(lubavitch.com) Fourteen year-old Daniel Alpert, an eighth grader at The Hebrew Academy in New City, NY knows what educational technology is all about. His teachers project prepared lessons on SMART Boards, and display text and pictures with cutting-edge document cameras; Alpert often presents his Power Point projects on the SMART Board too.

In Alpert’s Talmud class, his teacher takes collaborative learning up a notch by displaying graphs and charts on the SMART Board, and then dividing up the class into groups. Representatives from each group come up to the front to illustrate their understanding of the material with interactive board, adding a visual element to the discussion.

“I feel so lucky to be in this new generation where I can actually touch the Talmud I learn,” says Alpert, who lives in nearby Suffern, NY.

Like many schools that are still equipped with old blackboards, when the building was opened in 1995, the Hebrew Academy, says Rabbi Avremel Kotlarsky, principal of the school, was dated. But in recent years the school has caught up with the latest educational technology: a new 26,000 square ft. state-of-the-art addition to the building in 2008 was outfitted with SMART Boards in classrooms from Nursery through 8th Grade, and document cameras and computers at the rear of every classroom.

“By providing teachers with this technology we give them the tools to prepare better lessons,” says Kotlarsky. “Schools are recognizing that kids don’t focus on lectures anymore; we make it exciting by teaching with interactive technology in the classroom and making learning fun for the kids.”

The SMART Board features touch recognition that allows teachers – and students – to manipulate text and pictures, and allows simple tasks like writing and erasing with the touch of a finger. In addition to the ease of creating lessons, SMART Notebook software also provides prepared lessons, and allows teachers across the country to share their lessons as well.

Teaching with technology introduces a fun factor that makes kids look forward to school, says Jennifer Bryant, who teaches science for second and fifth grades.

“The kids instantly get excited about learning whenever we use the SMART Board,” she says. “The primary benefit is that the board includes three modalities: audio, visual and kinesthetic. So, for example, students visualize and hear a word that I write on the board, and come up front and highlight it, and then copy it down.”

Educational technology is engaging students and empowering them with the skills and resources to take ownership of their learning. Even if a student doesn’t understand the material at first, Bryant explains that the technology “plants a seed in the child’s mind and by seeing, hearing and even touching a word or image on the SMART Board, I watch students comprehend the material on their own.” When a few more advanced students were ahead of the class, she allowed them to create a Power Point presentation about the subject on the computers located at the back of the classroom. “Afterward, they presented their Power Point on the SMART Board. This gives them more autonomy; I try to use technology to help them light that light bulb on their own.”

Technology is changing the way people socialize and do business, and schools nationwide are investing in more technology in education as well. On a visit to TechBoston Academy in Boston, MA last Tuesday, President Obama announced $90 million in competitive grants for educators who find new technologies to improve learning.

Chav Landau, a resident of Monsey, NY who enrolled two of her children at The Hebrew Academy in 2009, is one satisfied parent. The hi-tech equipment is not, she says, taking over the role of teachers at the school, where classes are capped at sixteen students in order to maintain more individualized attention.

“What appealed to me most about this school is the tremendous care for every child. The staff they hire really care about each child, it is clear that this is their top priority,” says Landau.

Teachers at the school “aim to individualize teaching methods to serve every child’s specific needs,” says Shternie Perline, director of Judaic Studies. “One medium or technology can’t dominate the classroom when there are always children that respond differently,” who will be better served using different pedagogic models.

This month, Rabbi Kotlarsky introduced Safari Montage for streaming content of educational videos to SMART Boards, allowing teachers to quickly search for videos on a specific topic, freeze frames and annotate over the video and then save, share and embed segments into Word documents, Power Point and SMART Notebook files.

Nevertheless, insists Rabbi Kotlarsky, who will soon be inaugurating a Long Distance Learning Room utilizing state of the art HD video conferencing equipment, “technology is only a tool. It does not replace teachers.” But the marriage between technology and teachers seems to be a happy one at The Hebrew Academy now seeing fifteen percent annual growth rate with 80 students currently enrolled at the preschool and K-8.