Interactive Whiteboards and You

Interactive Whiteboards are a wonderful tool for learning, especially for smaller children. I have experienced their usefulness numerous times in school settings as a student teacher, observer, and as a student myself in high school. They are a really cool new thing that kids will try their hardest to be able to use. They improve participation, they can be used as a reward, and they help improve learning. They are very clean and fairly easy to use. However, that is one issue that I have seen with interactive whiteboards. I am pretty tech illiterate and I have seem some teachers that are basically the same way. Without the proper training, they can actually be difficult to use. And frustration with technology that one does not know how to use can grow quickly among teachers and students. But if schools invest in the boards, and in training for their teachers, they are an awesome tool that kids love. Even many, many years ago when I was in high school, our brand new school put in some of these boards. I always loved getting to use them, and most of my classmates felt the same way. It made learning fun for awhile. And in all of my placements, the kids feel the same way today, so they have not worn off their novelty yet. That is another problem I could see with them, but these are not things that everyone has at home, therefore this should not be a major problem for quite some time. They also seem to be expensive to place in every class of every school. Some poorer schools might be at a disadvantage here. regardless of all the negative talk, I think interactive whiteboards are awesome and great for schools.

Mid-Semester Status

So far, I am doing much better than I would have expected. I came into this class a little scared that I didn't know anything about technology. This class has helped me a lot and I feel good about the pacing and the material. I have missed only one assignment due to an absence, and I had to redo an assignment due to carelessness and forgetting to do almost half of it. Other than that, I feel great and I look forward to being able to learn much more about computers, videos, and technology as a whole.