The 20th century classroom had chalkboards or dry-erase boards. Those boards were used primarily to give students notes to copy or problems to work out. Typically, the teacher writes information on the board, and the students copy the information into their notebooks. Sometimes, the teacher will underline or circle important pieces of information on the board for emphasis. Many teachers would also allow students to come to the board to work out problems. Now, what if the students didn’t understand the notes or pictures on the board? What if the students could not flip the shapes in his or her mind to see that the two polygons were congruent? These are situations in which the “interactive” whiteboard comes to the rescue.
In the past several years, interactive whiteboards have entered the classroom. I have been in classrooms that had either a Promethean ActivBoard or a SMARTBoard. Regardless of the type of board, the interactive whiteboard opens many doors for student learning. No longer is instruction from the board limited to just lecture and note taking. For example, students in a Geometry class can manipulate shapes on the board to gain a stronger understanding of the theorems or postulates.
The teacher can create visually compelling lessons to grab students’ attention and interest. Instead of just listing a question and four possible choices on the board, the four choices could be on a balloon. The student would pop the balloon of the answer he or she believes is correct. The correct balloon will have positive feedback (i.e. something that says, “Good job” or a positive picture). The incorrect balloons will have something to let the student know that the answer is not correct (i.e. a sad face or something that says “try again”).
The interactive whiteboard is a big touch screen. This allows the interactive board to be used with virtually any application installed on the computer. In other words, the website with an interactive applet to help students understand congruent triangles can be shown and manipulated with the entire class. If a teacher has access to the TI SmartView emulator, then the teacher (or student) can demonstrate the correct keypresses on the screen so that the students can understand how to graph the function on their individual graphing calculators.
When the “interactive” whiteboard is used correctly, student achievement will increase. Now, if the board is used incorrectly, then the students will not benefit. For example, teachers should not use the “interactive” board as just another regular whiteboard. Though the teacher can use the board to write or display notes on the board and keep them across multiple pages, this is not its primary purpose. I am not saying that the teacher must always have interactive lessons on the interactive board, but the teacher should not use the board only to put notes on the board for students to copy on a daily basis. The teacher must use the board to his or her advantage.
Now, one of the major keys to student learning is by getting the students to do the work. The teacher must allow the students to go to the interactive board and manipulate the figures themselves. Now the teacher must keep in mind that there will be some students who will be apprehensive to using the technology. Therefore, the teacher must teach the students how to use the board and encourage them while at the board. Even if the student does something wrong, the teacher must reassure the student that he or she can do it. The teacher can show the student, but the student must work the board for himself or herself. Only by letting the student interact with the board will he or she learn from doing the task.
Interactive boards are great tools. Don’t just use it as a regular whiteboard. Use it to show students the concepts in ways that make sense to them.
Resources
Promethean Board: http://www.prometheanworld.com/server.php?show=nav.15
SMARTBoard: http://education.smarttech.com/ste/en-US/Classroom+solutions/Product+news+and+resources/SMART+Board+interactive+whiteboard/
TI-SmartView: http://education.ti.com/educationportal/sites/US/productDetail/us_smartview.html
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment