**The following article was written and photographed by Viola High School EAST students as their first major project of the year.**
Clear Touch comes to Viola Public Schools, helping teachers and students with their near-everyday activities that were previously impractical. Now before we get into anything, you may be asking, “What are the Clear Touch panels?” The Clear Touch panels are multi-touch screens with interactive displays that provide new educational learning opportunities.
Our teachers love the way they work and even let us know their honest opinions on the boards. Each one we asked gave us an honest review that was positive in every way towards the boards and the way the school is moving forward in terms of technology. This was only made possible due to the savings the school achieved with the Covid-19 shut down grant, as each Clear Touch panel was more than four thousand dollars.
“We love it! It has supported more hands-on activities and student engagement,” claimed one of our high school teachers. Other teachers are saying that they can’t imagine their classrooms without it. It has changed the landscape of the classroom dramatically. Teachers are loving how the kids are able to have fun and be more interactive. Some teachers are saying that they don't think that the kids understand that they have worked 20+ math problems when they are playing learning games, and it helps the teachers to get quick visual assessments of student progress. They are great for presentations, documents, showing assignments, and can make almost any lesson interactive. Teachers display and read books and are able to highlight or underline words or sentences. The panels can play videos related to the assignment and allow the teacher to write directly on the screen at the same time.
“I am really enjoying being able to get the students involved in creating concept maps and sorting items. I think it helps them take control of their learning,” claims another teacher. The panels have many more options that teachers are wanting to learn and explore. “I want to try out some of the snowflake.live lessons but haven't had time yet,” one of our teachers said. Our teachers are ecstatic. “It does everything you can think of! The panel includes the Snowflake program. On Snowflake there are so many activities you can create or use that someone else has for lessons. You can also make a whole spread using the Chorus Tool allowing for multiple students to use the screen at the same time. Resources are unlimited. We are so very thankful Viola School was able to provide such technology to us!”
Our students also enjoy them as, like the teachers said, it helps the kids with their learning. Students are excelling in ways they didn’t before because now they can’t help but see it as a more fun way to learn math, health, science, and so many other subjects. It helps students pay attention much better than they did in the past. The Clear Touch panels have had a major impact on our school helping teachers and students.
