Interactive Whiteboards

Interactive Whiteboards are something I have heard about but unfortunately have no hands on experience with them so again I googled. What did I find? Some useful tips for teachers from teachers Make sure your lesson is interactive.Think about where it is appropriate to make pages, or slides, interactive. This could involve children coming out to manipulate some text or a diagram, or typing directly into the PC/laptop. A good, whizzy maths game with things flying around and going bang at the beginning of a numeracy lesson, will certainly get your children's attention Images are powerful learning tools. The software which runs on your board will allow you to import saved images from your computer or copy and paste images from the web. I try to start every lesson with an image which the children can make some kind of emotional connection Having the laptop or PC connected to your board online is a must. There is now an extensive range of whiteboard resources available online. Some examples can be see below.

Different learning requires different resources, not all of which suit the whiteboard software alone. Websites, text documents, multimedia files, CD-ROMs and DVDs can all enhance the learning experience. By adding hyperlinks within your main whiteboard software you can move between websites, programmes or media by simply clicking on an icon Video and audio A port will be installed next to your board to allow you to attach your video player to the board and could you be used for Teachers' TV programmes and clips. Many can be incorporated into whiteboard presentations and can really clarify difficult points. Clips from your own digital video camera can also be easily incorporated Using digital video cameras, voting systems and scanners with your whiteboard can take your lessons to very exciting places. Document cameras, or visualisers, are extremely powerful when used with a whiteboard. They project anything placed under them onto the board, so children's work, a text book or even a woodlouse is immediately visible to all in amazing detail Here are some fantastic classroom resources I found from online:

Edna.edu.au - provide a huge range of interactive whiteboard resources. http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/schooled/school_theme_pages/iwb

Possum Magic the Online Project is for teachers and students who want to help celebrate this wonderful book. You can join in and participate anytime. http://www.ozprojects.edu.au/course/view.php?id=17

This Berenstain Bears online activity is an interactive cloze exercise where children write a story choosing objects visually. The story is several screens long. When the story is completed it can be read out loud, printed or shared with a friend. http://pbskids.org/berenstainbears/games/story/index.html

Finally does the Interactive Whiteboard fit in the following frameworks? Engagement Theory (Kearsley and Schneiderman,1998) - can content be linked to real world? YES - Can it be presented as a problem? YES - Can solutions be created from content? YES - Can they Donate it back to the real world? YES Learning Design Framework (Oliver, 1999) - Could the tasks be presented to students as problems, investigations, projects or role plays? YES - Are there learning resources linked to task such as books, weblinks, case studies etc? YES - Could content provide scaffolding via, strategies, templates etc? YES - Could content be provided in the way of quizzes, simulations, models, databases, tutorials? YES