[Tips for Teachers] Best Uses of the Interactive WhiteBoards

Our educational system has been experiencing tremendous changes since the past few years. Heavy textbooks are being replaced by ebooks and Flexbooks , notebooks are replaced by creation devices such as iPads and Tablets, and whiteboards are occupying

 the places of chalkboards. One more advancement in the field of whiteboards is the usage of interactive whiteboards. An interactive whiteboard (IWB) or smart board is a large interactive display that connects to a computer. A projector projects the computer’s desktop onto the board’s surface where users control the computer using a pen, finger, stylus, or other devices.

The board is typically mounted onto a wall or a floor stand and can be used in classrooms as well as workplaces. 

Interactive whiteboards make it easy for educators to enhance the presentation content by easily developing a wide range of material into a lesson, such as a picture from the web, a graph from a spreadsheet or text from a Microsoft Word file, in addition to student and teacher annotations on these objects. They engage students far better than chalk boards, conventional whiteboards and projector-screen combination. If you wish to use this technology in your classroom or if you’ve already implemented it, this guide helps you with the best ways to use the interactive whiteboards.

Record lesson activities:

Educators who are at the beginning stage of using interactive whiteboards can start their implementation with this activity. Interactive whiteboards include a software that enables users to create presentations and take notes. Educators can utilize this feature by recording their lesson activities and notes, encouraging students to come up and jot down few works,   saving all these works for future references. You can also print and publish them for your students.

Many smart board software include screen recording tools. Educators can capture them to provide previous lessons to students within no time.

A few interactive whiteboard resources:

There are thousands of flash files available on the Web which help you deliver lessons effectively using interactive whiteboards. Utilizing such resources can save your time and effort and enhance learning outcomes. The following article covers few such recommendations:

Few Amazing SmartBoard Resources on the Web

Encourage students to work on IWB:

While progressing through several activities on interactive whiteboards, you can get the expertise in its operation. Once you feel comfortable in navigating it, just spend more time giving your students’ the chances to work on it. Encourage your students to create interactive presentations for their own works and also ask them to create resources that contain all learning objectives required for a lesson concept.  

Teacher Comments:

“We put our notes, games, reading and pretty much anything possible on the board so we can write on it and manipulate it to fit what we are doing. Also, the students are much more willing to get involved in what we are doing. Many of the students who would normally just sit and listen will be willing to get involved to be able to come up and use the board. If you just turn the board on it doesn’t do anything to involve them.” – Josh Smeader, 6th grade social studies and science teacher in Mattawan, Michigan.

Explore & Exchange your knowledge by joining many Smartboard communities:

In recent days, collaboration has got increased attention as a great way to improve one’s expertise. There is no doubt that communication with other educators brings new innovations and practices. Many interactive white board vendors have recognized this fact and formed numerous smart board communities. Join such smart board communities, explore smartboard resources and exchange your knowledge with others.  

I recommend (with the help of educators whom I contacted) you a list of few amazing smartboard communities as follows:

SMART Board Revolution:

SMART Board Revolution  is a very good web platform for all SMART Board educators. This is an effective online tool for sharing your ideas, tips and lesson files that can maximize student learning. This website includes so many teachers  across the world, groups
, lesson files, video tutorials, blogs  shared by teachers and much more.

SMART Exchange:

SMART Exchange  enables educators to share resources which optimize student learning.

We hope this information is useful for you to know about a few great strategies of interactive whiteboard usage. We’d like to know about your personal ways of using smart boards in your classroom. Please feel free to share with us in the comment box.