Using whiteboards to enhance student learning

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Permalink Reply by Jackie Grice on September 27, 2014 at 9:50pm

Hey everyone, I know that my question seemed kind of hard, so any advice about using SmartBoards in the classroom will help me out a lot!

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Permalink Reply by Janet on September 28, 2014 at 7:37pm

Jackie, 

I too am looking for advice for how to use my interactive whiteboard. I have had one for 7 years and I need some new tricks. I don't know where you are in using the board for your class but I can give a couple of ideas. I create maps or fill in the blanks for assignments. Create a word bank and then lock the assignment so it won't move. Have students one at a time come and move the answer to the correct place instead of calling out answers. Any way you can get kids to come to the board and answer they love. I have notecards numbered 1-20 to pass out and that gives a student a heads up on the question they will answer. Hope this helps. 

Janet Candy

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Permalink Reply by Peggy George on September 29, 2014 at 9:11am

Hi Jackie, There have been some great conversations over the years in these discussion forums related to interactive whiteboards. Sometimes they talk about Smartboards, Promethian boards or other boards by name but lots of ideas have been shared about ways teachers are using them to be truly interactive with students using them (not just teachers). This is one discussion forum I have participated in that has many great suggestions http://www.classroom20.com/forum/topics/649749:Topic:48758 but if you do a search in the forums for smartboards you find many others.

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Permalink Reply by Dave Eveland on October 1, 2014 at 7:11am

There are some great ways to use IWB's for classroom management and whole-class games.  You can also use it as a part of center rotations - providing activities on the board that students can engage in w/o having to cut out a bunch of manipulatives (for example).  One of the easiest ways to simply begin using your IWB is by having students come up to the board at the start of the day (as class is starting) and use the board to indicate what type of lunch selection they're going to have. I have a friend that does this every day - she simply updates the lunch choices each day (there are only 4 options - one is 'brought my own') and the students simply drag and drop their name into the lunch area on the screen that they'll be getting.  Any student names not moved to a lunch selection are students who are absent that day.  While it's not an earth shattering means of using a board - it's an easy way to begin using it - and to get your students familiar with it. Hope you get more ideas!

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Permalink Reply by Josiah Rechenbach on February 23, 2015 at 9:09am

Interactive whiteboards can be very useful in the modern classroom. First, you can show anything on the interactive whiteboard that you have on your computer- powerpoints, videos, pictures, etc. Next, you can interact with certain elements (you can write on your powerpoints, have your students write on them, and more). The interactive whiteboard allows students to write on the board, and the teacher to connect the responses in a technological way. He/she can then save the responses for later use. 

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Permalink Reply by Henrique Giles on March 2, 2015 at 3:52am

I believe two of the most effective ways one can use a smart board is as an interactive projector, and as a whiteboard that saves anything that has been written on it. Imagine a whiteboard that would save any lecture, even if it was erased!

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Permalink Reply by Joe Mason on April 7, 2015 at 12:22pm

I recently used mine as a welcome back from Spring Break. I created a padlet and as students walked in, they posted what they had done over spring break. I think padlet is a great tool to use for low stakes sharing. It doesn't always need a name attached to it, so it can also be low stakes exit slips or exchange of ideas that are projected on the whiteboard.

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Permalink Reply by Ben Parker on April 22, 2015 at 1:36pm

There are a wide range of ways that you can use the whiteboards to enhance learning. They can be used simply as a whiteboard replacement (not really enhancing anything) or can be used in a variety of other ways. Videos can be presented to 'flip' the classroom (start with the video before any work with the idea/subject being presented). Articles/writing examples can be placed up with students being able to highlight or circle where they found their answer (or have blanks for them to fill in). If you use the board's 'notebook' (or presentation tool) you can set up things more similar to a slideshow presentation.

However, one big way it can be used is to give examples and explain how you should do things online. It can be used to show/demonstrate to students how to find information online in a safe and effective manner (search engines, good websites, differentiating facts from opinion). This also leads into the wide range of web tools that are now available to use that can then be tied into your classroom (classdojo for classroom discipline, Prezi or Glogster to present information, Quizlet for flashcards and quizzing).  I know that this is just scratching the surface but I hope the ideas are helpful! 

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Permalink Reply by Lynda Way on May 7, 2015 at 1:29am

I would like to suggest that whiteboard is good and also include projector in your classroom to make effective learning by using videos, animations, pictures and new updates available on the internet.

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