Interactive Whiteboards

How do you feel interactive whiteboards enhance teaching and learning?

Interactive whiteboards allow students to be more involved in their learning than with chalkboards or whiteboards. The interactive whiteboards are more engaging with the many different tools that teachers can use to gain the attention of the students. Students also enjoy when they can use the Smartboard because, quite frankly, it is more fun to solve a problem on the Smartboard than on a whiteboard. From a teacher's perspective, the Smartboard is like a powerpoint in that the teacher can use the same slides from class to class, but at the same time the teacher can write on the slides themselves, then erase the writing before the next class. The teacher can also use applications and interactive tools such as actually rolling a dice using the Smartboard. This makes preparation much easier for the teacher. As far as learning, students now are surrounded by technology in everything that they do. The regular chalkboard or whiteboard will most likely bore today's student, so the Smartboard engages the student using technology and all kinds of interactive applications. This makes learning more entertaining for the student and allows more learning to happen when the Smartboard is used correctly.

Was the technology difficult for you to learn to use?

I only scratched the surface with what the Smartboard software could do, but I did not have trouble using it. Everything was pretty simple and similar to other programs that I have used before. I felt like I was using a mix of paint, word, and powerpoint. There were also some other features that made it really easy to use. I liked that fact that I could highlight multiple objects and move them as one without having to group them. There were a few little things that I had to adjust to or have someone show me, but for the most part I think that I picked it up pretty quickly.

What are the pros and cons to having one installed in your classroom?

The pros of having a Smartboard in the classroom are that it engages the students and makes preparation easier for the teacher. As I said before, students are more interested in what they are learning when they feel that they are being involved and entertained. The Smartboard can do both. The Smartboard can really allow the learning to be interactive and it is a lot more fun playing with the Smartboard than going up to the front of the room to do something on a whiteboard or overhead. The cons of the Smartboard are becoming too reliant on it, using it too much, and not knowing how to fully use it. The first two points kind of go together. I can imagine that it would be very easy to rely on the Smartboard and use it for every single lesson. It does not matter how fun a lesson may be if the same lesson is done for two weeks straight, just changing the topic. This is especially a problem in math where a teacher could teach many different lessons the exact same way. The other problem with the Smartboard is not knowing how to really use it. Many teachers do not have training on the Smartboards, so they do not really know what it can do. The Smartboard can be just as boring as a whiteboard in the hands of the wrong teacher and it could also distract from learning if used the wrong way.

Think of some lesson plans you wrote in the past. How would you incorporate the Smartboard when teaching that content.

I have not written too many lesson plans up to this point, but I think that using the Smartboard would be much more effective than the basic whiteboard. Almost anything that I could do on the whiteboard, I can do on the Smartboard as well. I think that when doing examples of problems, the Smartboard can really help get the students get involved in the examples and learn more from them. Take for example the lesson that I am doing for our class. I am representing the quantities x^2, x, and 1 with blocks or tiles. Before having the Smartboard, I would have given the students the tiles and just talked about how to use them. But with the Smartboard, I can replicate the tiles using the Smartboard software and I can actually show the students how to use the tiles to solve problems. Showing the students works a lot better than talking at them.