“The SMART Board versus . . . “
Less talk! More fighting!
Battle 1: The SMART Board versus a whiteboard.
Interactivity: Advantage SMART Board. While you can write on a standard whiteboard, you can not pick up and move that writing, convert it to text, add pictures from the internet, use Flash tools, add sound, or do really anything else. Bo-ring.
Upkeep: Advantage SMART Board. The greatest day in the life of a whiteboard is the day before it is used. After teachers start using it, the name would more suitable be Used-To-Be-White-Board-But-Now-It’s-More-Like-The Walls-of-Nineteenth-Century-Coal-Mine. Obviously this would have been the name were it not for the amount of time needed to pronounce it.
Number of Capital Letters in a brand name: Advantage SMART Board. Winner: The SMART Board.
Battle 2: The SMART Board versus The Promethean Board
Slogan: Advantage SMART Board. SMART’s simple yet elegant “Extraordinary Made Simple” trumps Promethean’s catchphrase “Igniting the flame of learning.” We feel that while both are catchy, SMART’s does not implicitly encourage children to play with fire.
Intuitiveness: Advantage SMART. SMART Boards allow users to write with the pens provided, but also with their own fingers. Promethean Boards require a special mouse-pen to mark on the board. If you try to write on a Promethean Board with your finger, you will fail and everyone will laugh at you. If you want to be able to mark the board using your digits, doctors would need to implant a wireless mouse-pen into your finger, and at that point you would be an android. Everyone would fear you and no one would trust you.
Resources: Advantage SMART. SMART’s Notebook software makes it easy to create engaging interactive lesson plans Prometheus is a figure of Greek mythology whose liver was eaten by a vulture every day.
Winner: The SMART Board
Battle 3: The SMART Board versus The Ouija Board
Educational Value: Advantage SMART. SMART Boards are a valuable tool in the classroom for teaching a variety of subjects. Assuming Ouija Boards work as they claim, it would be irresponsible for a teacher to include them in the classroom because students, rather than studying, could simply ask ethereal beings for answers to test questions.
Ability to Predict the Future: Advantage SMART. Using the SMART Board, one could access websites with weather forecasts. Ouija Boards do not work. No, I know you think that one time it did. Your older sibling was moving the board. No, really. Go call and ask.
Spelling: Advantage SMART. Not even close.
And now, let’s recap the results . . .
The SMART Board finishes the day with a 3-0 record. Congratulations, SMART Board!
February 21st, 2008 at 5:43 am
Can’t come up with one REAL reason why Smart is better than Promethean? Rememeber WordPerfect, the blue screen word processor? No one else does either. After MS Word came out, WordPerfect disappeared pretty quicky. Promethean is the leader in Education, their Activstudio Software award winning, and any teacher that has used both can tell you which is better.
February 21st, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Hi Tom . . . thank you for visiting and taking the time to comment. First, you have to admit that post was hysterical.
Second, I’m not sure I understand your comments and would be interested in what you have to say.
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:35 am
I’d be interested to know too… obviously most of this blog is for humor, sprinkled with useful information, videos, etc. In reading that post, comparing it to ouija board and all, obviously not a true ‘comparison’ for any of the ‘competition’ the poster listed – it was about humor for that post…
I personally find Notebook software to be far superior in ease of use and reliability. ActivStudio seems to be ok, but lacking in many areas around ease of use for the teacher/student. The vast amount of resources within Notebook software I find to be more relevant.
Although this is a nice, open blog for commenting – tom, your response sounds more angry than informative.
So, some real reasons why I personally prefer SMART Boards and Notebook software to ActivBoards and ActivStudio:
1. Ease of use – the SMART Board itself is more intuitive – navigate with a finger, write with a pen, etc as opposed to navigating and writing with a pen. This can be seen in newer technologies as well – it is all about touch for navigation and manipulating content (ie – iPhone, Microsoft Surface, etc) – using a stylus as the mode of input seems to be less intuitive and not in the newer innovations coming out in products – even folks like Dell added touch to their tablet pc because just a stylus isnt as intuitive as having touch.
2. Resources – there are soooo many teacher created resources and materials out there for the SMART Board. There are lots for promethean too, but i find many many more available for SMART Boards – and not just from the manufacturer or publishing houses, but from teachers and educators.
3. Community – there are so many SMART Board users throughout so many areas that it is easy to find fellow users anywhere you go.
I am sure there are many more reasons, as well as opinions out there… do other folks out there have opinions to share?
