Some upperclassmen might remember their elementary days when teachers still relied on whiteboards, and possibly the archaic chalkboard, but now the humble whiteboards are out-performed by the Promethean boards that decorate every single classroom at BSM.

Teachers find ways to incorporate both the old and new technologies into their lesson plans, but the Promethean boards are convenient for pre-planned lessons and saving in-class activities. John Groess and Joanie Sauer, both math teachers, value Prometheans because of their ability to project accurate and to-scale graphs. Sauer also values the ability to save the notes she took in class as a PDF so students can access them from home. “I prefer the Promethean for the ability to easily make a PDF of what we’ve covered in class to post on Schoology, and also with word problems. To be able to copy and paste a word problem onto a Promethean to help kids with the decoding of a word problem,” Sauer said.

While online school was not the original intended purpose of Promethean boards, COVID-19 policies that dealt with online learning were made easier because of Promethean boards. When teachers were required to teach a mix of in-class students and online students at the same time the ability to do work on the Promethean board and have it project to both groups of students at the same time was a necessity. Chemistry teacher Lisa Bargas noted the benefits of having a Promethean throughout online school. “I did use it almost exclusively during that time where we were in different cohorts and students were coming in every other day. I used it exclusively so that the students who were at home could follow along with what I was doing. But I think it would have been a lot harder to communicate with half of the class at any given point like during our lockdown without the Promethean,” Bargas said.

Prometheans have many benefits, but there are some things about whiteboards that teachers prefer. Both Bargas and Groess like to write notes and equations on whiteboards because it forces them to slow down to the speed of their students. “Because when I write on the whiteboard, it’s about the same amount of time it takes a kid to write when they take notes,” Groess said.

Bargas prefers using the whiteboard because of the larger surface area for writing. For chemistry she has to write long equations and in order for the students in the back of the classroom to see, she uses a large font. “One of the cons [for the Promethean board] is it’s small. It’s smaller than at least the whiteboard in this classroom… I write on the large side, so I can’t squeeze what I want to squeeze in on the [Promethean] board,” Bargas said.