Educational technology keeps getting smarter in Valley Stream

A few years after the popular educational tool, the interactive white board, debuted in classrooms, schools in Valley Stream have unveiled a similar resource, the SMART Table.

Designed by SMART Technologies, maker of the SMART Board, the table is getting rave reviews from the few teachers who have begun to use the interactive resource with their students. Elementary Districts 13 and 24 both have a few of these tables in the schools, and officials hope to add more in the coming years.

Lynne Sollin, a kindergarten teacher at the William L. Buck School in District 24, said there are numerous activities for children on the SMART Table. A group of students can work on the same interactive surface at one time. Sollin said that while it is designed for up to eight children at a time, she prefers groups of four.

District 24 currently has four SMART Tables. There is one in each building for kindergarten — the tables have wheels so they can go from room-to-room — and one for the special education classes at Buck.

In District 13, Willow Road School kindergarten teacher Vicky Mitchell was the first to get a SMART Table, and she likes to have two children use the table at once. “I them to work together,” she said. “If one child is having difficulty, the other child can help them out.”

Both Sollin and Mitchell say they use the table for a number of different subjects including language arts, math and science. Mitchell said it is particularly useful to help students with their early literacy skills. She has games on there where children can sort letters, write letters and words, and learn about word families. In math, they can sort numbers, count, add, subtract and study patterns.

Plus, Sollin noted, students can learn multiple subjects at once. She demonstrated one activity that tied in science with language arts. Students saw pictures of animals and had to identify each by the first letter.

Marissa Levenberg, a special education teacher at Buck, said she like activities with multiple choice questions. “It gets them to think a little bit,” she said, “and they have choices.”

What Levenberg likes most about the table is that multiple children can use it at one time and everyone gets a turn.