February 26th, 2008 at 5:50 am
It is too bad to me that Tom did not return. One of the reasons we started this blog is to provide a forum for discussion. If you have an opinion, please feel free to share it with us.
The post was obviously in jest. I believe strongly in the SMART Board, and I see teachers every single day who have made it an integral part of their classrooms. This website, however, is not designed to boost sales, but to provide support and resources to teachers using SMART software.
We encourage everyone who reads this to add their own thoughts. Please keep it positive however and remember that we do not want spitting contests and chest pounding.
Seriously, I’m trying to get my mom to start reading this blog.
February 26th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
I, too, was hoping that Tom would return. I didn’t really understand his comments on WordPerfect.
Anyway, there needs to be some more battles. How about a cutting board? ironing board? perhaps a SHMORGUSBOARD? (hope I spelled that correctly…) You get the point. This post is great… keep it up!
February 29th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
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June 11th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Try to write on a SMART Board. CANT DO IT! use an EXPO pen. Can’t do it, can but it stains, what good is a white board in your room when it is all stained up? I’ve seen tons of SMART boards not being used. Why? STAINED and useless. Try the RIGHT board, the Interwrite board. Does all that SMART does but, more use it digitally and physically. Plus way better software. You can erase EXPO and SHARPIE yes Sharpie pens right off with a cloth and expo cleaner. When your projector quits then what? Interwrite Boards are far more superior than those other two. I’m taught for 10 years and know better!
June 12th, 2008 at 6:22 am
Hey Jim, I doubt you’re coming back and it’s very unlikely people will come read this as this post is several months old, but let me answer a few of your concerns.
First, thanks for visiting our site. We appreciate different views on interactive whiteboards. As someone who works with SMART Boards every day, I have to disagree with you. The surface of the SMART Board is similar to a whiteboard and cleans off the same way. Let me makes this clear: YOU CAN CLEAN DRY ERASE MARKER OFF A SMART Board. I would always point people toward writing using digital pens and the other interactive tools because they allow teachers to do more and involve the students in more productive ways. The problem of dry erase markers being difficult to clean is universal.
I have not heard of the Interwrite Board before, but it’s curious that the big claim you have for it is that it’s an interactive whiteboard that works really well as a standard whiteboard. It’s a bit like trying to sell someone a new computer that has a piece of paper attached to it and going “Look how awesome this paper is! You can write on it!”
I’m not going to go off on a long diatribe on the virtues of SMART Boards over other interactive whiteboards. I believe there is enough information in this comments section alone to explain that. Also, I’m not in sales, I just train teachers each day on the SMART Board.
So, to recap, the statement that a SMART Board that has been used with dry erase marker is “stained and useless” is false and based on lack of experience or blatant misinformation.
Thanks for commenting again. We hope to hear more from you in the future!
June 26th, 2008 at 10:18 am
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July 9th, 2008 at 11:18 am
I have seen many a Smartboard with bad marker stains, so I think Interwrite has a valid claim. When you get that substitute teacher in and she uses a permanent sharpie, I would much rather have the rugged Interwrite board.
July 10th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Man, people keep posting on this one.
I will choose to believe that Dave and Jim Hudson are two completely different people who are teachers and do not work for Interwrite, even though that is difficult to swallow as they are both coincidentally commenting on the same blog post from several months ago with the exact same point of view.
That said, and this is referenced in one of our posts, you can clean a SMART Board with the same products you use to clean a normal whiteboard. If a substitute teacher wrote on the board with permanent marker, you could still clean the board. IT IS NOT RUINED.
I want to meet all of these substitute teachers who are writing on whiteboards with sharpies. I picture them also blowtorching the pencil sharpener.
July 14th, 2008 at 9:52 am
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July 3rd, 2009 at 11:15 am
What about the eBeam? a third of the price and pretty much does the same thing???
October 7th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Actually, WordPerfect is still superior to Word for real writers (Reveal Codes feature, etc.), so those comments are irrelevent.
April 6th, 2010 at 11:54 am
While researching whiteboard options I stumbled on this blog. I saw an inspiring demonstration of the SMART Board last month by an auto technology teacher. Our county office has purchased a number of Promethean boards which are already deployed. My director has asked me to submit a request for whichever tool will serve me best. I will be ordering some kind of interactive white board for my welding class soon. I have gotten some clues from this site and see that there is some passion regarding the issue, I did not get enough specific information to make a choice. So my questions…1. What are the choices? 2. Where can I get objective, dispassionate, non-humorous analysis of the pros and cons of the available system?