Express Publishing ELT

 

 
According to an organization named Futuresource Consulting, one in seven classrooms in the world will have interactive whiteboards by the year 2011.
 
So, what are they and how do they compare with chalk and talk blackboards?
IWBs are boards which are touch sensitive, linked to a computer. Whatever you’ve got or can access on your computer can be projected onto the board and you can manipulate what you see by using a mouse, stylus or finger. (There’s no chalk dust.)
Anything written on the board can be saved on the computer and thus sent anywhere. You can send stuff to absent students or share it with colleagues. Lesson notes can be re-used.
When you’re using IWB software, there are more than 57 varieties of what you and your students can do with it. I won’t go into the technicalities here. Express Publishing has clear and detailed user’s manuals and teacher’s guides for various courses using their CDs.
 
Here’s a summary of a report from the British Communications and Technology Agency back in 2003 about the benefits of IWB in the classroom.
- More motivation and enjoyment.
- More participation and collaboration.
- An improvement in personal and social skills.
- Less need for note taking.
- A better ability to cope with complex concepts.
- Accommodation to different learning styles.
- Increased self-confidence.
 
Research in 2007 found that:
- Students were more engaged
- There was more student centred activity
- Teachers asked more questions
- Teachers monitored more
- There were better pass rates on Standards of Learning Tests
 
Particularly for young learners, who may learn better through visual, auditory or kinaesthetic means, IWBs can help. They give students the opportunity to see, hear and touch. (Not that this cannot be done without this technology.)
 
Using an IWB also seems to help fulfil Bloom’s 50 year old famous taxonomy of educational objectives: affective, psychomotor and cognitive.
You have to
- receive
- respond
- value
- organize
- characterize
Those are the affective parts.
Cognitively you have to
- remember
- understand
- apply
- create, analyze and evaluate.
 
IWBs are useful to aid this, particularly in our computer and monitor obsessed societies.
 
It’s still about how you use it. Nothing will replace the teacher – student relationship.