Why IWB

I stupidly got into an argument on the TES forum yesterday with two guys who are not in favour of IWB's and have made their feelings clear on several threads. They wanted to be convinced as to what the IWB could offer over and above just presenting using a laptop and data projector.

I thought it might be useful to add my thoughts here as well.

Here is my response;

I have no doubt that you can do a lot with a PC and a data-projector - even more so if you couple that with a wireless mouse/keyboard and wireless slate which could be passed around the class.

And for showing video clips, powerpoint presentations etc, this is fine. If you want the students to sit and watch something.

The Review Project, when they looked into the use of IWBs said this

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Anecdotally, teachers who have taught firstly with a data projector and then with the addition of a whiteboard all say that they would feel very awkward having to return to their computer each time they want to do something on screen. One remarked that he didn’t feel part of the class when working on his computer. The students are looking at the screen while the teacher is talking somewhere else in the class. With a IWB the focal point is both the teacher and the screen.
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With just projector and laptop the lesson is disjointed. Kids are focussing on one area of the classroom while the teacher is in another. An IWB puts the teacher at the focal point alongside the materials

With a laptop and projector there is more chance of the teacher just "presenting" and pupils being spectators. The boards allow better interaction with the materials - annotating over the top.

Unfortunately, due to the lack of training, teachers still use the IWB to present and there is little interactivity.

Like I said, I agree there is other tech out there too - a tablet PC and projector could do a lot of what is done on an IWB in terms of annotation, interaction, but again you still have the disjointed classroom.

And I say again, It's not about the clipart - you're taking a point I made out of context. But for some teachers, having a ready made resource bank that they can quickly access really helps speed up the creation of lesson materials. The Smart Lesson Activity Toolkit with its interactive flash games, or some of the Promethean flash materials and see how they could be used for lesson starters and plenaries. Yes you can find these online if you know where to look, but many teachers don't have the time to do this

A lot of boards are being used badly, by teachers who haven't been trained on how to get the most out of them, or who just want to "present" to a class rather than interact with them. This needs to be addressed with CPD.

Take a look at the blogs that are appearing from young teachers who have embraced this tech and are doing some amazing things with it to enhance the teaching and learning of whatever subject they are delivering. All agree that there is something that the board adds that makes it more than just a projector

for example Joe Dale's blog: http://snipurl.com/251qt

More research articles (for and against) can be found here;
http://www.schoolfacilities.net/rl/interactive_whiteboards.cfm


If anyone else can post "a defence of the IWB" then it may be worth adding to the thread.

Smart Seminars

If you are a school in the UK you may be interested to hear about a series of seminars that Steljes/Smart are running at venues around the UK. Or you can have the session come to you!

The sessions will focus on getting the most out of your Smart board as well as a demonstration of Smart Notebook 10 and Senteo, their new voting system. You can view a course agenda here.

These sessions are taking place during April/May in 5 locations around the UK. For more information on the locations, and to register a place then click here.

If the dates don't suit you, Steljes can also arrange to have an approved Smart trainer (like me!) come into your own school to run a twilight 60-90 minute session with your staff. Even better, if you arrange this as part of a cluster of 5 schools then they'll pay your school £100 as a hosting fee.

If you are based in the South-East of England, then there's a chance it will be me delivering this session. If that interests you, then get in touch with me and i can explain more. Otherwise get in touch with Steljes on 08450 724800 and they can explain more about this and organise a more local trainer for you.

If you have Smartboards in your school, and you feel you haven't been making the most effective use of them, or you feel you'd like to see what's new or maybe get a look at the Senteo voting kits, then its well worth getting in touch with Smart and having a free training session.

Effective Presentations

Here is my first attempt at using SlideShare to share a PowerPoint presentation I have used in the past.

The presentation covers some of the advice I give to teachers when using PowerPoint or Interactive Whiteboard software such as Smart Notebook or ActivStudio.

It's amazing how many teachers never check the IWB resources they make to see if they can actually be read from the back of their classroom. Often the text is too small, the background too busy and the colour combinations very bad.

This quick guide should help

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Biology on the IWB: 10 Quick Ideas

Here are some quick ideas for using an IWB for Biology teaching.

1. Sequence the stages in Mitosis or Meiosis using images or statements

2. Drag and Drop animals and arrows to create Food Chains and Webs

3. Label diagrams of the various body systems using images captured from the Internet or from the gallery.

4. Investigate genetic crossing using drag and drop punnet squares. In Smart you could use the Infinite Cloner on the B and b, or just stack several letters on top of each other so when you drag one down, the rest remain.

5. Use the camera to capture pictures from the internet to illustrate a lesson on the dangers of alcohol and smoking. Or use the Inside Body powerpoint presentations from the ASE site as a source of images.

