Technology Researcher Badge-Louisa

The Use of Interactive Whiteboards in the Primary Classroom

Learning and Teaching With Interactive Whiteboards-Barber, Cooper and Meeson

The IWBs are a very engaging tool, however this is only the case when they are used appropriately to add value to teaching. It is important that all children should have an equal opportunity to use the IWB and this should be used in all aspects of a lesson. In order to engage focus groups, very clear guidelines should be set on what the children are expected to do. The IWB is a means of sharing ideas and therefore can be incorporated into any lesson to make it more practical. It is important that the teacher is confident in using the IWB, as this will support the best teaching and motivate pupils. The board will increase the appeal of a lesson for many children and will therefore help children to learn as they are further engaged with the topic. The board will also increase the pace of a lesson, as a teacher can make quicker progress, which will also keep the pupils engaged.

It is vital to manage the interaction between the pupils and the IWB effectively, to enhance learning opportunities and getting the children to solve a problem where they are required to come to the board will enhance their progress. The board can also be seen to enhance the learning of children will special educational needs. Delivering content where deaf children can see the lesson on the board and visually impaired children will benefit from larger images and text is vital for their learning.

When looking at resources for the IWB, the teacher should consider whether the software matches the needs of the curriculum and of the children, how easy is the resource to use within the time I have available and how to teach using the software. Differentiation between children is a key factor when deciding upon resources. PowerPoint, videos, images, maps, cameras, scanners and digital microscopes can all be used on an IWB. This device is therefore key within a classroom to ensure the children are engaged and involved with a lesson, to enhance the learning of special educational needs groups and to provide resources for a classroom.

How to Survive and Succeed with an Interactive Whiteboard-Braham

An IWB offers several advantages to a classroom. It motivates the children through the use of colour and multimedia. The interactive nature of the board increases the children’s learning as they are more likely to remember a lesson they were more involved in. The board is also great for finding and saving resources to use in the classroom. The IWB is very good for presenting learning and the children can have the opportunity to self or peer-assess their learning. Saving the children’s ideas on the IWB gives their work validity and importance and this will help to boost their confidence by sharing and developing ideas. The IWB can be used to place lessons in context, link objectives to prior learning, for resources, differentiation, mixed ability groupings, discussions, research and assessment.

The board can be used for games and starters for example spelling activities, anagrams or sentence construction for literacy. The board can also be used to annotate pictures and images or the children’s work. Interactive teaching programs can also be used, for example number gym and the numbers game in maths. The IWB is therefore extremely useful in the classroom in order to motivate and engage the children and increase their confidence. The IWB promotes discussion in the classroom and will make each child’s ideas valued. The different games and starter activities will keep the children interested in their learning.

 

You Can Use an Interactive Whiteboard-Cogill

The IWB has a huge range of functions that will help to make lessons exciting and engaging. It can be used to show websites, video resources, children’s presentations, for effective starters and plenary sessions. The teacher could use thought bubbles to initiate a new topic, save children’s’ ideas, use a picture to stimulate creative writing or show a video clip. At the end of the lesson the teacher could scan in children’s work, show a film of the children, visit a website or write down the children’s ideas.

These books are really useful as they give lots of different ideas about how to use the IWB during different lessons and for a range of subjects. It suggests that you can use it to teach ICT in order to develop the children’s confidence with computers. You can use the whiteboards in all subjects for example in maths to teach number sequences, class surveys and the value of money, in literacy to interact with a text, share reading and teach phonics, in science to investigate sound, use the digital microscope and show how plants and animals grow and in foundation subjects to explore objects from the past, look at the world or compare places of worship. These books therefore demonstrate the huge range of functions that the IWB’s have and how they are vital in a classroom to develop a child’s confidence and understanding.

Overall

• Teacher use of the board to engage

The teacher should use the board frequently and have each child come up to the board to involve each child in the lesson. The board will also help engage focus groups of children, for example the IWB can support special educational needs children by having that visual element to aid their understanding.

