Interactive Whiteboards- Improving Teaching
Interactive Whiteboards- Improving Teaching
Bayne, P. (2007). Interactive Whiteboards: Improving Teaching. Teacher183, 28-30. Retrieved February 25, 2008 from Aplus Education Full Text Database.
Interactive Whiteboards are beginning to play a major role in providing a growing number of country schools with access to the same educational resources that are available to their metropolitan counterparts. This reality has surprised me and has enabled me to truly understand the importance of SMART boards within schools.
The SMART boards interactivity means that students can physically get involved with their education as most of the commands on the interactive whiteboard are affected by the touch-sensitive screen or the pens and eraser as discussed in an earlier page. Students at St Joseph’s School in Pemberton believe that the interactive whiteboard is ‘quicker, easier to see, more visual, fosters greater participation from all students, even the shy ones, and is a lot more fun’ (Bayne, 2007). The students believe that there are areas of the SMART board that could in fact be made better, these include; increasing it’s mobility, allowing accessibility to more than one student at a time, making it bigger and making it wireless.
Louden (in Bayne, 2007), a teacher at St Joseph’s in Pemberton states in the article that she would be ‘lost without the SMART board’. She does all her planning and teaching tasks across all KLA’s and believes that the SMART board is particularly useful for the visual learners within her classroom. Louden (in Bayne, 2007), believes the SMART board to be very rewarding and enjoys seeing her students taking an active interest in their education. The interactive whiteboard is so beneficial as it caters to many different ‘learning styles, abilities and multiple intelligences’ (Bayne, 2007) within the classroom which is so important for children in the 21st Century.
With research showing the success of teachers using interactive whiteboards, it is evident that there is no correlation to gender, age or ICT skills. Zetten (in Bayne, 2007) says ‘any teacher is capable of improving their teaching through the use of the technology. They just need to question their teaching, be creative and think outside the box’. I agree!