6. Sort foods into 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' foods, then use as basis for a discussion about whether there is actually any such thing as an unhealthy food.

7. Simulate how to use a quadrat before going out into the field using random dots and a square annotation, or the square spotlight tool.

8. Combine the IWB with a digital microscope to demonstrate and label slides as a whole class.

9. Keyword Plenary – pupils choose keywords from a selection, drag them into the middle of the screen and use them to explain one thing they’ve learned from the lesson.

10. Use a visualiser (Document camera) when carrying out dissections of the heart or flowers to make it easier for the whole class to see what is going on. Use the camera tool to capture images during the various stages of the dissection and add labels to the images. A cheaper alternative would be to use a webcam clamped to a retort stand

Whiteboards - a beginners guide #3

There are many different ways of interacting with the IWB to support teaching and provide learning opportunities.

Introduction: – Lesson starters, giving the lesson aims and objectives, “Awe and Wonder” introductions

Main body: Explaining practical work/tasks or illustrating main concepts. Using software/ simulations or other software.

Plenary: collecting in results, analysing data as a group, summarising the lesson aims (can easily call them back up from the screen used at the start of the lesson)

The following techniques can all play a role in each of these sections of the lesson.

1. Drag and Drop: This allows the user to move items – either text or pictures around the screen. This is ideal for matching activities, ordering items or labelling diagrams.

There are a range of uses for this simple technique:

• Sequencing – putting events into the correct order, eg steps in an experiment, phases of the moon, stages of digestion, timelines,
  


• Ranking – putting things in order of importance or magnitude eg electromagnetic spectrum in order of wavelength


• Matching – matching words to their definitions, putting matching halves of sentences together, characters and moods, sums and answers
  


• Sorting – eg renewable and non renewable energy sources, healthy and unhealthy foods


• Labelling – eg Putting labels onto diagrams


• Word Walls – drag words to fill in the gaps in cloze procedures.

2. Rub out to Reveal:this involves placing a layer of colour over the top of a word or picture in order to hide it. Use the eraser to reveal the hidden item. If you want to, you can cover the item in the same colour as the background – this makes the item invisible but you do need to remember what you have hidden underneath. Use this for hiding labels on diagrams, or words in sentences.

3. Annotating over Windows: Being able to write over the top of any other software (for example a CD ROM, an internet page or a Microsoft Office document) is very useful. Adding comments, highlighting items, writing additional notes, drawing arrows – all things that can be done by the teacher or by the pupils to discuss and analyse what’s on the board. For example adding annotations over a graph in Excel show how to read data from the graph or pausing a video of different levers and adding arrows to show the direction of different forces.

4. Screenshots: Bringing in resources from other software and the internet can be done easily by using a screenshot. This can be a whole screen, but it is often more useful to take an area screen shot. Google images can be a very useful source of pictures for all subjects. Please note that there are copyright implications and the pictures should only be used in teaching and not sold or widely distributed without the consent of the website owner.

5. Spotlight and reveal: Some whiteboard software allows you to place a spotlight over the area of the board where you want to focus the pupils’ attention. You can also use a reveal technique to show a bit of the board at a time.

6. Using simulation software: Using a combination of data projector and interactive whiteboard it is possible to interact with simulation software such as Crocodile Physics or Focus Science Investigations. The whole class can observe the experiment and suggest changes etc.

Nearly all the features discussed above are available whichever interactive board software you are using. What you need to do is take time to think about the interactivity of each page you create or each task you set.

Whiteboards - a beginners guide #2

There are many ways an IWB can benefits your teaching. Some of them are summarised here:

Motivation: Pupils say that they find it motivating because it is big, bright, and colourful and they can get more involved with the lesson. Teachers find it motivating because it opens up a wealth of resources from which they can select their teaching materials.

Use of images and colour: The IWB/Projector provides a much better quality of image over a traditional overhead projector acetate. This can make diagrams easier to understand. Photographs have more impact. Colour can be used on concept charts/brainstorms to link related ideas.

Use of multimedia: Watching a video has been possible in lessons using a video/dvd player and television but now including short bursts of multimedia is much easier with an interactive whiteboard. These can provide excellent lesson starters or form part of a plenary.

Items can be moved on screen: Text and pictures can be ‘dragged and dropped’ on screen. This can help with a variety of tasks (see below). Using traditional methods, this could only have been achieved through using cut-out pictures or words and blu-tac which was time-consuming for the teacher and may not have been as visually clear for the pupils.

