruction.

Why SMART?

In a continued effort to enhance their technology efforts, the District began working with a cohort of 5 teachers from Bear Creek School to determine how SMART Learning Suite (SLS) could be used effectively in a variety of classroom settings aligned with district curriculum. The teachers in this cohort were chosen by the administration based on grade level and subject area expertise. Their goal was to have them become “SMART Champions”, and help train the remainder of the Bear Creek’s School staff on effectively implementing the SMART solution into a classroom learning environment.

Aligning SMART Solutions with District Curriculum

The objective for the cohort of Bear Creek teachers was to investigate and demonstrate how the use of SLS could support instructional strategies, and empower teachers to use it as a resource to design technology-enriched lessons that would assist students with the attainment of required curriculum objectives.

To accomplish this, the teachers spent several days over the course of the fall and spring, meeting with SMART Trainers and learning how to leverage SLS to engage students. They were given professional development time to work with staff members on the SMART team, and learn about new ways they could integrate SLS in their classrooms.

Outcomes: Enhancing Classroom Experiences Through Active Student Participation

As a result of this collaborative process, the cohort of teachers below became part of the leadership team for Bear Creek School, dedicated to the advancement of technology aligned to district curriculum, increasing student engagement.

Read about how these five highly effective teachers used SMART to increase visual learner engagement, creative/critical thinking, active student involvement, collaboration among classmates, and participation in education outside of school.

	Rebecca Bair used SMART Recorder to allow her students to continue participating in education outside of school, to strengthen their ability to retain and apply computational knowledge to complex application problems. Read More
	Todd Davis used Speed Up SMART lab activity to enhance how his students were actively involved in building their foundational multiplication and division skills to enable them to better multiply and divide fractions. Read More
	Ashley Fultz used SLS to increase her students’ active participation in identifying and defining grammatical terms, such as action, helping, and linking verbs. Read More
	Lori Carrasco used SLS to increase her students’ opportunity for independent writing practice, which provided immediate feedback, and reinforced their ability to connect and explain evidence that supported text dependent analysis. Read More
	Danielle O’Haren used SLS to foster student collaboration, which improved her students ability to apply their foundational knowledge of fractions, and enabled them to better solve word problems that involved fractions. Read More

For more customer stories visit smarttech.com/greatness

Download the PDF