Friday, November 2, 2007

Interactive Whiteboards...

...10 good reasons why to use interactive whiteboards in school...


Here they are:
In my opinion (and I’m not a salesman) these are 10 of the reasons why I believe teachers should use interactive whiteboards:

1. Kids love technology, just not geeky technology. Expensive technology that is used correctly and fasionably will attract a young persons attention.

2. It is a large object, a focal point with a lot of detail. A normal whiteboard is big but only as interesting as the ink on it. A digital interactive whiteboard can have interactive objects on it, widgets like clocks, calculators, news feeds. Give yourself an interesting (not mad) wallpaper for added effect, maybe a landscape view or a closeup of a texture, or water.

3. You can share your experiences of browsing the internet with your class. Instead of hiding behind your computer while browsing for that image that will help with the lesson, do that with the class, they may offer help. Browsing the internet is an activity that todays students are more than familiar with and is as natural as flicking through a book or browsing the library was in the 80s.

4. Interact with video in front of your class and ask on the fly questions, pause a video in front of the class by tapping it, turn around and ask a question about what just happened, or what is currently on the whiteboard, and then resume.

5. Use photographs, in the past it may have been necessary for you to print out a large colour copy of a picture at your expense and stick it on the wall. You may have had to illustrate a vehicle or device crudely on your whiteboard. Now you can open a file and the class can see exactly what you are talking about, photos are available from many sources online.

6. If you loved the lesson you just gave, and the answers that your class wrote on your whiteboard were excellent, simply save your digital flipchart. In the past you may have had to take a picture or crudely write the notes down between classes, now you can save the file and look at it later. It’s a good idea to tidy these kinds of notes up and reuse them for another lesson.

7. Resources. Whiteboard manufacturers will provide you with many resources with your whiteboard, and many others online or via resource CDs. These resources, such as backgrounds, shapes or characters, can be used to quickly build a lesson that looks very good. These resources are providing many teachers with new options, these teachers may not have had the artistic skills to present their lessons effectively before.

8. Interaction. Allow your students to use your interactive whiteboard. They can also take this opportunity to use the features in telling their own stories, or explaining their ideas. Your students, unfortunately, are probably better users of the whiteboards than you are.

9. Games are a fun activity, but also a great way to learn. Many flash activities exist that can help in the classroom and are also fun to play on a whiteboard. Games like sudoku, wordsearches, anagrams, speed math. Maybe organise the classroom into several teams and arrange activities for them.

10. Simplicity, the whiteboards are just an input device for your computer. If you can use a PC then you can use the interactive whiteboard. In fact, having such a large screen should make things easier for you. If you are confident with PCs then give it a go, if not then ask your IT department for a few pointers, or sign up for one of the many free IT workshops available that can help you develop your IT potential.


This is found at http://www.innerllama.com/blog/ . For some reason the link doesn't load from here so copy it onto your browser's address link and then search for 'interactive whiteboards' to find the page.

3 comments:

constantine ziogas said...

Thanks Kally!

I do believe that the technology of education is changing and that whiteboards are the future. I hope we get to employ one in our class.

Ellie said...

oh fiiiine
u got me
i'm in:)

constantine ziogas said...

Nice!

Let's see what happens!

:------)