Saving and retrieving materials: All teachers have banks of resources which they use from year to year. However, having them stored as computer files on a laptop or USB stick means that a teacher has all their resources with them all the time. Recapping at the beginning of lessons is proving to be very useful (reload last weeks notes) and saving completed lessons provides a record of work done. The sheer volume of material that can be accessed from a networked computer leaves a well-prepared teacher with a huge bank of resources to draw on. This would be almost impossible in a classroom with no computer.

Hard Copy: It is possible to print a copy of the notes that have been written onto the screen. This means that the teacher can have evidence of work carried out or a group could each be given the results of some collaborative work such as a brain storm task. The screens can be printed for revision purposes too.

Why not just use a Data Projector?

One question often raised is “Why have an interactive whiteboard?” Many teachers have already experienced the benefits of linking a computer to a projector but why not just work at the computer – what difference does it make working at the board?”

Research has provided two answers here:

1) being able to write on the board, either on a blank screen OR over the top of other software is very useful- you couldn’t write with a mouse – you would have to type and this isn’t as spontaneous.

2) working at the board: many pupils enjoy being able to come and work at the board. They perceive the position at the front of the class as being important and enjoy having the opportunity to make their point before their peers.

There is something almost theatrical about working at the board. The fact that a teacher can pick something up and move it in front of an audience and the fact that other events can be triggered by pressing on certain buttons. This could be done on a computer at the side of the board, but the visual impact is not as great and this creates a certain effect on the observer.

Anecdotally, teachers who have taught firstly with a data projector and then with the addition of a whiteboard all say that they would feel very awkward having to return to their computer each time they want to do something on screen. One remarked that he didn’t feel part of the class when working on his computer. The students are looking at the screen while the teacher is talking somewhere else in the class. With a IWB the focal point is both the teacher and the screen.

(source - The Review Project)

Whiteboards - a beginners guide #1

It might be useful to start at the beginning and explain a few basics for those readers who are coming here to find out about Interactive Whiteboards from the point of view of a complete beginner.

What is an interactive Whiteboard?

Wikipedia defines an Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) as

An interactive whiteboard is a large interactive display that connects to a computer and projector. A projector projects the computer’s desktop onto the board’s surface, where users control the computer using a pen, finger or other device. The board is typically mounted to a wall or on a floor stand.

Basically, an interactive whiteboard is a type of touch-sensitive computer screen. They are used in a variety of settings such as in classrooms of all levels of education, in corporate board rooms and work groups, in training rooms for professional sports coaching, broadcasting studios and more.

The basic kit consists of three parts

• The Whiteboard - touch sensitive
• A data projector
• A laptop or PC

The computer projects an image of the computer screen onto the Whiteboard. The user can then interact with the whiteboard screen and move the mouse pointer from the board, rather than having to use a mouse.

Some newer versions involve adding touch capabilities onto a very large LCD monitor. As the price comes down I can see this eventually replacing the need for the data-projector.

Most whiteboards do not have built-in speakers. But often they are bought as part of a kit that includes a speaker and amplifier to enhance the multimedia experience. A decent set of speakers is highly recommended when installing a whiteboard system in your classroom.

There are three main types of board:

1. Membrane / Resistive Boards

This uses several thin layers of material that are stretched across the front of the board. When the surface layer is touched it makes contact with other layers and causes the board to respond. The main type of board that uses this technology is the Smart Board.

Advantages: anything can be used to write on the board, different coloured pens and an eraser can be picked up without having to click on floating tool bars, generally cheaper than solid-state boards of a comparable size. Many children like the fact that they can move things on the board just using their finger. Very nice with SEN pupils.

Disadvantages: board is activated if touched by mistake (you can't lean on it), the surface could be more easily damaged than solid-state boards. If two children are working at the board they need to take turns to touch it as touching it at the same time will confuse the system.

2. Electromagnetic Boards

These boards have a durable hard surface that covers the mesh of electrical wires buried in the board. A special pen containing a magnet is used to interact with these sensors and activate the board. Some of these pens work on their own, others need batteries or to be recharged. Some boards come with a small writing tablet that can be passed round the class, and is used to enter information onto the main board. The main example of this type of board is the Promethean ActivBoard. Cambridge / Hitachi boards also work in this way.

Advantages: Durable surface, higher resolution, faster tracking speeds. Pupils near the board cannot interact accidentally unless they have the pen. Newer boards allow two pens to work at the same time.

Disadvantages: Will only operate with supplied pen (replacement pens can be expensive), changing pen colour or to erase mode requires clicking on floating tool bars. Pens can be prone to cracking or breaking. Buttons can stick and give odd effects.

3. Infrared / Ultrasound

these devices clip on to a conventional non-interactive whiteboard and give it some of the functionality of a 'true' interactive board. They consist of a receiver unit attached to the edge or the corner of the board or flipchart and a set of large pens that transmit a signal to the receiver unit when pressure is applied to the tip. Examples of this kind of system include Mimio and EBeam.

