HOW TO TEACH A LESSON USING INTERACTIVE WHITEBOARD
Interactive Whiteboards (IWBs) have
held a prominent place in conversations about technology integration in the
American schoolhouse for nearly a decade. Teachers see IWBs as motivating
gadgets that can capture the attention of students. School leaders see IWBs as
tangible symbols of innovation and reform that can be touted on parent nights,
and policymakers see IWBs as the key to preparing students for the 21st
Century. Even Barack Obama believes that IWBs should play an important role in
tomorrow’s classrooms, writing during his 2008 presidential campaign:
Imagine a future where our children
are more motivated because they aren’t just learning on blackboards, but on new
whiteboards with digital touch screens; where every student in a classroom has
a laptop at [his or her] desk; where [students] don’t just do book reports but
design PowerPoint presentations; where they don’t just write papers, but they
build web sites; where research isn’t done just by taking a book out of the
library, but by emailing experts in the field; and where teachers are less a
source of knowledge than a coach for how best to use it and obtain knowledge.
By fostering innovation, we can help make sure every school in America is a school
of the future.
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The challenge with IWBs is a simple
one, however: They are costly investments that do little to automatically
encourage innovative teaching. Described by honest companies as a bridging
technology designed to bring digital tools into traditional classrooms, they do
more to facilitate existing practices — whole class lectures and presentations,
independent work by individual students at “the board” — than they do to
transform learning. Sadly, this pattern has become all too common — and
comfortable — in digital integration efforts. As Clayton Christensen, Curtis
Johnson, and Michael Horn demonstrate in
Disrupting
Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns,
most teachers use new technologies like IWBs to simply “sustain their existing
practices and pedagogies.”
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STRATEGIES
FOR INNOVATION
That
doesn’t mean that the Interactive Whiteboard in your classroom — especially if
it is paired with sets of student responders and/or wireless slates — can’t be
used to innovate. Like any tool in the hands of a talented teacher, careful
decisions and systematic efforts can help to ensure that your IWB doesn’t go to
waste. If you’re lucky enough to work in a school or a district that has
outfitted classrooms with IWBs, consider the following strategies for making
the most of this digital investment.
ASK
OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS WITH RESPONDERS
For
many teachers, the immediate feedback offered by the sets of student responders
often paired with IWBs is invaluable. With little effort, teachers can collect
formative assessment information that can be used to inform practice “in the
moment.” And while this kind of work is responsible and intelligent, it can
lead to an over-reliance on lower-level multiple choice questioning techniques.
To avoid this
trap, begin using your student response systems to ask open-ended Likert scale
style questions in your classroom — How much should the world care about global
warming? What responsibility do wealthy countries have to support development
in poor countries? How important is freedom of speech? Then, give your students
a range of common perspectives to choose from. After you’ve initially surveyed
your class, encourage students to share their perspective and deliver a lesson
connected to the content that you are studying. When your lesson is finished,
resurvey your class and see whether or not student perspectives have changed. Encourage
students who revised their original thinking to explain the reason for their
revisions. By doing so, you can ensure that your IWB promotes higher-order
thinking in your classroom.
GET
YOUR WIRELESS SLATES IN THE HANDS OF YOUR STUDENTS
One
of the most valuable tools often bundled with Interactive Whiteboards are
wireless slates or tablets that can be used to control the IWB from anywhere in
a room. Slates unchain teachers from the front of the class and allow them to
move freely throughout their room to monitor and manage the progress of their
students while continuing to present key concepts.
Slates become even
more valuable, however, when they are put into the hands of students. Consider
having students use slates to work out different solutions to a common problem.
Ask your class to watch for mistakes or misconceptions as a peer completes a
task transparently. Create comparison/contrast activities that allow groups to
consider the common characteristics of a concept that you are studying in class
by manipulating a collection of important vocabulary words. Whatever you do,
recognize that student-centered IWB activities depend on your willingness to
put IWB hardware into the hands of your students.
RECORD
YOUR LESSONS AND POST THEM AS TUTORIALS
In
a world where the range of abilities within each classroom is becoming
increasingly diverse, creating opportunities for remediation is nothing short
of essential. Unfortunately, structuring targeted remediation efforts can be
overwhelming for already overworked educators.
That’s why
innovative teachers have started to use the screen-capturing software packaged
with IWBs to record full-length lessons and mini-tutorials for their students.
After each lesson is recorded, it can be posted online in a remediation warehouse.
Students who fail to demonstrate mastery can be pointed to specific tutorials
designed to reinforce classroom teaching. What’s more, parents can visit
tutorial collections and learn to provide more effective support for their
children at home.
REQUIRE
STUDENTS TO WORK THROUGH “ENHANCED PRESENTATIONS” WHILE WORKING TO PERSUADE
With
the explosion of visual content available online, the very nature of persuasion
is changing. No longer are the most influential ideas communicated in
text-based presentations. Unfortunately, however, text-based presentations
remain the norm in most school classrooms.
To better prepare
your students for the multimedia world that they will inherit, require that
presentations in your classroom draw from the full range of interesting content
available online. Have your students integrate short video clips and websites
that can be used to influence their audience into their final products. Instead
of creating simple slide decks with static content, insist that presentations utilize
the full range of tools offered by your IWB. While initial efforts are likely
to be balky, your students will eventually learn to toggle between the content
and tools that are the most effective at communicating key points.
LET
YOUR STUDENTS IMAGINE USES FOR YOUR IWB
For
whatever reason, schools have been notoriously bad at seeking feedback from
their primary customers — the students sitting in their classrooms. Instead of
co-creating motivating learning environments together, teachers generally continue
to struggle when asked to relinquish authority over instructional decisions.
This hesitance
carries great consequences — especially in an environment where students are
far more comfortable with imagining new uses for digital tools than their
teachers. That’s why the most progressive teachers turn control over their IWBs
to their classes. By asking your students to reflect on the kinds of learning
experiences that they find the most motivating and then giving permission for
free exploration with your IWB, you’ll not only be surprised by the quality of
the discoveries that they make, you’ll also convince your students that they
are capable thinkers and learners — and equal partners in the cycle of
instruction.
VISIT
THE LESSON LIBRARIES CREATED BY THE MAJOR IWB COMPANIES
As
skeptical as some critics are about the impact that Interactive Whiteboards can
have on classroom teaching, there are some truly remarkable educators that are
using their IWBs to effectively change their classrooms. Many of these educators
freely share what they are learning in lesson libraries maintained by the major
IWB companies.
After signing up
for free accounts at Promethean Planet or
the Smart Training Center,
you’ll gain access to lesson collections sorted by content area and grade
level. You’ll also see streaming video of teachers using their IWBs in their
classrooms. All of these opportunities can help you to think through the kind
of teaching and learning that IWBs make possible.
Sharing best practices
As
you begin to design lessons and activities with your Interactive Whiteboard, be
sure to share everything that you learn with your peers! While good
applications of IWB technology exist, they can often be time consuming to
imagine and to create. Working together over time, your faculty can document
the kinds of practices that are the most effective at delivering content and
engaging your student population. Doing so will ensure that your IWB becomes
something more than a tool that simply sustains existing pedagogies.