• Games and websites as a starter activity

The board can be used for games and starters for a range of different subjects which will draw the children’s attention and immediately engage them in the lesson. This will also be a good way of finding out what the children already know by writing down ideas about a topic on the IWB.

• Training and resources available for teachers

There are lots of resources that can be linked to or used on the IWB and they can be saved and used again. There are lots of books about the whiteboards and these are great to train teachers and boost their confidence in using the board so they can then use it to boost and improve their lessons.

• IWB and talk

The IWB’s are a great tool for discussion and can be used to mind map ideas and portray a class view on a topic. This will develop a child’s confidence as they will be made to feel like their ideas are valued and then as the document is saved at the end of the lesson, it can be referred to at a later date and throughout that lesson, making the discussion more valuable as it is not forgotten.

• Developing confidence with the IWB

It is important that the teacher is confident in using the whiteboard so it can aid the lessons and progress the children’s learning rather than hinder it. The children will also gain confidence from the IWB as their ideas will be valued and saved and they will become more engaged with a lesson and therefore gain a greater understanding for it, boosting their confidence about a topic or subject.

 

E-Safety Awareness Badge-Louisa

This poster is really eye-catching and I like the way it uses the parts of the body to engage with the children and successfully portray the information. I really like the way that this poster encourages the children to respect and protect their and others information online in order to keep themselves safe. The posters encourages the children to speak to an adult if they are upset or worried about anything online. I also like the way it sets the expectations for only using a personal device for educational purposes while at school. This is a really good poster and sets high expectations for each child in the school to be a digital citizen.

This poster encourages the children to be safe and ‘smart’ while on the internet, which is an important subject. This shows the children why you should stay safe and not give out any personal information about yourself on the internet or meet up with anyone you have met on the internet. It talks about telling a teacher or parent if you get into trouble online. There is a helpful website for the children to visit if they are unsure or want any extra information about the topic.

 

 

This poster is friendly and colourful and is eye-catching. This poster also talks about not giving out any personal information and asking an adult if you are unsure about something that is said online. I like the way the poster talks about being respectful of others and yourself when online.

 

 

I really like this acrostic poster which gets the message across successfully. I like the way it encourages the children to talk to an adult if they are unsure or uncomfortable and not to give out any personal information to strangers. This will help keep the children safe online.

This poster is bold and gets across the message that internet safety isn’t only about dealing with problems which arise, it is also about being part of a safe community and keeping everyone safe. This is a powerful message and will respond to the children, making them think about online safety.

 

 

 

This poster responds specifically to Facebook and I like the way it has used the blue colours to help put the message across. It shows how you should think before you act and look at your privacy settings to ensure you are safe online. I like the way it shows how to deal with cyberbullying-by not responding to it and blocking and reporting that person. This poster is really useful to show how to be safe on Facebook and what to do if there is a problem.

 

 

Similarities between the posters:

• They all demonstrate how to stay safe online and give different techniques with how to cope with problems online, such as telling an adult.
• They are all bright and colourful to catch the children’s attention.
• Many of them talk about respecting both yourself and others online.
• They state that you shouldn’t give out any personal information online or meet up with a stranger you have met online.
• Some of them talk about only using mobile devices for educational purposes while in school.

 

My Own Poster:

 

 

 

Apps in Education Badge-Louisa

• Collins Big Cat Books

There are various different books in this series and this app allows the teacher children to read the story, have the story read to them or create their own story. There are lots of different versions of this book, for example: ‘Around the World’, ‘Dark Night’ and ‘The Garden’. This is excellent to relate to English, as the teacher could use it during guided reading or to stimulate the children’s imagination by creating their own book. A positive factor of the book is that it is really child-friendly and easy to use. The books are really colourful and have really interesting characters for the children to engage with. A more negative factor however is that the make your own book section is quite complicated and difficult to use therefore younger children (who the app is designed for) may need quite a lot of support with this.

