Korean Job Discussion Forums

[chotaerang]

I saw this video on TED http://www.ted.com/talks/johnny_lee_demos_wii_remote_hacks.html and thought it looked great but I can't think of what to do with an interactive board (or a hack). What are effective ways to use this in elementary and middle school classes?

[WadRUG'naDoo]

You can expand/focus in on parts of the books, play audio, have students use it in front of the class, grab files, etc. all while standing and facing the class where the students don't have their noses in their books having to look up and down all the time.

[edwardcatflap]

For me the biggest advantage of interactive whiteboards, compared to projector plus powerpoint, is the way you can write on the board with what feels like a real pen for ever and it will never run out. The interactive software enables you to flip to another blank board very easily as soon as you run out of space but you can also save all your work if you want. The guy in the video is doing it on the cheap with an infa red pen and adobe photoshop software. This is better than using projector plus PPT and writing with a mouse but you are limited by the software.

He showed us you could write quite easily but didn't demonstrate how you can change the size of the font, reduce the text, move it to another part of the board etc.. all of which you can do on an interactive whiteboard. In the second half of the video he demonstrated some weird thing with a 3d room that didn't look like anything you might want to use in the class room. Basically it looked impressive because he was talking about stuff he did that cost 50 dollars compared with a 2,000 dollar interactive white board and that's why people cheered. It looked ok initially but I'd like to see him do a bit more stuff related to actual teaching before he would convince me. I've been using interactive whiteboards for about 5 years in the classroom and I can tell you they piss on any other technology out there - for teaching. They've got their faults but they're so much more in line with what teachers actually want than anything else available.

[jrwhite82]

They're great for creating mind maps for brainstorming and organizing ideas.

They will make any lesson more visually engaging. For example, if you are teaching a lesson on prepositional phrases, you can have some sentences on the smart board and have the students come up and highlight or underline the sentences with cool animations. It will keep them more engaged, which means they will learn more and reduce behavior issues at the same time.

[Confused Canadian]

Not knocking the interactive white boards (wish I had them at my school), but for those of us stuck with projectors and PPT, this is a great site for creating mind maps:

https://bubbl.us/beta/

[Juregen]

tu

[bianca_dee]

This guy is a genius! That was awesome!

[Milwaukiedave]

I worked at a high school last year that had one. It was pretty neat, but it takes some getting use to. Also had some technical problems, so when the right person wasn't around to fix it, life sucked.

[lorenchristopher]

I saw this video and was wondering the same thing!! What are some good activities or games that would really bring out the fun of having an interactive white board?

There are some English flash games, or barryfunenglish.com has some games where the students could come up with the pointers and compete, etc. Hope this thread continues with some more ideas.

I move classrooms every 50 minutes, so calibrating it each time would be a pain.

[wallythewhale]

I'm currently using one right now for my elementary school. honestly, you don't have to play games with them to make them fun. students love to come up and just use the pen to write words/sentences. they always get a kick out of that. games are a bonus.