Tech4Teachers.info

I’ll start this post by saying my 8 year old son Noah (he did all my video taping) just finished third grade at an elementary school in the Buffalo area. I can recall just a couple months ago helping him study for a science test that had some things on it related to food chains. After checking this next video out, I immediately had flashbacks of our study sessions. I don’t think his teachers used a Whiteboard, but if they see this video, I’m sure they’ll want one.

This next video showcases how the Smartboard brand of whiteboards can be used in a more advanced capacity within the sciences. The video takes a little time to download, but it will definitely give a slightly different spin on how this tool can be used.

To view the video in a Windows Media Player format, click HERE (please be patient). For QuickTime, click HERE.

Finally, Jane Chalmers does an incredible job of teaching about the planets using her whiteboard. She even uses it to play a video that gives the students a better sense of the distance between planets. An additional lesson is provided in the same video by Ally Goff about electricity.

Click HERE when your’e ready to view the video.

These two videos were put together by social studies teacher Tim Hopper at Chippewa Middle School in Okemos, MI. Not only does he provide an excellent overview of how the Whiteboard (he’s using a SmartBoard brand Whiteboard), he also shows how it can be integrated into social studies class.

In addition to these videos, I’ve located Web-based activities that can be used with a Whiteboard. Remember, Whiteboards are basically large, touch-sensitive computer monitors. With that in mind, take a look at these activities designed to be used with a Whiteboard in social studies class. The first is about famous people and the second is to develop mapping skills. Both are aimed at younger students between 7-9 years old.

Click HERE to begin “Famous People”.

Click HERE for “See you see me - Landscapes”

Students these days are so used to being able to interact with information. It helps the information become part of them and it keeps them engaged. This can be particularly helpful in a subject like math. The video you’ll see next showcases Angela McNeil’s use of Promethean’s version of the interactive Whiteboard. I wish those things were around when I was a kid!

To see how a Whiteboard can be used in math class, click HERE.

This next teacher spotlight shows how life can be infused into the Pythagorean Theorem using a little help from an Interactive Whiteboard. Click HERE to watch the video.

This last example features a kindergarten teacher utilizing a whiteboard to demonstrate addition and comparing sums. She uses a dice program that is one of the many programs that has been created specifically for the whiteboard used in the video. Talk about visual!!!

I see Whiteboards as being a key element in developing writing skills in English class. The video below shows how a Whiteboard can be used to encourage students to utilize adjectives more in their writing assignments.

This next video is designed to highlight the value of Whiteboards in building the foundation when it comes to reading and writing. If you get your students to understand these concepts at the early levels, their chances of succeeding later in life will be much better.

Finally, the next video you’ll see spotlights Antonio Coleman’s use of Promethean’s Whiteboard in his fourth grade English class. He has his students organizing the events of a story on the Whiteboard as well as some other pretty amazing things. It definitely beats the old chalk board!

To see the video, click HERE.

Through seeing and making associations between images and meaning, we acquire languages. An interactive whiteboard is a perfect tool to display images and have students make associations between what they see and what they here. In this next video, we see Marie Daniels incorporating a whiteboard as well as other technologies into her teaching practices to provide her students with an engaging experience.

To view the video, click HERE.

Because teaching English as a second language is very similar to teaching a foreign language to English-speaking students, I decided to incorporate videos that highlighted ESL teachers using whiteboards. For a foreign language teacher, the similarities will be obvious and ideas should start to flow. This next video showcases a teacher using a whiteboard to demonstrate prepositions. She then has students drag objects around the screen based on the prepositions they are learning.

In this final video, the same teacher utilizes the Whiteboard to teach the past tense of various verbs. She has a student come up to the board to complete an action and asks the rest of the class what that student did. The correct response must come in the past tense.