Board sees Smart Board as teacher demonstrates

The middle school also has the Smart Board technology.
By JoANN JONES
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
BELOIT -- West Branch High School math teacher Shawn Alazaus has become known to his students as the "man with the magic finger" because of his ability to integrate technology in his classroom.
Alazaus, who applied for and received a $3,000 grant from the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation to purchase a Smart Board, demonstrated the technology's uses to the West Branch Board of Education during its monthly meeting Thursday evening at the high school.
"The board allows me to take out anything that's on a computer screen and put it up there," he said. "I can also write on the board and actually pull a graphing calculator onto the screen so that it's fully functional."
With a touch of his finger, he said he can bring up different sizes of graph paper, clip art, his grade book and his seating charts.
Learning about it
Alazaus said he had first seen how effective the board can be in the classroom during a Mahoning County math teachers' conference last spring.
He credited high school English teacher Elizabeth Williams with helping him write the grant.
He also is in the process of developing his own Web site that will allow him to save the notes he puts on the Smart Board for students who are absent from class so they can access the notes from home.
"It's like bringing the classroom to their homes," he said. "I can also e-mail parents their child's grade in about 30 seconds."
Alazaus is sharing his technical knowledge and grant-writing experience with fellow teachers who are interested in getting Smart Books. Alazaus said he is the only teacher in the high school to have one, but he said there also is one in the middle school.
Renewed insurance
In other action, the board renewed its building and property insurance with Westfield Insurance through the Williams and Case Agency of Sebring.
District Treasurer Karen Elsner said the amount the district must pay has not been determined because new school construction is ongoing.
The board also authorized its president Larry Romigh and Elsner to enter into a sanitary sewer easement with Mahoning County for the Damascus Elementary building under construction.
Elsner also will act as fiscal agent for a charter school in the district, Sharon Lynn School for Girls, as well as authorizing textbook purchases for the school.
The board also:
UAccepted a $1,000 grant from Miami University for high school science teachers Davida Wagner and Kevin Buckley. Wagner and Buckley also were granted professional leave to attend the National Biology Teachers Convention in Chicago from Nov. 10-12.
UGranted retired teacher Bob McCosky a contract as driver's education instructor at $15 per hour.
UGranted an unpaid medical leave of absence for up to one year to custodian Dan Favazzo Jr. The board then hired district resident John Maldoven as a long-term substitute custodian at $8.50 per hour.