Logically Speaking

As I watched this video, once I realized that the students were working on a logic problem, I got a little excited. I used to love doing logic problems in my mom's crossword puzzle books. Of course, most of the time I could only solve about a third of it, but I still kept trying. I think logic problems are a useful tool in classrooms. They help students develop their critical thinking and problem solving skills, even if they have to resort to the process of elimination, as one group did. But the key to using logic problems in the classroom is that students should show how they actually calculated the answer. That's hard to share with the class if a student figures it out on a piece of paper and there's no document camera. How would the student share it? Pass his worksheet around? Copy it on the blackboard? By using the document camera, students were able to show what strategies they used to solve the problem with the rest of the class. However, I don't think the SmartBoard was particularly effective. Sure, the pictures of Mercedes and the other kids were cute, but I don't think they really provided anything to the lesson that a chalkboard or whiteboard could have. Since the students interviewed said they like the SmartBoard because it's fun and makes everybody watch, using the SmartBoard just to use it may be worth it, if it keeps the kids interested. I also thought it was interesting that in the interview following the lesson, the teacher noted that as she was learning the technology, so were her students. She said it made learning a two way street, which I think makes the relationship between teacher and student closer.