Smart Board interactive whiteboard, a new teaching tool combining multimedia technology to advocate interactive education, has dramatically changed classroom learning after the International School of Sino-Canada (ISSC) in Nanshan District put it into use this semester.

"The SMART Board has been very attractive to me because it allows me to participate in a lot of activities with my teacher and classmates in classroom," Witold Smieszek, 17, a Polish Grade-11 student at the ISSC, said Tuesday after attending a 40-minute class on media literacy with four classmates.

In a classroom equipped with a whiteboard, a computer and a digital projector, Smieszek and his classmates not only learned concepts and styles of advertising from their Canadian teacher Samantha Caines, but also designed their own advertising for virtual products such as "Burp Cola" and "Sweet, Super, Fun Flakes."

"If you know how to use a computer, you will no longer like the traditional teaching style which has only a blackboard and chalk sticks," Smieszek said.

Beginning this semester, SMART Board interactive whiteboards were installed in nine classrooms for students of Grade 3 to 11, according to Jill Jollineau, the school's principal.

The SMART Board package software was developed by SMART Technologies, a Canadian firm, in 1991, and began to be commonly used in schools in North America about four years ago.

So far, the ISSC is the first school in Shenzhen to use the SMART Board package software in classrooms.

Established as a joint venture school in 2002, the ISSC now has a total of 156 students from about 30 counties and 17 certificated Canadian teachers.

Editor: Yan