SmartBoards were actually awesome! The issue is that most teachers disliked them because they didn't know how to utilize them, didn't want to learn something new (a lot of teachers are like 50 years old) and basically had the old man shouting at clouds "damn these newfangled computery thingies", or genuinely had no good use for them: My mom was a French teacher at the time, and being able to get pen input to her laptop from a whiteboard wasn't exactly a useful tool for her.