6 Tips To Use An Interactive Whiteboard Effectively

Student Using an Interactive Whiteboard (Wikipedia)

by Paul Michael Kerr

The whiteboard replaced the blackboard as something easier for the teacher to use.

It was clearer for them to write on and was easier to clean at the end of the day (assuming you hadn't used permanent markers by mistake).

The interactive whiteboard though is a whole new way of teaching and getting the message across as opposed to a better way of doing the same thing.

The issue at the moment is that many teachers are still struggling to come to terms with the potential of these tools as a new way of teaching and improving the learning outcomes of the students in the class.

When everyone can pull together and help create a pool of ideas to get the most out of these new whiteboards, that is when the most benefit will be felt.

When you are using a whiteboard in the classroom take these six points on board to begin with and use them as the foundation to build up your new range of teaching approaches.

• Stop seeing the whiteboard as just a tool for the teacher to write stuff on. An interactive whiteboard is as much about student involvement as it is you presenting your ideas to the class. Get them up writing on the board or interacting with it to increase their engagement. Make use of the potential it offers to appeal to different kinds of learners.


• Embrace the potential of being able to save screenshots as you go along. These files you save as you go along can be put on the web for students to review at a later date or for you to review before exams. This gives you the chance to go over old topics easily and review solutions and teaching for areas they struggled in (if you keep the mistakes too).


• Take advantage of the fact that it offers you a window to the world wide web. Use the tools that this offers you such as Google maps of live webcams of the lambs at a local farm to bring the world they are learning about to life.


• Instead of thinking of static learning, bring things to life by using video clips and sounds as opposed to just photos. This is another way to broaden the appeal of your teaching to learners of different types.


• Be prepared - make sure you have everything planned out that you want to do on the board beforehand. The smoother and quicker it all goes the better the learning outcome will be.


• Get creative - don't be limited by what you have done before. Use it to create a contextual backdrop in a history class, create a looped video clip of you writing to teach young learners about how to form letters, use online games to help them learn, take the students into a whole new world.

Paul is passionate about teaching and new technology. Just click to learn more about how technology such as interactive whiteboards can be used in schools to help enhance the whole learning experience of students.

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