Nathalie :: Blog

During our last meeting, I took some footage of members of our group while they were sharing their experiences and lesson ideas.

This file illustrates how Jamie's grade 3's sign themselves in upon arrival, and simple agenda org.

This one shows a varity of content from the Smart Notebook Gallery.

Looking good Jamie!

Barb

Are you interested in contributing to this Interactive Whiteboard Presentation with a educators from around the world.  If you have some tips and tricks to add please send me a message through Commun-it and I will invite you into the shared development area of the presentation as a collaborator.  You will need an account on Google to jump into the editing portion of this presentation.

Has anyone here used IWB as "a vehicle for moving non-techie teachers into embedding digital resources into their teaching"?

IWBs do not dethrone the teacher as much as blogging does, for example. Does that make it an effective tool in teacher professional development?

I've been using interactive whiteboards for some time now but have discovered lately that I'm not as enthusiastic about this technology as I was at the beginning. I think one of the reasons why I've become reluctant to use the whiteboard in my classroom is because it tends to make my classes very teacher-centric. After all, it requires that I stand in front of my class and deliver the old chalk and talk ... well ... click and talk. Yes, the board is very interactive but mostly for the person actually using it - the teacher. Once the novelty wears off, the students just treat it as yet another teacher tool.

So, I've started using some strategies that counteract that reluctance and minimize that sense of teacher-centred classroom and content delivery. First of all, I've stopped using it myself and, instead, have been giving my students opportunities to present their work using the interactive board. It also works well for group projects because group members can jump in at any time and take control of the presentation by tapping the screen. There's no more need for three or more students to crowd around the computer.

Currently, I'm working on a new strategy which essentially entails making individual students responsible for teaching specific parts of a longer lesson/topic. Everyone has a chance to present their work and use the technology while contributing to what is essentially one project. After March Break, I will be saving all their work as image files and putting it on Flickr so that they can be easily accessed. In addition, once the slides are on Flickr, every student will be able to comment on the work of his/her peers. The conversation that begins in class will continue online even after we move on to another topic.

I'm not sure how effective the above strategies are in helping sustain a sense of community. They have certainly made me embrace this amazing technology again.

Does anyone have any other suggestions on how to sustain a sense of community and eliminate the teacher-centred approach?

We are yet again trying to make a wireless laptop cart work at a school and are experiencing some serious issues that are leading us to not pursue this technology right now.  Some of the serious issues we are experiencing are:

1)  batteries...because so many different teachers are using the machines, the laptops may be charged or they may not be, as well, the shelf life on the batteries is very poor.

2)  Imaging...because of the limitations of bandwidth, we cannot reimage these machines on the wireless network, instead we need to have them physically connected to our network.  This is very problematic when reimaging the entire cart.

3)  connectivity...because of the nature of the wireless AP's (and we use Cisco equipment), connectivity is sometimes dropped, resulting in lots of frustration on the part of the user.

I realize that there are other boards throughout the province that are experimenting/implementing these roving carts, and I was wondering if anyone could address these three big issues for me from their perspective?

Thanks,

/shawn

One of the tools that I like to use is the power of social bookmarking in order to identify resources that I can use for PD or pass on to my peers. Del.icio.us is great tool tool for a live update of new materials that educators can use. 

Take a look at:

http://del.icio.us/tag/iwb and http://del.icio.us/tag/whiteboard 

Have any favourite resources for IWB?