Interview

A few weeks ago, I interviewed one of my students. The student, M, is 11 years old. She has been attending my school for the last 2 years. She was very enthusiastic about talking to me. I selected her because she is very honest and somewhat opinionated. I felt she would tell me the truth and not just what I wanted to hear. She's also quite able to express herself despite having trouble using correct grammar. The questions I asked are in bold. Her answers are given verbatim. A few times, I clarified her answers. These clarifications are found in brackets.

Tell me your thoughts about the SB?

I like the SB because you can look at anything you want and the class can see everything and it’s so much better than my teacher bringing the computer around and showing everyone.

How has it helped your learning?

Now I’ve learned so much in Social Studies the first time we used it. We looked up Indian, I mean Native American stuff and we have been learning a lot and there’s actually a lot of people who have been learning so many things that I can’t imagine.

Has it helped in any other subjects besides Social Studies?

You can learn and have fun on the SB at the same time by playing the treasure game my teacher pulled up from the internet. It’s fun and you’re learning at the same time.

So you think it’s helped you learn grammar?

Yeah. It’s better because it describes more things than the textbooks. It uses words that we understand and we get better thoughts of things rather than just having a short sentence. The book goes too fast. There’s not enough examples to get it.

Oh and there was that game we played. The one from funbrain…

You mean Mad Libs?

YEAH! That’s the one. See that was really good because it used all these nouns and stuff and adjectives and the other ones. It gave us all these good words to put in sentences and we didn’t have to spell it or anything, just touch the word. Even though sometimes it was hard to touch it when it was bouncing all over the screen but that made it fun too.

I’m glad you enjoyed that game.

Um, let’s see… We could also take SRC tests when we all read a book together we can take the test together. And Google earth was the best. We can see things like the Eiffel tower and see where our friends live and you can put the address down and see the place. Remember how on the Grandparents breakfast day they [the parents and grandparents] all wanted to see the board. My two grandmas were so excited and they asked what it was and they said “we didn’t have that when we were little”. One of my grandmas said “man that would have helped us when I was little”. She was very excited to see the differences between when she was little and now how there are tvs and computers and smarboards in the classrooms.

Your mom got to see the board too, did she have anything to say about it?

Your parents get real excited when you come home and you say Mom look what I learned on the SB today and parents are happy that the board helps you so much and you look up things and get more information and put it up on the SB so you get more time to see everything.

I think that’s it, no wait, remember in social studies. You can look stuff up during social studies when you have a question and you can find the information right there.

What do you mean by that?

In the textbooks, you know how the sentences [paragraphs] are really short? Well on the Internet it’s more like a paragraph [whole web page] and that’s so much better than one little sentence. It helps you understand it.

You can go up and get a pen and you can write things and you can write it in cursive or however you want. It’s not boring like just sitting there listening cause you get to do stuff out of your seat.

How do you think the SB helped your writing?

It helped us by showing the class and how it was a big picture and seeing it clearly and seeing it better.

Can you explain that a little more?

You know, how you can show us everything, like, just put all the sentences up so we can see what it’s supposed to be like and if we get stuck we can look at that and it helps.

I’m going to list some things that we used the board for in writing class. I want you to tell me your thoughts about each thing. If you think it wasn’t helpful, it’s okay to tell me that, too.

Doing research?
That was the most fun things because you can just imagine so many things that you can look up on the computer and you can see so many things. The White House was pretty cool. I didn’t know that it had 135 rooms. It’s way easier to find stuff on the internet than in books because you don’t even know if the stuff you want to know is in that book and maybe the library doesn’t even have the book you need but the internet does.

So the SmartBoard helps with Internet searching? But can’t you just do that on a regular computer?

Yeah but it’s fun to see it all together and like, when you showed us the good websites and not the bad ones to use it was easier to do it myself.

Scholastic website?
That was also a fun thing to do. Half of the things I looked up there I didn’t know.

Personal research?
I didn’t know that people recycled 50% of the cans. I found this good website.

How did that help your writing?

I think it made my speech better to have more information in it and stuff.

Organizing paragraphs?
People can see what you’re talking about instead of just reading it and when you underline it, it’s better because you can see where the teacher was reading.

So underlining things helped?

Yeah and the colors too. Oh and saving stuff. That was the best part about the Smart Board that we got to study the same things for a couple weeks but we can still save it and go over it again if people forgot about it. And there was that one time I was absent and you printed what I missed so I didn’t get behind and all that.

YouTube Videos?

We got to watch the old cartoons [School House Rock] you learn stuff that you didn’t know and now you know it. It’s in your brain and when your teacher asks you the question it pops up in your mind and you already know it.

Do you think you could have gotten that from a book?

No. A book may give you a sentence and it would be good words but it wouldn’t give you the right words that you would need. Like a book would tell you a horse is a mammal that can run really fast but you need more to understand it. So by looking it up using the SB, people can learn more stuff and know how it helps so many people rather than just one person and it gives you information the book doesn’t.

Anything else you want to add?

You can put up a white blank board and you can write down the words that we’re having trouble on and you help us with it instead of having a regular white board. You can erase it better, there’s no marks on the board like pens do. You don’t have to clean it every single day.

What things could I do to make the board better?

Nothing that you can explain better. Nothing. If you explained it wrong someone would raise their hand and you can explain it better. We use it perfect. We use it for what we need it for. For everything! For speeches we looked up so many things on the SB. It’s fun how you use it. Not the other teachers but how you use it. You look up things and think “oh my class would love this one and you see how we love it just by our faces and you pick things how they look fun and it’s just exciting how we look up things that are fun and we’re learning.”

Thanks for talking with me.