Advantages: Very cheap (about a fifth of the cost of dedicated boards), very portable, comes with several different coloured pens and eraser.

Disadvantages: Pens are big and bulky and use batteries or need charging. The system is more fiddly to set-up and does not respond as quickly or accurately as other technologies. Often the software supplied is quite lacking in features when compared to that supplied with "proper" interactive whiteboards.

Software

The whiteboard is simply an input device that gives the user control of the computer where their finger/pen becomes the mouse. Any computer software can be used on an interactive whiteboard in exactly the same way if you were sitting at the computer.

Most boards will come bundled with their own software which allows the board to be used like a regular whiteboard - but the notes you write can be saved, stored, manipulated, printed. They allow multiple pages, banks of clipart, different page backgrounds such as graph paper and desktop capture.

Not all software works the same way and allows the user a simple interactive experience. If you are buying a board - please test the software out first. Usually you are tied to the software provided. The cheapest boards often come with very user-unfriendly software. This can be a false economy if your teachers then do not use the board because they cannot do the things they want to do easily.

Also be aware of the TDS ActivBoard. TDS is the parent company to Promethean and they sell a board which is almost identical to a Promethean ActivBoard - and does come a lot cheaper. Unfortunately, what is not usually explained is that it does not come with ActivStudio/ActivPrimary software and that this software will not run on the boards. Again you are saving money but getting the useful software that will make using the board a much better experience. I have been in so many schools that have bought these boards thinking they are Promethean boards.

Smart and Promethean do generally have the best software, and are the two boards I would recommend. It then becomes an issue of whether you want to use your pen or your finger and this can be a personal preference.

Blank Canvas

Back from holiday. Had a great time skiing. Photos are up on Flickr if you fancy a look.

I was clearing some of the photos from my mobile phone and I thought I'd share this photo from an IWB session I did a few weeks back.

Once I have gone through the basic tools of Smart Notebook with a group of teachers, I give them 10 mins or so to have a play with the software on a blank page to see what they can create.

Most of the time we get some excellent drawings. Other times, however.....

IWB and Learning Research

Thanks to the NAACE mailing list yesterday I was made aware of some more research into IWB's being undertaken by Cambridgeshire County Council into the use of IWB's in the Primary Classroom.

Only the first phase has been carried out yet, looking at the patterns of interactions when the teacher is leading sections of the lesson using an IWB. There are lesson observations of Literacy, Numeracy and History lessons with reflection on each.

The study is not yet complete, there is a phase 2 yet to come, but it will be interesting to come back later and see what the finished study finds.

You can find the research here.

Clipbank

As well as being an Interactive Whiteboard trainer for Smart/Steljes I also train for other educational companies. One of those is Espresso, which for those that don't know is an excellent library of video clips, news articles and Flash activities for Primary Schools. I have been training for them for about 18months and I love the product. The quality of the videos is very good and Espresso quite deservedly won a BAFTA last month.

So I was very interested to see their secondary product, Clipbank, today at a session designed to get us up to speed with the product to be able to deliver training to schools next year as they buy into it.

Espresso acquired Channel 4 Learning earlier in the year, and Clipbank was one of the products they inherited. They've spent a lot of time tweaking the product to be delivered on a server in-school in the same way as Espresso and the new-look version will be on-show at Bett next month.

Like Espresso you get a very simple user-interface that gives easy access to a wealth of video clips (currently over 2000 clips) for 8 subjects. The quality of the clips is excellent, as you would expect for a company with their media experience.

The potential for using resources like Espresso and Clipbank on the IWB is huge. It means teachers can use short video clips to introduce a lesson or as a way of summarising the main points. Whiteboard tools such as the camera can be used to grab screenshots from the video and bring into the IWB software for annotation. A sequence of screenshots could even be taken and then used as a sequencing activity.

So a great resource, and I look forward to getting stuck in delivering training in Clipbank next year.

The other excitement from the day came from the fact that Espresso headquarters is at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. This is also a working TV studio where the likes of Doctor Who and TFI Friday were filmed. Today they just happened to be filming the Top of the Pops Xmas Special. Apparently the likes of Girls Aloud and the Kaiser Chiefs were in the building. There were huge bouncers on the door and paparazzi hanging around outside. I did see quite a few hairy types carrying guitars and stuff wandering around the canteen but if they were famous I didn't recognise them. It is definitely a sign that I am getting old(er) in that I wouldn't recognise a Kaiser Chief if it came up and kicked me in the backside.... I know their songs but couldn't point one out in a line up.

The Proclaimers were also there apparently, and I'd have much more chance of spotting them, had I managed to see one.

But I didn't. Which was a shame.