Interactive Whiteboards

Before this week’s session, having to learn how to use an interactive whiteboard was one thing I wasn’t particularly looking forward to as part of my teacher training. Watching teachers desperately trying to figure them out, during lessons when they wouldn’t do what they wanted them to, made me feel that they are sometimes more trouble than they’re worth. However, I realised during this week’s lesson on how to use a SMART board, that during my experience I hadn’t always seen them being used to their full potential.

In class we had to teach ourselves and other members of the group how to use a specific tool featured in the SMART software so that by the end of the session everyone knew how to use a number of tools. Each feature is one that allows children to become actively involved in the lessons with opportunities to come up and use the board- and in doing so being interactive!

Recorder- allows you to record what you are doing as you do it and thus play it back when you are done, pause, fast forward or rewind.

Fade Buttons- allow you to hide an answer or part of a sum (for example)- children that think they know the answer can come up and check themselves by clicking on the ‘button’ on screen to reveal the answer. Balloon Pop and Erase to Reveal are similar tools - pop the balloons or erase the pen to reveal something hiding beneath.

Checker Tool- here you can have a question and a set of multiple choice answers and a ‘checker box’ - you can drag each answer into the checker box and it will tell you whether it is right (tick) or wrong (cross).

Tunnel- drag a question through the tunnel and the answer will come out the other side.

These were just a few of the new skills we learnt in class, most of which you can search under ‘Gallery’, remembering that for certain tools you have to ‘group together’ or ‘send to the front/back’. The session was an eye opener to the many things you can do with an Interactive Whiteboard to aid your teaching and make lessons more interactive- its how you choose to use them!