Interactive Whiteboards

I, like many of you, am very excited to be doing our first project using the SMART board. However my initial reasoning was not very strong. I was just super excited to write on the board with the fake pens and play with the cool settings. After reading this article I am even more excited. I knew that interactive whiteboards were great, but I did not realize the magnitude for which they benefit the classroom. The most important benefit that I got out of this article is how they appeal to a large variety of students' learning styles.

Many students find staring at a chalk board for any extended length of time to be boring. Thus, for students with attention disorders who need change to keep them focused, the interactive whiteboard will help them excel. Using an interactive whiteboard allows for many changes of backgrounds and introduces interesting twists to ordinary lessons. For visual learners, the increased accessibility to multimedia will help suit their needs. Kinesthetic learners will enjoy being able to touch the screen in a lesson that usually would not be hands-on. The list goes on and on, and I believe teachers will be able to reach out to all learners using the interactive whiteboards.

I wonder if there are critics of this new technology. If so, what is their reasoning. From my experiences, interactive whiteboards only make education better. Last year at BJHS, I saw more hands in the air to participate than I thought was possible. The students were so eager to write their answers on the screen. I hope that we are all lucky enough to have such technology in our classrooms once we become teachers.