Job Discussion Forums

[Ludwig]

[shmooj]

Just some of the things that you can do with an IWB....

Display anything you can on a computer i.e.
worksheets you have created
pdf files
images
the Internet (and thereby an almost infinite selection of clipart, video and audio to illustrate anything via Google or AltaVista)
videos
windows media player with the funky screensavers and the lights off (kids love this!)
You can, of course, type directly onto the board from a computer at the front of class which is superfast if you can touchtype and obviously, extremely legible.

Accessing the Internet means that you can immediately access the thousands of ready made activities for ELT already on the net especially flash animated stuff for kids and they can interact with it live, on the huge screen at the front. They love it.

You can freeze the board or blank it while you prepare the next thing and then reveal it. You can zoom in to an area on the board too.

Of course you can write on the boards too but one of the best features is that you can write over all of the above as if you had laid a screen of glass over it. So you can

Bring up a worksheet you've done in, say, Word and then fill it in with your pen to show kids, for example, how to do it for homework.
You can draw over webpages too.

You can also use functions such as spotlight which only highlights a circle you drag over the screen - great for vocab guessing games, or the blind which allows you to drag and reveal from any side of the screen.

There are loads and loads of things you can do.

Powerpoint is one of the best programs out there to use with an IWB. I use powerpoint every day. For example, today with 8 year olds, I had a powerpoint of a song we use timed to reveal words on the beat when I clicked the pen on the board. When the kids have got the hang of it, they will be doing the clicking and picking up the rhythm of the song and thereby prosodic features of English through kinasthetic associations.

You can drag and drop images around the place. You can click on a map and drag/draw it immediately in any colour on the board - great for showing people where in fact the UK is and how it is divided up.

You can even take what someone has written and select it, enlarge it, cut it, copy it, paste it, put it on a new page... so, when kids write a drop letter ON the line, instead of dropping below it, I can select it and have them drag and drop it to the right place, thereby reinforcing where the letter should be placed.

It is so versatile that it is only limited by the time and imagination that I have to put into it!

A couple more drawbacks though:
if you put the board on freeze while the countdown timer is displayed or an animation or video is displayed, it will freeze it.
if you write over a document or webpage and then remove the "glass" screen to, say, scroll down in the document, all you've written will disappear and not return when you bring back the "glass"

[gugelhupf]

I must apologise for confusing our hopeless piece of kit with what is obviously something quite different - our thing is something called a "Softboard" or "Smartboard" and is worse than useless. I can't comment on IWB's as I have never seen one.

I do use powerpoint a lot for non EFL teaching and lecturing and find it very useful and a damn sight faster than putting together a slideshow in any other medium. Trouble is, IT technology is still so damn unreliable that I always end up printing off OHP transparencies as a fallback if I'm giving an important talk.

[Ludwig]

'Shmooj', thank you for (another) informative post. One point caught my imagination:

[shmooj]

[guest of Japan]

Shmooj, that was interesting. Now I want one too.

[Gordon]

Maybe I could put it on my research budget, I'm so sick of chalk.

Who makes these whiteboards? Are they portable at all?

[shmooj]

Nope, they aint portable cos they come with a computer and a projector. Try lugging all that around. If moved, and from time to time even if they aren't moved, they have to be calibrated so that the pen and the marks you make are actually in the same place. So, obviously, moving them regularly would be a huge hassle in terms of hardware and then the inconvenience of having to recalibrate although this only takes twenty secs or so.

[once again]

What exactly is an interactive white board?

[gugelhupf]

This thread has given me the impetus to have a long look at Powerpoint for a few more innovative ideas for use in the ESL classroom. Much of what I have done in the past with Powerpoint has been in a lecture situation but I'm sure there are plenty of ways to use it in a more student-centred manner - not least getting students to produce their own presentations in English as a group activity.

Shmooj's excellent idea with the song could be repeated in so many ways. Given a reliable hand-held remote mouse it would be possible to circulate the classroom to allow students to operate the controls without the disruption of bodies running back and forth to the teacher's desk.

[SueH]

Shmooj,

Thanks for your long and thought-provoking post - it really picqued my interest. There are IWBs at some of the colleges where I work, but I've never been on the training. As an ex systems analyst with a healthy scepticism about technology I've never felt I was missing much.

But like everything, until it is a universal fitting in every classroom I'll have a natural resistance based on past experience in trying to get, book, move, set-up the one video-player or whatever other piece of kit seems helpful for a particular lesson.

The other area that worries me is the tendency I've seen (not necessarily in teaching) to use equipment just because it is available, and the use of every bell and whistle, whether relevant or not.

What is your experience of the influence on lesson preparation time and do the students get disappointed if you don't produce the flash effects?


Thanks again for your post which I shall copy and put in a safe place ready for when I get on one of the courses.

Sue

[shmooj]

[once again]

Thanks for that smoo...very kind..we have projectors and computers..can they be converted with software...or is it all in the hardware...?

[shmooj]

If you have a digital projector and a computer I would think you only need the board, software and pens to go about finishing the job. HOwever, this has got to be the most expensive part of the kit.

no idea on prices.

Bear in mind that if your IWB goes, you don't even have a surface to write on normally. Your computer can stall, crash or simply die on you. Your projector bulb could blow. This has happened to a few teachers here over the last few months. Lesson materials flushed down the swanee....

veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery frustrating!

[ls650]

In my day we used a good old-fashioned chalkboard - none of this new-fangled whiteboard stuff.

And we liked it that way. Dammit, we loved it!