How can an interactive whiteboard add spice to my lessons?

Saturday, December 5th, 2009 | IWBs

Variety is the spice of life. Yes, life is more interesting when you try to do things in a different way. Variety is like spice which will add flavour to your teaching.

Spices are used to enhance the natural flavour of food – a cinnamon stick makes pumpkin taste better, one clove gives a kick to your stew and a small pinch of chilli can make the world of difference to a boring dish.

Spices are edible – but they are not food. You can’t eat a plate of pepper. If your hand slips and you add too much spice the food will be spoiled.

An interactive whiteboard must be used in the same way that an experienced chef employs spices:

sparingly

skilfully

understanding the anticipated effect on learners.

Don’t feel that you have to use the board every single moment of the day. You are not using the blackboard all the time, but through experience you’ve learned to turn to the board when appropriate. With experience you will reach the same point with your interactive whiteboard: you will use it throughout the day, when suitable.

For example, when you prepare for a history lesson you may find a fitting picture to show at the start of the lesson. Your interactive whiteboard allows you to conceal the picture at first, and then reveal bit by bit of it. Let the learners guess what the picture is – a good way to get them involved. When you question the class about when the scene on the picture happened, why it happened, who were involved, and how the picture makes them feel, the scene is set for you to launch into your lesson. You may not return to the board for the entire lesson, but you have added spice to it.

Perhaps you’ll go overboard when you start using your interactive whiteboard, but as time goes on you will learn to use this device to spice up your lessons and to create an interactive classroom.

Click here for more information about interactive whiteboards.

Tags: IWBs

1 Comment to How can an interactive whiteboard add spice to my lessons?

Mark C
Sunday, 6 December, 2009

Yesterday a friend of mine, a History teacher was discussing how the IAWB would change his way of teaching. Some examples were : The interpretation of cartoons, viewing different sources which changes our history from theory to fact, videos of interesting locations and how they contributed to our circumstances we study as well as ourselves recent history. Having come through the 80′s and 90′s we are living history. This can now be documented with the simplest of devices…a mobile phone and shown via the IAWB / dataprojector. The whole idea is that one can write on them ans save them.
Recently (23/11/09) a meteorite fell somewhere in Gauteng and footage of a CCTV is on Youtube. This was a teaching moment on sceince in action using the IAWB. Wow!
There are many more examples, but if I should teach again I would want a IAWB in my classroom. One of my arsenal of tools!

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