Interactive Whiteboards: How They Keep the Classroom Alive
Interaction is often said to be a more effective way to get people to learn than simply imparting reams of information in the hope that some of it sinks in, and this is one of the reasons why new classroom technology is absolutely essential when trying to capture the attention and imagination of school children and learners of all ages.
Classroom technology is a general term which is used to describe everything from interactive whiteboards (commonly abbreviated to IWB) to audio tools and student response devices, and these are being invested in and rolled out across schools, colleges, and places of further or specialist education across the UK and the US.
Why are these pieces of technology so important though, and how can they really help to increase the success of teaching and learning? Put simply, classroom items such as the interactive whiteboard allow teachers to communicate with young people using the technology that they use to communicate with their friends. Inspired by the popularity of social networking sites and other internet-based communication in the social lives of young people, interactive whiteboards deliver absolutely anything that can be created on a computer, to a screen mounted at the front of the classroom and this can be a great way of making learning accessible for young people.
Teachers can now use an interactive whiteboard to display vivid images and graphics, film clips, text documents, web pages and much more, and they can control what is seen on screen in the same way as they would if they were using a standard computer screen. But interactive whiteboards now have the added bonus of being able to be operated in two ways, via finger / gesture touch and “pen”, and they also allow multiple users to collaborate on one activity or task at the same time.
With the technology available to allow teachers to share resources and image-based information with students, and to ask them to interact with the information presented to them, with the teacher, and with other students, attendance levels should improve, as should grades, results and the social aspect of the learning environment. The boards do not just allow teachers to write as they would on a normal white or black board (although they do facilitate this) but they also allow them to move, rotate and enlarge images and allow pupils to do the same.
Find out all you need to know about interactive whiteboards and other pieces of forward-thinking classroom technology online and see how it could improve your student response and grades.
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