Simple, plain whiteboards that the teacher wrote on and rubbed off again. And before that there were the black chalkboards. I actually had one Geography teacher who would still insist on using his blackboard as opposed to our whiteboards. Who knows what he would have made of the Interactive whiteboards?!
What are Interactive whiteboards then and how can they benefit children in the classroom? As the article Interactive Whiteboards in Education states, the interactive whiteboard is 'an electronic version of a dry-wipe board on a computer that enables learners in a virtual classroom to view what an instructor, presenter, or fellow learner writes or draws'. The key word here is 'virtual' and by being virtual gives us so many more possibilities than just writing on a whiteboard and rubbing it out again.
Tekgia, as well as the article above, highlights the benefits of using the Interactive Whiteboards in the classroom. These include:
* Replacing the scenario of a large group crowding around a single computer. The interactive whiteboard allows a large group to sit and participate comfortably in a presentation.
*Creates a collaborative layout and an environment of engagement so that there is naturally more dialogue between tutor and students, peer-to-peer and within groups.
*Ability to enhance any presentation or lesson by easily integrating video, animation, graphics, text and audio with the spoken presentation.
*Children benefiting from the interaction with the knowledge and task, both personally and socially.
These are just to name a few and for all the old-school chalkboard and whiteboard fans, it can still be used in just that way. We can even select a crayon on a black background to try and create a similar effect - that should keep my old Geography teacher happy!
In some aspects though he may just have a point. Sometimes complicating a simple idea can have its downfalls. For instance, what do you do when the Interactive Whiteboard decides not to work? I remember this happening to the Year 6 teacher that I worked with when he was about to have an observation - definitely not the prime time for it to break down on someone! What can you do when most of your teaching uses the IWB? Surely we can hardly be expected to do more planning just incase the IWB fails on us.
There are also the things we have to take into consideration when using the IWB - the room can't be too bright, the positioning of the activities on the IWB shouldn't be too high or else many of the children (and me!) won't be able to reach and no matter how much I may like the colour yellow, it should NOT be placed on a white background or nobody would know what the task is!
Despite the downfalls and considerations I do believe that the IWB is an excellent invention for all the advantages mentioned earlier, and if used as an interactive tool, I think it is extremely useful for a child's learning and engagement.
For me though, I am a slight techno-phobe and have only tried to use them briefly last year when I was working as a Year 6 TA and failed miserably. In the end it was the children trying to teach me!
Fortunately our ICT Interactive Whiteboard session helped to sort out some of my fears and was thoroughly enjoyable. In our lesson we were put into groups and all had to use a specific effect to make a presentation/lesson starter. Ours was the 'Magnifiying Glass Effect' where we used a virtual magnifying glass to reveal hidden information. I think this is a great idea for children as they will probably love the idea of being investigators and using the magnifying class to come up with something new. We decided that our 'children' (the rest of the group) would have to use the magnifying glass to reveal words with the 'oa' phoneme in it as you can see below. I think it is a good fun, oral starter and this is where the children can really interact with the activity.
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| The Checker Tool |
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| Magnifying Glass |
As other groups also presented we were able to get to know what other effects we could use. My particular favourites were the Random Generator tool, where values or pupils names can be randomly generated, and the Checker Tool. The Checker Tool can provide the children with instant feedback to questions they have answered. This is again another fun, interactive tool where another group used it to ask questions in Science, which you can see above.
Now I've printed off how to do all the effects we were shown and downloaded the SMART software I should be all ready to get on with my assignment - designing part of a lesson using the IWB. I'd love to develop on our Phoneme idea but I'm hoping to come up with something completely new and despite my fears I'm actually quite excited about getting started on it.
I've also located the site Box of Tricks, which has some additional ideas that I may just have to borrow so watch this space :)
Stephanie you are showing my age because I never learnt from the first version of the white board!
ReplyDeleteYou make a valid point about the IWB breaking down in a lesson. I don't think individual lesson plans should incorporate a back up plan but the medium term plans, which apparently we produce for the whole topic, could list resources which are to hand in the class room should worst case scenario occur.