In this report, MARTIN PAUL examines the impact of interactive smart boards on the enhancement of students’ performance in Mathematics
Three years after the installation of interactive smart boards in mathematics classrooms in Nigerian Turkish International Colleges (NTIC) skyrocketed the performance of students in the subject, the management of the colleges has extended the virtuous gains with the installation of the smart boards across all the classrooms its colleges.
The interactive smart board’s application, which allows teachers to create digital lessons that they present and control simply by pressing the whiteboard’s touch-sensitive screen, has demystified subjects that were hitherto consider difficult to understand.
Though, NTIC is reputed as one of the leading international schools in Nigeria, stakeholders say the installation of the interactive smart boards has opened up a whole new vista for the students of the schools.
According to the Head of Computer and Institutional Technologies of NTIC, Mr. Erkan Yildirim, no fewer than 130 of the interactive smart boards have been so far installed in all the branches of the Nigerian Turkish International Colleges.
Yildirim, who disclosed this recently in Abuja, said the smart, interactive and technology driven boards are enabling new practices in classroom teaching, by facilitating easy communication and collaboration, which have improved learning capacities in major science subjects and mathematics, even as it reduced the strain of teaching.
“The teachers can easily prepare their manual for the students, the (interactive whiteboard) can help the students do the lesson and can easily use those materials by interacting with boards,” Yildirim said.
Asked on the difference between the ordinary whiteboards and the smart interactive whiteboards, Mr. Yildirim likened it to the difference between a valley and a highland.
“The (interactive smart board) is very nice and impressive for the people and students especially, they enable students to interact with their lessons.
“It does not only shows what will use and picture as obtainable in ordinary projector and whiteboard, the interactive smart board enables the students to interact with the board and what they are doing they can see the result as a visual and also improve collaboration with other students.
“For example, six students can build a one house easily together by using the interactive board,” he added.
Speaking further, Mr.Yildirim said the management of the schools introduced the interactive smart boards about three years ago with six boards, but the boards were only limited to computers rooms and mathematics classrooms, adding that the need to extend the benefit to all students of NTIC led to the importation and subsequent installation of the 130 smart boards in NTIC located in Abuja, Kano, Kaduna, Lagos among others.
In his words : “Three years ago we imported six interactive boards and those boards have been used in computer rooms and mathematics classrooms and we recently imported 130 interactive boards which we distributed and installed in all NTIS branches.”
The introduction of the Interactive smart boards, which are only available in few schools across the world, has recorded improvement in students’ performance in key subjects such as mathematics and biology, even as the students expressed delight over the cutting edge technology use in the smart board application.
Apart from the sophisticated intelligence embedded in the interactive smart boards in NTIC, which have already made teaching more attractive, the smart boards can also be used in conferences, students’ projects collaboration, as well as independent learning rooms to optimize interactive solutions for both students and teachers.
One of the students of NTIC, Abuja, Alabin Mohammed, who spoke on the development, said the introduced smart boards are better in all ramifications when compared to the ordinary white boards.
According to him, unlike the white board that has to do with the manual use of marker for writing and drawing or the ordinary projector that is simply connected to a computer system, the interactive smart white boards have a smart’s digital ink that is easily operated by using an active digitizer that controls the input for writing capabilities such as drawing or handwriting.
“The smart board is better because the teacher teaches us (students) better with it, we can use different colours and images and they can bring presentation to us more easily.
“It has improved learning especially for mathematics, we are able to do geometry with it more easily. With it you can use different colours to indicate the angle ypu are looking for, I think it has really helped unlike just using a single mark.” He said.
Another student, Salamatu Mohammed, who also bared her mind on the benefit of the teaching device, said the smart board has proven its capacity to enhance students’ performance in all subjects, especially those that involve a lot of drawings and high numbers of figures.
“With the smart board our lesson come to life with colours and diagrams, Apart from Mathematics and Biology, it has also improved my understanding in area of diagram, because is not everything that can be drawn on chalkboard.” She said.
A mathematics teacher in the school also concurred with the student’s views, stating that the challenges of developing figures and the large chunk of time often wasted in solving mathematics and other subjects have been addressed by the smart board application.
He said, the interactive technology tools in the smart boards have further facilitated easy teaching, learning, communication and collaboration in classrooms and thereby improve overall student achievement, adding that the application is easy to use and intuitive, as digital learning resources can be accessed simply by touching the large interactive display by using the finger or pens from the smart pen tray, which enables teachers to write notes in digital ink and highlight relevant learning material.
The installation of the interactive smart boards which has further cemented the Nigerian-Turkish International Colleges’ leading position in the application of new technologies to improve teaching across the litany of its schools, will also phase out the use of ordinary whiteboards and markers across the schools.
The school is closely monitoring the overall impact of the use of the technology in classrooms since its installations recently and has already found positive effects on the pace of learning and student achievement.
Nigerian-Turkish International Colleges, run by well experienced and dedicated members of both the academic and non-academic staff, are renowned for expertise in preparing students to work towards a bright future by providing excellence and innovation in education.
