Nine years ago, I had a vision for my classroom where small groups of students would leverage Social Constructivism to solve word problems, coauthor labs and solve simulations. The first step was the Collaborative Classroom, which has grown to almost 100 around the world.

Recently, SMART Tech provided multiple 55inch and 65inch IQKAPP Interactive Flat Panels. It took me a month to get them mounted on the walls. Now I have the great surfaces, but the computers running them are out of date. One of them is Windows XP with a 3.5 inch floppy drive.

I am looking forward to having students co-create and solve simulations in small groups. I am hoping to connect each surface to PASCO Probeware. I wonder if the size of the surface matters.

Every adult that walks in the room says that they surfaces are mounted too low to be seen by the whole class. My response to them is, “They are meant to be student centres, useful to the small group only.”

There are lots of new technologies coming out on the market, from very large screens to mirrored individual devices. It is my firm belief that the SMART Interactive Flat Panels are by far the best solutions for small group collaboration. The mirrored 1:1 devices, even to a cloud space is not the same as being able to all point and interact with the same screen.

They also provided a 48 inch and a 84 inch KAPP Boards. I am not sure how these are going to be useful at the moment. Students do not yet have wireless access. At the moment, we will need to capture what is written on them onto USB and then upload them at home for students. In the future, we will be ready when BYOD finally arrives.