Making the Leap to Interactive Whiteboards

  • 09/21/06

Making the Leap to Interactive Whiteboards

By Denise Averill

Interactive whiteboards are replacing chalkboards in many districts across the country. Could your district be next? You better hope so.

Interactive whiteboards help you integrate digital information into teaching, presenting, and brainstorming. These easy-to-use collaboration products improve learning and meeting effectiveness by enhancing communication. They also help create an active audience engagement, which, in turn, saves you time and effort.

Today’s interactive whiteboards maximize student retention and learning by using hands-on technology tools to enhance learning. The interactive whiteboard’s touch-sensitive display connects to a computer and digital projector, enabling you to control specific computer programs and write notes on the whiteboard with a special digital pen. Through the use of this cutting-edge presentation technology, you are able to write notes, insert diagrams, link to Web sites, and save your work for future use.

We live in such a fast-paced digital world where our students are very comfortable with—and are “hard-wired” to—using computers for everything from communication to gaming. So, why shouldn’t we be using the same tool that the children work so well with in our schools?

Remember, children are comfortable with technology and are willing to embrace new concepts and ideas that aid them in learning. They will also respond better to a teacher who shows the same comfort level. If you’ve visited a toy store recently, you’ve seen the plethora of electronic toys and educational games for youngsters starting as young as 18 months. Thus, it only makes sense that we move from the chalkboard to the whiteboard.

I know that there will be teachers who think that pen and paper still work just fine—and they do. But we must make a concerted effort to move ahead with the changing times. We have entered the digital realm, and we must conform to it for the good of our students and the good of our schools.

Denise Averill is a teacher at Roberge Elementary School in River Vale, N.J.

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