• I Can Animate Lite

This app allows the children to create videos and animations. There can be up to 240 frames and the children can make a short video by making models and moving them slightly each time to create a moving picture! This relates to the ICT curriculum, especially in Key Stage Two, where the pupils are expected to use sequence in working with forms of input and output. This also relates really well to English, as the children will use their imagination to create a form of digital story. The teacher can therefore get the children to use this app to develop their computing skills. A positive element of the app is that it will really excite and engage the children and boost their ICT skills. However a more negative element is that it will take a very long time to create a short video.

 

• Book Creator

This app will allow the children to create their own book, including photos, video, text, sound and drawing with the pen. You can copy and paste an image from the internet or from your photos and position it around the page. You can then edit the book and read it back. This is also really good to relate to English, as the children can develop and share their own stories. The teacher can use this to create her own story and read this to the class or allow the children to create their own ones and share them, or set this as a homework task! This app seems easy to use and a really useful resource, however may be more useful if it created characters, or suggestions for the children to use, like the Big Cat books do.

• Kid’s Maths

This app is a game for children which helps with their addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. This is good for younger children and the teacher can use it to test the children’s understanding, as a fun activity as a starter or plenary to a lesson or set this as a homework task. The children will really enjoy this and will engage with the app, however the tasks do not seem very difficult and it may be better if the teacher could set the difficulty level of the app.

 

• Pocket Phonics

This phonics app is really good, as it says the sound out loud and gets the children to trace the letter with their finger, following the arrow. It then helps the children to make a word by them clicking on the sound that is read aloud. The teacher can pick the letter sound that she wants the children to focus on and this provides a good support base for the children’s phonics and writing. The teacher could use this as a starter to a lesson on the interactive whiteboard. The app is really engaging and gives the children lots aof guidance and praise. It could be improved by having all of the letters available at the beginning as there are only a few basic sounds on the app, rather than progressing onto digraphs and trigraphs.

• Fun Spanish

This Spanish game is really interactive and useful for children to learn the basis of the language. There are main topics of colours, animals, numbers, food, vehicles etc. and then various games within these topics such as matching pairs or reviewing the topic. This is really useful to test listening, speaking and recognition and there are lots of resources on the app for teachers to use to engage the children within the Spanish lesson. The app is really useful to provide a basis to the language in a fun and interactive way, however is slightly limiting and only says the words in Spanish, instead of sentences.

• Nouns Verbs

This app will help the children to progress with their nouns and verbs and involves the children doing activities such as matching words into boxes and identifying which word is the noun or verb. This would be useful to use as a started to an English lesson to recap this with the children. A positive impact of the app is that the activities are useful to show what a verb or a noun is and to enhance understanding. It may be more useful if the app included harder tasks or different levels for the children to progress to.

 

• Twinkl

This phonics app is really useful to boost the children’s understanding. There is each letter sound that the children can trace, a letter matching game and an activity listening to and recognising letter sounds. This would be a great for an Early Years class for the teacher to help the children’s understanding of phonics. However many of the games are locked and it would be good if more activities came with the original app!

• Padlet

This app will allow the children to mind map ideas and put them all onto one document. This is really useful, as each child can post their ideas onto the interactive whiteboard and a discussion can be based from ideas. Photos, videos and voice recordings can also be shared. This can be used in various subjects and will excite the children. This can also be anonymous, to gain all the children’s ideas and opinions. This could form the basis of discussion, however may be time consuming to have and all the children will need a computer or a tablet in order to do this, which they probably don’t have on a day-to-day basis.

• Skitch

This app allows annotation of different photos, videos, google images and drawings. This can be used in the classroom by allowing the children to annotate photos of themselves doing a piece of work, something they have drawn or a photo they have taken. This can also be used by the teacher to annotate a child’s work to either mark it, use it as evidence of assessment or show what the children are doing in a photo of them. This will excite the children and they will enjoy annotating their work. However this may not be used very often or done by hand instead!