Interactive Whiteboard Teaching Resources

Tackling Whiteboard Adoption Challenges

Classroom Technologies | Feature

A Georgia school district is using a hosted solution, mentoring, and professional development to get its teachers up to speed with collaborative classroom technology.

City Schools of Decatur in Georgia began outfitting all of its classrooms with interactive whiteboards about six years ago, but it wasn't until recently that the district turned to technology to make sure teachers were actively using the equipment during class.

"Our teachers loved the boards," said Heather Borowski, the district's instructional technology coordinator, "but they found it was time-consuming to create the content necessary to utilize the technology."

Not wanting to see the investment it made in whiteboards for all of its K-5 classrooms go to waste, the district rolled out the initiative by having teachers apply for the boards. "Teachers basically let us know whether they wanted the technology or not," said Borowski. The early adopters not only got their hands on the whiteboards first, she said, but they also served as models for the rest of the school's staff.

Teacher Challenges
"Over time, more and more teachers wanted the boards because they saw their colleagues using them and wished to have access to the same resources," Borowski explained. But once the whiteboards were installed--sometimes covering entire walls and leaving no room for traditional dry erase boards--that initial momentum slowed significantly.

"We started to see that considerable time was needed to create the interactive whiteboard lessons," said Borowski, whose team first addressed the issue by holding day-long instructional sessions and after school instruction for teachers district-wide. Instructors got hands-on lessons in how to use the equipment and the associated lesson-building software.

The challenges persisted, as evidenced by the frustrated comments Borowski received on her year-end "technology integration" teacher surveys. "Over the last few years, the surveys revealed that even though teachers liked their interactive whiteboards," said Borowski, "they didn't have enough time to create lessons for them."

And while teachers didn't go back to their "old ways" of teaching (and, in many cases, couldn't because their dry erase boards were gone), Borowski said lessons weren't as robust as they could have been if the instructors had the resources necessary to adequately prepare whiteboard-based lesson plans.

Interactive Whiteboard Activities During Reading | Teaching ...

I first got an interactive whiteboard in my classroom in 2008. I was teaching Prep at the time and it was a steep learning curve to discover how I could best use it to engage my students and improve learning outcomes .

Fast forward three years and I am teaching Grade Two in an open classroom with Kathleen Morris . I love the  enormous range of interactive websites and tools available  for my students, and while I could utilise the IWB and our planning documents include many links to websites each week.