By Julia Dweck, Gifted Specialist, East Penn School District 

Alright, fellow teachers, get ready to be amazed because the BenQ Board is about to become your new best friend! How do I know this? Because I got one installed in my classroom this year. With the arrival of the BenQ Board, daydreaming about how to add engagement and collaborative learning easily and quickly has become a thing of the past. The BenQ Board keeps classroom lessons lively. And now it’s time to shake things up with this game-changing teaching tool.

No-Prep Learning

The BenQ Board gives teachers greater opportunity for interactive learning by engaging with students in real time. Teachers: With this smart board, you don’t have create anything ahead of time in order to promote interaction and engagement! Talk about getting back some time!

You can write with it, draw, take screen grabs, record lessons, open up and share files from Google and other cloud platforms, have multiple students working on it simultaneously, split the screen to show multiple applications at once, and so much more. The biggest time-saving improvement has been in the case when there’s a question or an idea that pops up in the spur of the moment, I can facilitate the understanding with students. There are so many different tools to make this happen. No more jotting down the idea to build something later. That's what helps students stay engaged, increase collaboration, and improve their retention. As a gifted support teacher, I've been able to use the smart board across multiple subjects — from ELA to history and geography, and virtual field trips.

Not only can the BenQ Board bring your lessons to life with films, graphics, and memes, but it also has a boatload of other handy features that will make your teaching experience more engaging, interactive, and fun. For example, you can use the BenQ Board to share and solve equations in real-time. This simple feature keeps my math lessons dynamic and exciting. Whether students are solving equations or drawing shapes, every hand in the room is raised in hopes of solving the next challenge on our BenQ Board. Because everyone wants to be first up to the BenQ Board, choose a student using the smart board’s random number generator.

Confidence in Learning

Watching students solve problems during math or write answers in ELA are just other ways the BenQ Board has helped me to monitor my students’ progress, identify areas for improvement, and adjust my teaching methods accordingly.

One thing I’ve witnessed working with gifted students time and time again is that they feel like they should be universally gifted; they're almost afraid to make a mistake and feel like they must always have the answer. The BenQ Board introduces collaborative problem solving that gives them the confidence and excitement to learn where they’re at.

I have found that even the most reluctant students are eager to race up to the BenQ Board to interact with the learning experience. Plus, with its text-to-speech and audio descriptions capabilities, the BenQ Board is a game-changer for students with disabilities or learning differences. It ensures that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed.

But that’s not all: With BenQ Board’s split-screen function, I can display multiple things at once. I can show a video based on a novel we’re reading on one side of the screen; while taking notes on the other as students brainstorm predictions about what will happen next. And while we’re taking notes, we can use the sticky notes feature to jot down ideas, reminders, or questions so that we don't forget them later. And it’s not always me up there taking notes. Every student in the class wants to be the teacher just so that they can get their chance up at the BenQ Board.

Another great feature is the timer! You can set a timer for any activity or task, which is great for keeping your class on schedule and making sure everyone stays on task. “Okay, everyone. You have 15 minutes to finish this assignment. Go!” With the timer, students in my class are in charge of their own time management, which is an important part of becoming an independent learner — not to mention making life easier for me as their teacher. 

Of course, the BenQ Board is also a collaboration and communication powerhouse. My students can work together on projects, share ideas in real-time, and even compete against each other — thanks to the scoreboard tool. We’ve really stepped up our Math 24 class competitions since we got our BenQ Board, and my students’ participation and performance in solving challenges has improved ten-fold. You can download the Math 24 and other apps right from your BenQBoard.

But the real magic behind the BenQ Board is that it lets you customize your teaching to each student’s needs. It’s been great for creating personalized activities that cater to the many different students in my room, ensuring that every one of my students gets the support they need to succeed. 

And here’s a little something for us teachers: Remember all those times you spent time writing notes and diagrams on a whiteboard, only to have it erased or smudged? With the BenQ Board, you can save and share your notes and diagrams via Google or your preferred cloud storage application, making your life a whole lot easier and efficient. Plus, the back of your hand won’t bear marker smudges anymore!

It's also really important to highlight how incredibly easy the BenQ Board is to navigate. I know from experience how intimidating and time-consuming it can be to learn new technology, but BenQ has our backs. With a very small learning curve, it’s possible to incorporate these features into your lessons in minutes.

So, administrators, if you want to keep your students and teachers happy, engaged, and successful, then you know what to do: Get that BenQ Board installed in your classrooms ASAP! It's interactive, personalized, data-driven, collaborative, and so much more. Trust me, you won't regret it!

About the Author, Julia Dweck

By day, July Dweck serves as a mild-mannered gifted support teacher for the East Penn School District, whose powers and abilities are used to best meet the needs of her students. By night and weekend, she enjoys designing educational resources and guides that captivate learners of all styles and abilities to share with the professional teaching community, such as those available through Wonder Workshop. Dweck is also a published children’s book author. She’s collaborated with leading illustrators and produced over 30 books. She presented at the 2012 National Center for Family Literacy for her creative use of technology in the classroom. Whether Dweck develops hand-on activities for top-level publishing houses like Random Penguin and Little, Brown Books, or the classroom, her goal is to inspire creativity and innovative thinking. Find Dweck on Facebook, Amazon, LinkedIn, and Twitter.