Special Needs School Standardizes on SMART Products

SAN FRANCISCO-SMART Technologies Inc. announced that the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine, Fla., has standardized on SMART Board interactive whiteboards (running on Mac OS X(R)) to help improve learning for its students from pre-kindergarten through grade 12. With the help of local SMART reseller CCS Presentations and grants from the SMARTer Kids Foundation, the school has equipped classrooms with the whiteboards products to engage students with hearing or vision impairments and special needs.

Teachers and students use the interactive whiteboards in almost all subject areas. Students can create movies and storyboards using iPhoto, iMovie and Quicktime applications, applying effects and transitions to photos and videos captured during field trips.

Many students arrive at FSDB with limited language abilities, and teachers have found the interactive whiteboards useful in teaching grammar basics. The whole class can follow along on the interactive whiteboard, write notes in digital ink, take screen shots of Web pages and save their notes in a variety of computer formats.