Hopefully they will make the software a bit more like smart notebook – very very important that activities are quick and easy to make for teachers, but encouraging to hear that there will be downloadable material from the website.

Sharon also made very valid points about making sure everyone is engaged with IWBs and the Table – teachers do need far more training on how to “teach” and how to get children to “learn” with these technologies and not just on how to create activities – yes its important – but it so important for them have input about using them to promote all those other skills and whole class/group discussion and how it really is ok to turn off that projector sometimes! But that’s a subject for another blog in another place….

So thanks to all of you, I found this by accident (as you do) and will be now following with interest on Twitter and Tweeting our experiences with the Table in September (yes Danny that was me that said that….)

Mary

While the matter of value for money with any technology is subjective and a debate in itself, it is worth noting that pioneering any new technology is an expensive business for both the manufacturer and the early adopters. This is one of the reasons why SMART has provided a number of early beta program units to leading practitioners to help guide the kind of development you only get once a product has left the lab and is in use in the real world. SMART is committed to listening to feedback from our customers and over the last decade we have been on a journey with educators to understand and optimise the application of technology to the improvement of learning outcomes.

Your comments about the Toolkit have been fed back to the team working on this product and I recognise the point about the payoff for the teacher. SMART saw similar concerns in the early days of the interactive whiteboard and then, as now, worked to both stimulate 3rd party content development and make it as easy as possible for teachers to create and share resources. To date, over 100 organisations have downloaded the SMART Table software developers kit, which is free of charge for non-commercial development and we are also working directly with a number of publishers and software developers for multi-touch enabled content and applications. Further, soon you will see content developed by teachers using the Table available for sharing through smarttech.com. I know that future versions of the SMART Table Toolkit will increasingly offer more flexibility and greater productivity largely in part to feedback from persons such as you, beta program participants and others.

I recognise that the SMART Table needs to have a range of applications for different age ranges and levels of learning. At the moment a number of the applications address knowledge and recall which are very useful and imperative in Foundation and Key Stage 1 classrooms, and the teachers at this level have provided us very positive feedback thus far on this as well as the discussion and collaboration they are witnessing amongst these early learners. Two of our newest applications – Hot Spaces and Addition Plus – were the direct result of these teachers asking specifically for the functionality that they deliver. However, we do want to stretch this learning and apply applications that provide a learning environment which target comprehension, application, analysis and evaluation, and take advantage of the rich interface multi-touch provides. We are already designing activities that will achieve this and, as time goes on, there will be a wide range of deeper applications developed both by SMART and third parties that address different learning styles and levels of learning.

Tom, I know as a teacher that your time is precious and appreciate the efforts that yourself and others have put into integrating the Table into your classroom and articulating feedback. Let me assure you that we are listening and by doing so, continue to deliver on our commitment to enhance teaching and learning by providing technology for the classroom.

My own school has been mentioned in the reply above, but I’m not sure how fair it is to make comparisons between our two situations. As well as completely different pupil and class profiles (my class is probably the same size as one of your groups, for example), the way the SMART Table is being utilised is completely different as well; at your school you have the Table in your class all the time available to the same pupils, whereas in our school the Table is in a communal room and groups of pupils are timetabled onto it at specific times during the week. Whilst I can see pros and cons to both methods, I don’t think it makes for a valid comparison to hold them up to each other, rather the two approaches complement each other in so far as the pilot study goes.

Similarly, with regards to the cost/benefit issue I feel that as a partner in a pilot scheme we expect to be encountering problems or challenges from day 1 – that is the whole point of the pilot is it not? To identify and hopefully address such issues. A customer who has invested a significant financial outlay in a Table will have an entirely different perspective, and is entirely entitled to do so! But I digress – on to the SMART Table itself.

Before I start, I would like to re-iterate and echo your belief in the potential that multi-touch devices have for effective teaching and learning in the class. I have seen enough from the SMART Table even at this pilot stage to convince me that multi-touch has a big future in the classroom. And SMART should find themselves in the driving seat; they have been pretty quick out of the blocks, and as we have both discussed previously the Table is a good quality, solid piece of kit.

Sadly, that on its own will not be enough to make this project a success. I agree wholeheartedly with your assertion that whether the SMART Table stands or falls will depend almost entirely on the software and applications that are developed for it, and at the moment the scope is limited. Unlike other SMART content creation software, the Activity Toolkit is ‘clunky’ to use and makes simple tasks laborious – for example, certain file extensions being accepted and others not can put an extra step in what is already a lengthy picture upload process. Whilst I have many thoughts about how content creation using the Toolkit could be improved, I will save them for a blog post or for the GoogleDoc, except for what seems to me to be the most glaring. SMART already has an incredibly successful and remarkably intuitive creation tool at their disposal, one that many teachers are very familiar and comfortable with. The ability to drag and drop objects from notebook software to table software and back should be seamless, or in fact the ability to have Notebook open inside the Activity Toolkit to help with content creation.

On a brighter note, it is good to see that SMART have their ear to the ground. The Toolkit has been updated already, and not only has new content been created, but new applications too. The really good news is that these have seemed to be a result of feedback that they have been given about using the Table – the Hot Areas activity seems to be an attempt to ‘work around’ issues that had been highlighted with Hot Spots, and whilst not a perfect solution, it certainly seems to add versatility. If they can continue to respond to the feedback they receive in such a manner it bodes well for the Table.

The final area I wished to address at the moment is regarding the development of applications for the Table. Again, I believe as you do, that an increased range and versatility of Applications is central to the Table’s sustainability. For the Table to be commercially viable, it will need to ‘hit the ground running’ from the software point of view when it arrives in schools, and whilst at the moment it does not, I also know from my own experience and from ‘virtual’ conversations I have had with you that the ideas are there for some fantastic applications, but not necessarily the technical expertise or tools to put these together. Similarly, there are some multitouch applications already out there – for example, the ‘water’ application that Durham have would be fantastic for some of our pupils, and some of the projects on the NUI Group could be equally useful – if I only had the expertise, equipment, tool sand time to get them running on the Table. And where better to judge whether an application is providing a worthwhile teaching/learning experience than in the classroom? With our pupils especially activities need to address cause & effect, hand-eye co-ordination, fine & gross motor skills – utilising the Table could add a collaborative or even competitive aspect to such activities. So whilst I would be keen to get the developers on the case and let us test drive their creations in class, surely I’m not the only person who thinks it would be a worthwhile exercise to put the teachers who have been working with the SMART Table together with some of SMART’s finest to generate some exciting and effective table content? That would be playing to strengths.

What a great thorough review. Thanks for that. I wonder, however, whether we must take a step back and accept that this technology is still in its infancy but that it nevertheless has great potential. Yes, it has glaring limitations too at the moment, but it does give us all a glimpse into what the future holds.

Your feedback is honest and I hope Smartboard sees it as the constructive criticism it is. I, for one, hope that Smartboard don’t shelve this project and continue investing in research into the fantastic possibilities it has to offer.

Oh yes, the price…. ridiculous. But I’m sure it’ll come down.

Criticism of your comment about the “woeful payoff” shows how far removed the author is from the classroom. Teachers have a very limited amount of time available for prep and simply cannot justify hours of work to produce a learning activity that will last moments.