Education with Interactive whiteboards
For several years everybody is telling us the wonderful benefits of Smartboards. But what are these Interactive whiteboards? The whiteboard is a step in the integration of new technologies in the classroom. Education is quite unchanged. if a Roman travel in time, he would be very surprised, but not in classrooms where technology is still used nearly 2,000 years ago in many places.
Interactive whiteboards are, as simple as, a computer connected to a video projector that projects on a whiteboard on which we can write with markers. This is an activity that has been doing a long time, but the big difference is that the new screens also have a sensor that acts as a mouse and allows the teachers and studentes to write digitally on the screen. Everything you type on the screen is scanned and can be reused and teachers can save, print, email them and export them in various formats to be recorded screens. The whiteboards are one of the best forms of education and that accommodate different modes of teaching for teachers who sets high quality content and highlights some elements of them or the simple teacher who takes students "to the board" to solve exercises . Besides it reinforces general teaching strategies with the whole class but using the right strategies it can be combined with individual work of students. The interactive whiteboard for its ability to display all kinds of information through the Internet encourages students' critical thinking and creative use of the board is limited only by the imagination of teachers and students. The wide range of tools to interact with the whiteboard allows teachers to increase their creativity
in explaining, is not the same brush chalk shaped leaves or brush the color you want to mark important things. Another great advantage is that the boards allow the possibility of recording, printing and reuse of stored screens thus reducing the invested effort and facilitating the review of the taught. For example if one day we gave the kind of irregular verbs we can return to it by simply clicking on it. Interactive whiteboard will also connect us with the world with the possibility of video conferencing with students from other classes or even other continents, in collaborative learning through communication tools. Students also receive many advantages, complex concepts are easier to understand thanks to the explanations connected with videos, simulations and images with which you can interact. Students can access digital content can be easily distributed. Most striking full color classes in which collaborative work, discussion and presentation of work in a fancy way enable students more easily motivated to study. And the collaborative work with peers favorices self-confidence and social skills development. Students from distant countries have a new resource that allows them to better explain their customs, traditions and cultural heritage. For students with disabilities, The whiteboards are a breakthrough, visual difficulties can be overcome thanks to the possibility of increasing the size of text and images, as well as the possibilities of manipulating objects and symbols giving more contrast or changes Colour. As the hearing impaired is partially solved with visual displays, digital resources in sign language or even using wireless headphones. The boards are primarily a world of possibilities in education.
Success stories There
are
many
success
stories
in
Educational
Administration,
Schools
worldwide.
In Andalucia, educational administration has made a full commitment to ICT. Gradually giving
levels and classrooms whiteboards creating one of the most prepared generation in digital resources. (http://www.juntadeandalucia.es/educacion/nav/contenido.jsp? pag=/Contenidos/TemasFuerza/nuevosTF/300909_EscuelaTIC20/texto_tic) In smaller environments we can highlight cases like Alhambra Institute (http://www.alhambrainstituto.org/) that it is developing plans to take learning Spanish to a new technological level with the use and development learning whiteboards and offering Spanish digital courses for teachers.
In the United States, although there is a general policy of support for the SmartBoard many institutions are using it from primary schools (Frenchtown Elementary School in New Jersey and Pennsylvania) to universities like the University of Florida (http://guides.law.fsu.edu/RCTechnology/SmartBoard).