Students use high-tech tables to learn

TAMPA - High-tech tables are helping a handful of Bay Area students with their second grade assignments.

"Liquids, solids and gas. And what are all those three things combined called?" Letecia Nathan asks her classroom.

The students are hard at work, learning the basics of science.

Dozens of children use construction paper, pencils and folders to complete assignments. Meanwhile in the back of the class, four little hands slide across a touch screen computer. They're playing on a SMART Table .

"I haven't learned how to spell some words, so that's why I actually like this because sometimes I can figure out how to spell words," student Olivia Carey-Jones said.

The SMART Table is an interactive computer designed for students from preschool to sixth grade.

Nathan's class at Lee Magnet Elementary School in Tampa is the first in Hillsborough County and one of the first in the state to have one.

"We've had a lot of teachers come in and look at it, some students that have come in from other classrooms to look at it," she said. "Of course my class is excited because they know they're the only class that has one to."

The table lets up to eight students play at a time. Lessons range from math to social studies and art.

"What we're trying to do is see what type of affect it has on the education of our students as a learning tool. And from that other schools may be added," Lee Magnet assistant principal Jonathan Barlar said.

Barlar hopes the state will buy additional SMART Tables for the school. He believes interactive computers are the future of teaching.

"There whole world is technological. So by using technology in the classroom we're reaching them," Barlar said. "So we're hoping they'll grasp concepts more in the way they've grown up with that technology."

The interactive table is made by SMART Technologies of Canada. The company also makes SMART boards, an interactive white board that has replaced the old-fashioned chalkboards.

The SMART Table cost $8,000. The one at Lee Magnet was funded through a federal grant for technical school equipment and is part of a pilot program.