Chapter 1, Question and Explore, relates to the Williamson text Chapter 1 where it talks about getting to know the technology that you are using and understanding the operations and concepts of the program. This chapter helps the teacher learn how to begin to use the whiteboard. In the Williamson text it is talking about learning the common features and functions of computer software. In "Getting the Most Out of Your Interactive Whiteboard" chapter 1 is based on this same idea.
The chapter begins by giving details on how to begin to use your white board. It explains how to orient the board so that you can use it and advises you to keep your lesson objective in mind when determining how you want to use the board. The books suggests posing a question or presenting a problem for the students to solve. It gives detailed instructions on how to write and type the text into your document. It also tells how to take notes and how the teacher can add more pages to their document. It explains how to organize information and then if the teacher wants to save and/or print it helps him/her to know how to do that. It even gives guidelines on times the teacher may not want to save their document or changes made to it. The chapter goes on to tell how to use additional features of the white board as well as using it on-line. The white board has tools available for the teacher to use and helps him/her to understand how to use them.
In the class I am doing my internship my teacher, Ms. McLemore, just received a board like this at the end of last year. She is just learning to use it as am I while I am in her class. It is a very useful and beneficial tool because of the resources we can access on line that the students can be actively involved with. Being able to create documents as well that we can use and show the students on the screen is very beneficial as well. I have not used a lot of technology in the past when I have been in school classrooms. But now that Ms. McLemore has this in her room it amazes me how much we use it. We use it everyday, several times a day. There are so many different functions and ways we can use it that it does not get boring because we are doing the same thing over and over. It seems that every activity we can do in an unique way that helps to keep the students attention. I hope to have one in my classroom, when I have my own, and I am looking forward to learn more and more about what I can do on it. Ms. McLemore and me are very new at this and as much as we use it I know we have not even begun to realize all the things we can do with it.
Good for both of you in learning to use it!
ReplyDeleteThe challenge is to use it interactively with the students. Too many teachers use it as little more than a screen for PowerPoint and PowerPoint-like presentations. Getting students involved seems to be the key to realizing the full potential of the board.