Interactive Whiteboards

Pupils take part in a "timed gather" activity.

Interactive Whiteboards are slowly and successfully impacting on the ways in which we deliver our teaching. Pupils are experiencing a whole raft of new learning techniques as these ground breaking new tools allow teachers to develop resources which appeal to a range of learning styles in a way in which suits the “digital natives” we are presented with everyday in the classroom.

Along with card sorts, group work, paired work, post-it notes, scissors and glue, poster making, voting with your feet (and a raft of other kinesthetic, auditory and visual learning tools we’ve been using for years) teachers have the opportunity to gain instant feedback on a class’s prior knowledge with voting tools and personalised games. Pupils can take control of the direction the entire lesson takes as they choose where to go next in a well designed lesson resource. The software provided with the boards is helping teachers to create lesson resources for free where as, in the past, they’ve paid hundreds (or even thousands of dollars). Visualisers allow pupils to instantly display their work on the big screen and for fellow pupils to help them develop their response based on predefined success criteria which match the lesson’s objectives.

Which ever way you look at it IWBs are a part of current teaching pedagogy in most schools in most countries and they are having an amazing impact on the way we teach and our students learn. Use the links in this section of the site to learn more about these exciting tools, find some free resources to get you started or find a training course where you can get more one to one help.