World Photos by Alex Powers Above First-grade student Natalie Hearne types the word “ham” on a SMART Board during a spelling exercise at Hillcrest Elementary School Sept. 30 in North Bend.

NORTH BEND — Long gone are the days of blackboards and chalk.

In the North Bend School District, children and instructors have graduated to a more sophisticated, albeit expensive, mode of sharing information at the front of the class.

Teachers and children are using SMART Boards in nearly every classroom at Hillcrest and North Bay elementary schools, along with North Bend middle and high schools. These interactive white boards allow teachers and students to access the Internet, play instructional games, write and do a number of activities with the touch of a finger.

Essentially a large tablet computer, users operate SMART Boards with a fingertip or stylus. Images, such as Web-pages, interactive diagrams or real documents are projected on the screen with a LCD projection unit or document camera.

“It helps us because it’s like learning in a fun way,” said Hillcrest fourth-grader Danny Woodruff. “You get to touch stuff with your fingers. ... You can just go up there and do it.”

At Hillcrest, the first of North Bend’s schools to adopt SMART Boards, kids spend a great deal of instructional time with the new technology.

The school began using SMART Boards around April 2007, said Principal Bruce Martin. District administrators have a three-year plan to put the technology in nearly every North Bend classroom.

Superintendent BJ Hollensteiner said there are about 60 boards in the district and there are plans to add 50 more.

Considered “digital natives” by many in education, students already know how to use computers, but they need continued access to technology to become successful in the real world.

“It’s new to them, but it’s not foreign to them,” Martin said. “They’re very focused and they’re very into what’s happening in the classroom.”

With the boards, instructors can easily bring real world information into a lesson.

For example, if the class is reading a fictional story about sled dogs, and wants to learn more about the real animals and the work they do, the teacher can do a quick Web search for a site about the annual Iditarod sled dog race.

“Books are not going away because of this ... but it’s going to be highly interactive in a format that kids are used to,” Martin said.

In Patti McKenna’s class, children spent time working out anagram spelling problems with their SMART Board. Standing in front of the large screen, first-grader Titus Koch moved the letters — each in a brown bubble — of a jumbled word to correctly spell camp. His classmates sat at his feet, shouting out helpful suggestions.

Many classes, along with their teachers, are learning to use the boards as they go along. However, a few of Hillcrest’s fourth-grade teachers have been using them long enough to help out their colleagues.

“(They are) at the level where they are learning new things every time they open it,” Martin said.

Fourth-grade teachers Angie Duvall and Ruth Ellen Melton are creating lesson plans with the SMART Boards and share their efforts with colleagues. Each grade level has a file on the system network, through which teachers can input information and share resources.

Last week, Duvall’s class seemed comfortable using a Smart Board as students played “Jeopardy.” In a room lined with paper globes and paper maché balloons, children rang bells and jumped to their feet whenever they knew the answer to a question about photosynthesis, paragraph construction and other topics.

“That is correct,” Duvall said in a loose impression of game show host Alex Trebek.

Nine-year-old Brooke Aldrich said the SMART Board makes class more fun.

“I think it’s a lot better because it takes a little longer to look up stuff in books. On SMART Boards, you press a button and, like, there’s your answer,” Brooke said.

She added that interactive games reinforce the lessons she’s learned throughout the year.

“It’s just reminding me of stuff I’ve already learned and it’s very helpful to remember what you’ve done,” Brooke said.

Duvall said she’s noticed a difference in her pupils already. Simply put, they’re more engaged.

North Bend High School Principal Bill Lucero emphasized that SMART Boards are just a tool. Teachers still have to teach.

“There’s no question students are more comfortable around new technology than adults are, so we’re learning together,” Lucero said.

The principal said some teachers were initially reluctant to use the boards, but after they got some training, they soon changed their minds.

“I don’t think they had any idea what its capabilities were,” Lucero said. “I just think that technology is ever-changing and with it students need to be exposed to the most current advances in technology so they can be successful in the workforce.”

Melton’s class tried a different approach to the technology. Using hand-held student response systems, or clickers, children answered questions on the interactive white board.

At the top right corner of the screen, a box showed the number of students who answered a question, and then the percentage of how many got it right.

When they answer incorrectly, Melton re-explains the information, or can quickly assess from responses that kids aren’t reading the questions closely enough.

She and the students also spend time editing compositions on the screen. They take images of papers with a document camera and then cross out, replace or respell words on the SMART Board over the original image.

Fourth-grader Neal Rose, who is in Melton’s class, said he sees the SMART Boards help them to learn more.

 “I just think our brains can grow more by using this technology. We learn quite a lot on SMART Boards every day,” Neal said.