Interactive Whiteboard

Interactive Whiteboards are designed to focus the attention of the children, but to also to boost the interactivness of the teacher's lesson. Another name for these types of boards is the Promethean Interactive whiteboard System. Based on what I have seen during class, you can do a lot of the board: change pen color, erase, write, find games, and create different interactive activities for the students. Some different things you can do on the board are: allow the students to come up and just write on the board, have games where they have to either write on the board or drag different things around, or maybe they just want to tap different things and see what it does.



In my HS, we had this IWBs in almost every single classroom. Problem was our teachers would never let us use the boards. One of our teachers did, sort of. I was a sophomore in SH and my global teacher had all these different multiple choice questions up on the screen. One by one, he had us all go up to the board and do a couple of the questions. though this wasn't much, it still got the class up and moving. The other teachers either didn't have th boards in their class, or were so afraid that we would break them that they wouldn't let anybody, except them, near the board. Those teachers that only had whiteboards and chalk boards in their room , I felt, should have gotten a IWB. Granted I couldn't read what was ever on the board, but at least later I could go up and read it up close. I can't do that for the regular whiteboards or chalkboards because it inolves being able to read others hand writing. Having a visual impairment makes it hard to read even small print on a screen nevermind someone's actual hand writing. I've seen my vision teacher work with young students, who's teachers use IWBs. She makes it so that the student, who also has a visual imapirment can have a computer that hooks up to that screen so that they could see what was on the board because it would project on the screen right in front of them.

This takes me into the differentiation part. When it comes to differentiation, it's both possible and not. The only time it wouuld be realistic is if you were teacher a class with not so many students in it. The bigger the classroom the more difficulty the teacher will have in meeting all the students needs. The board is designed, with people with diverse learning styles, to be: flexible to use, effectiveness and simplicity For instance, fi the student learns audotorially, the teacher can make the lesson in audio format and the student can listen to it. If you have a tactile student, they can go up to the board and "play around with it." That or the the teacher presents games, or acivities, the student can use the board to teach themsleves the lesson.