White is the new Black(board)!

Interactive Whiteboards are becoming increasingly popular, thanks to recent Government initiatives.  In 2004, the Secretary of State for Education announced that £25m was to be made available for schools in the UK to purchase whiteboards.  

What is an Interactive Whiteboard?

An interactive whiteboard enables a teacher or pupil to control a computer from the whiteboard itself. A multimedia projector is used to project the content from the PC screen on to the interactive whiteboard; once this has been set up correctly the whiteboard becomes the point of control, although the option remains for the PC mouse and keyboard to be used as well.

Interactive whiteboards allow even novice users to open documents, spreadsheets, presentations and websites. With a little practice, teachers can then start to use the whiteboard’s ‘floating tools’ to add notes or comments, or highlight text.

The effective use of interactive whiteboard technology can radically transform the interaction between teachers and students and allows for classroom discussion and collaboration using a visual, auditory and kinesthetic medium.

 Features of Interactive Whiteboards

• Pages: every whiteboard has a design area where teachers can create and manipulate text, images or multimedia elements. The software allows content created to be saved and run in conjunction with other PC applications (e.g. websites, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, etc.)
• Pens: users can write on the whiteboard (in multiple colours) and the results can be saved on the linked PC.
• Resources: teachers can develop or integrate resources to use in the classroom to engage and motivate students – all kinds of activities, software and internet resources can be introduced.

Interactive Whiteboards as a teaching tool

They have the potential to:

• Enhance demonstration and modelling: teachers demonstrate in order to show pupils how to do something; modelling helps pupils to understand underlying structures, relationships and processes in abstract concepts.
• Improved classroom interaction through the promotion of effective questioning: the interactive whiteboard encourages questioning and intervention at a range of levels, including open, closed and uptake questions along with probing and evaluative responses, all as part of the general flow of a lesson.
• Additional resources: digital flipcharts and notebooks that come as part of the whiteboard’s software suite can be adapted and re-used by teachers according to the needs of the class.
• Increased pace and depth of learning: interactive whiteboards allow collective engagement with learning problems and encourage creative and seamless use of additional digital materials.
  

Benefits of Whiteboards

Whiteboards are both practical for teachers and motivating for students; their benefits include:

• Ability to prepare and access saved work
• Access to multimedia files
• Software choices
• Involvement in the lesson
• Rapid response

Comment – from MirandaNet evaluation

"We looked at a wide variety of applications within the learning environment, from Maths games and spreadsheets to using the Internet and Encarta. The Whiteboard was very versatile and staff could see a lot of applications where it would be an extremely useful tool.

Students were very motivated by the Whiteboard lessons and commented on the fact that they had been able to understand much better what to do by being shown rather than being told."

Source:http://www.mirandanet.ac.uk/pubs/smartboards.htm

Links

Becta Interactive Whiteboards Project: http://www.becta.org.uk/leas/leas.cfm?section=5_2&id=3155
Kent NGfL Evaluation: http://www.kented.org.uk/ngfl/whiteboards/report.html