Epson Whiteboards Enable More Interaction in Medfield Classrooms [Video]

Medfield Public Schools technology specialists Teri O’Brien and Jessica Durdel demonstrated the use and features of Epson whiteboards in classrooms to the Medfield School Committee at Monday’s meeting.

O’Brien, representing instructional technology for grades kindergarten through five, has been working in the elementary schools for seven years and provided some insight on how the use of these whiteboards can enhance a student’s learning experience at the .

“We have 10 of the Epson projectors at Dale Street and 10 smart boards,” O’Brien said.

O’Brien demonstrated one way teachers at Dale Street have been using the Epson projectors.

“The teachers can access their teacher edition [text books] online,” O’Brien said. “The kids also have a science book online. What the teachers do is they bring up the book on their whiteboard and teach the kids how to login [and use the online text book].”

In addition to the online textbooks is a program called E-Tools, which enables students to experience interactive learning both in the classroom and at home.

“There are videos for the kids to watch at home, more practice [activities] if they need extra practice, if there’s a test coming up,” O’Brien said. “Every single lesson has a practice page.

“These practice pages are something we can do as a class before a test to prepare for a test, or if we had a lot of trouble [with a lesson]. At the end, we can check our answers and check our work. There’s a lot of different parts to the math book online that they can do at home [and] of course there are some great games in here to help students practice.”

Durdel, the district’s technology specialist for grades 6 through 12, demonstrated what teachers have been doing with the newly installed technology at the middle and high schools.

“The first thing I’d like to show are the tools that come with the Epson and some of the ways we can use them in the classroom,” Durdel said.

The tools are all interactive and require students to stand in front of the class at the board and physically get involved with the lesson.

“Even when you’re interacting with the text and you’re highlighting what you think is most important, the kids are out of their seats and really participating,” Durdel said. “The teacher can switch to whiteboard mode, which gives [the teacher] back the white board [the teacher is used to] and [the teacher] can say ‘OK, we were talking about that article, let’s have a conversation about the pros and cons of the issue.’ Students can brainstorm what they think about the article. The teacher can go ahead and save [the whiteboard text] to her [computer hard drive] and can print it out for the students to have or she can post it on her website for students to see. So that’s one thing this interactive whiteboard can do.”

Durdel also demonstrated more advanced software that comes with the Epson, called Easy-Teach.

“[The software] allows teachers to create lessons and they’re very interactive,” Durdel said. “This is a way to get kids out of their seats, interacting with maps. These countries all over here [on the interactive map in her presentation] are all objects. You can have the students come up and use them as a game.”

Medfield Superintendent of Public Schools, Bob Maguire, said teachers are currently being trained on best practices and ways to use the technology in the classrooms and that the peer-to-peer interaction should get them excited to use the whiteboards across the district.

“The best way to get teachers to do this is by seeing other teachers do it,” Maguire said. “We will be supporting these groups of teachers that are really motivated and are going to try and give these folks more opportunities for more in-depth training as the year goes on and hopefully foster an environment that gets contagious. Hopefully, this shows off what people are doing and gives them opportunities to show what they’re doing. Really share and get the recognition.”

Maguire, who has worked hard to advance the district’s use of technology, said the possibilities in the classroom with this type of equipment can be “fascinating.”

“All that took place on a wall,” Maguire said. “That was a blank wall, which is pretty amazing.”