{"id":22089,"date":"2013-11-11T22:33:49","date_gmt":"2013-11-11T22:33:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wp\/?p=22089"},"modified":"2013-11-11T22:33:49","modified_gmt":"2013-11-11T22:33:49","slug":"day-315-the-death-of-a-projector","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/2013\/11\/11\/day-315-the-death-of-a-projector\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 315: The Death Of A Projector"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fifty days to go in this project. I’m still, I always be will be, surprised at how well this is going. It might not always be the most interesting thing to read, but it’s been written every day…<\/p>\n

Today a disaster occurred. The projector in my room failed. Now, there are rumblings in the education sector that all the money spent on interactive whiteboards<\/a> in schools may have been wasted and could certainly have been spent elsewhere. The amount, roughly equating to \u00a36 per child per year since their introduction (I wish I could provide a link to where I read that), isn’t huge, admittedly, but still.<\/p>\n

The issues stem from the fact that some people aren’t using them well. They didn’t receive training for what is, honestly, a fairly advanced piece of kit. The trouble comes from an inability to produce your own activities for the boards – that leads to a reliance on other users to create them or on commercial products<\/a> which drive the cost up even more. The commercial ones generally don’t add that much value to lessons in the long run either.<\/p>\n

\"English:<\/a>
English: A Smartboard (Photo credit: Wikipedia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The biggest problem with not having a whiteboard<\/a> is that I don’t really have much usable board space as the majority of a wall is taken up with it. Add in to the equation that I have a huge dry wipe board BEHIND the SMART board<\/a> which I could use instead…<\/p>\n

It is similar to the one shown in the photo here, except mine stands out from the wall somewhat.<\/p>\n

It poses the problem also of replanning lessons for the rest of the week. Like them or not (I personally love my SMART Board<\/a>), my planning is utterly dependent on a set of slides that go alongside the written lesson plans. A busy week ahead then…<\/p>\n

Geocaching: tonight I tried three caches, finding the third one. Not a very exciting place – a small wood weaving around an industrial estate – but it’s surprising how these things can exist alongside each other. Geocaching never ceases to surprise me!<\/p>\n

Related articles:<\/h6>\n