I was fortunate to attend a session on interactive whiteboards last Friday. Luckily, my mentor's name was chosen from a hat to receive one of four interactive whiteboards that will be installed throughout the school. The session I went to on Friday was basically a bunch of sales pitches by the whiteboard companies. The school brought in four different companies that produce the boards so we (a committee of about 15) could pick the best one. To sum up the presentations, interactive whiteboards = awesomeness.
Basically, the an interactive whiteboard consists of three parts: a board, a projector and a computer. You can project anything on your computer onto the board. The key is you can "interact" with the board using an electronic pen. The pen allows you to write on the board and also serves as a mouse. One of the boards came with a software that basically had anything you would ever want on it. For example, any map of anywhere at anytime can be reached with a few pen taps. Also, resources like conjugations for foreign languages, graphs and virtual dissections are available. In sort, its a really powerful tool and I want one.
I hope that my classroom gets one installed within a month or two so I can start utilizing it. I think these types of boards will be commonplace within 10 years. The Bloomfield Hills District put one in every room. So they are starting to show up more and more. One of the sales guys made a good point when he said, "Students come to class and the room looks exactly like it did 30 years ago. They are playing with video games and cell phones before class. But when they get there they see chalk....chalk and a board."
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3 comments:
chris,
i'd love to hear about the ideas you have re: using the whiteboard in class. how much room do you need to use it tho? there's not much room to navigate in front of the board in my room at Wayne Mem.
Chris
Looking forward to hearing about your adventures in the interactive whiteboard world. There are some great interactive whiteboard tutorials on Teacher Tube. Search for "whiteboard"
They are so much fun to play with! And much more interactive than the average PowerPoint.
Also, the kids have fun playing with them, too. It is helpful to get the textbook on a CD-Rom or some such so that you can project it and write all over the thing.
And when you take notes, you can save them and let the kids make a copy or something if you want. But mostly they are just fun. I want one!
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