I just opened the 2011 Lakeshore Learning Materials Elementary catalog and I have just one word to say….WOW!!! Okay I can’t stop at one word; let’s add on EXCITING, INNOVATIVE, AWESOME, ENGAGING, and CAPTIVATING!
It's no secret that I'm a great fan of this educational supply company, but I just have to say that their new Technology section is sixteen pages of awesome learning! Lakeshore’s creative product developers have designed over 100 new interactive software-learning programs to use with interactive whiteboards and computers. That’s right, even if you don’t have an interactive board, you can use these CD-ROMS on your classroom computers or in your school’s computer lab. There are programs suitable for all grades 1 through 6. I never thought I’d want to go back to the fourth grade, but with these great tools, learning has never been so much fun! I am by no means a “techie,” but if you are not familiar with the Interactive Whiteboard here’s my very basic 4-1-1 to get you in-the-know.
The interactive, touch-enabled white board (i.e. SMART Board) has actually been around for almost twenty years, but in the past 5-7 years they have gained wide-spread popularity in classrooms. Today these boards are used by literally millions of students across the globe. An interactive whiteboard is basically a combination of a specially designed dry erase whiteboard and an LCD projector. It can be mounted on the wall just like a white board, or freestanding on a floor stand. The board is controlled by computer software, which turns the whiteboard into a jumbo computer screen easily viewed by an entire classroom. Combined with Lakeshore’s new learning software programs, kids can literally walk up to the board, touch the board and match rhyming words to pictures, move words into sentences, identify cause and effect, or ride a snowboard down a mountain! Is that cool or what!
The Impact on Education
Lots of research, both formal and informal, has been done on the effectiveness of these interactive boards. You have to determine exactly what you mean by “successful,” but most teachers using these boards agree that the boards themselves are really just a tool. An incredibly powerful tool, without a doubt, but it’s the teacher using the board that makes the real difference.
Heather Wolpert-Gawron, 7th and 8th grade Language Arts teacher and 2004 California Regional Teacher of the Year, stresses that both effective training in how to use the boards and effective teaching is critical. In her article on “Technology Combined with Good Teaching Leads to Success,” Heather cites the studies done by educational researcher Robert Marzano which show some pretty impressive results of student achievement scores when a trained teacher confidently incorporates technology, like the interactive boards, into their daily teaching arsenal of tools.
As with any new technological tool, there are plenty of opinions to go around.
The PROS:
- Increases student motivation and involvement in the learning process
- Promotes student collaboration and problem-solving
- Notes and information written on the board during a lesson can be stored for future use records and documents student achievement
- Allows teachers to develop creative, multimedia lessons for easy access in the future
- Appeals to a wider range of students’ intelligences (visual, motor, social and digital)
- Allows teachers to create lessons and outlines for substitute teachers
- The dry-erase markers (or the cleanser used on a whiteboard) can irritate the eyes, nose or throat of youngsters who are particularly sensitive to the chemical out-gassing
- The cost of the boards and projectors themselves, as well as the supplies needed for their effective classroom use, can be cost prohibitive for many schools. Outside funding or non-profit groups are often needed to raise money to purchase these boards
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