The most obvious interactive whiteboard benefit is that it is your blank canvas. Teachers can use it to make a list of subjects to research or to list the implications of whatever topic is being discussed. Those lists can be captured, shared or even turned into the starting point for students’ homework assignments.
Simply print out the notes. Better yet, publish them as a PDF to your website or email them so students can access them at home. Sharing digital files helps reduce paper usage and support your school’s green initiatives. For example, with our Sharp AQUOS boards, you can save the digital ink layer, then capture a screenshot that you can save, email or post on your website.
2. Create Multimedia Presentations
You can go beyond capturing a single page when you put your whiteboard’s screen recording tools to work. Many whiteboards make it possible to record audio, and with online screen recording tools, you can create a multimedia presentation right from the content on your board. Leveraging the many ways that whiteboards can capture information helps integrate several different learning styles, whether through visual, auditory or hands-on interactions.
3. Teach Collaborative Problem-Solving Skills
With the interactive whiteboard as the central tool, teachers can pose a question to the group and hand the reins over to students to let them solve the problem. Students can get hands-on and collaborate using the interactive whiteboard. Because it’s connected to the internet, they can use online information to help them come to a conclusion. Even remote students can participate and provide feedback in real time.
4. Reach Students in a New Way
Perhaps the biggest advantage interactive whiteboards offer is the ability for your students to interact with the subject matter and manipulate objects right on the whiteboard. Research shows that kids learn best when lessons cater to a variety of learning styles. For example, interactive lessons that get kids up and out of their seats appeal to kinesthetic learners.
On a regular white board, you can write notes and draw diagrams to make your point. Interactive whiteboards can do things like spotlight a capital city on a map, reveal text line-by-line as you read or highlight words with your finger. You can also create boxes that hide text and images to reveal later in your lesson. Sections of the board can be magnified to draw attention to specific elements of your lesson such as graphs, keywords or images.
