How Interactive is Your Whiteboard

There were three main ideas that caught my attention after reading “How Interactive is Your Whiteboard?”

The first being that the way teachers are posing questions in the present day is really not evoking higher levels of thinking and scaffolding learning. This is concerning because isn’t the purpose of questioning to not just assess and monitor student understanding but to build upon knowledge think and respond to questions with higher complexities thus allowing further discussions and learning to take place. I believe that the way that teachers pose their questions today is due to the time restraints that teacher have to deliver instruction. I believe that teachers need to think about asking fewer question and only asking question that will maximize student response and demonstrate the knowledge of the students on higher level.

The second being the way we use an IWB. I believe that the IWB can be used as a tool to enhance teacher instruction. The teacher can use this tool to assist his/her in the way he/she delivers the instruction to enhance and promote student learning, student interactions, and discussions. It is important for teachers to remember that the IWB could be used as a teaching aid but the real instruction comes from the teacher and the way he/she gets the student to think about the material through asking higher level thinking question, having meaningful discussions, and culminating activities to reinforce the learned material.

The last thing that caught my attention was that there were gains in scores on national test. This advance was not because the students were truly applying and understanding at higher complexities. This result was because teachers are teaching to the test discouraging the students’ ability to reflectively and strategically think and process information. What has teaching come to? Is it more important to teach your students to reflectively and strategically think and process information on higher levels of complexity or to simply teach the students strategies to pass a test?

How can Educators be sure that interactive tools are used to their best potential?

The teacher must first learn how to use the tools correctly and demonstrate their knowledge about the tool to the students so that they to can interact and manipulate the tool. It is also the role of an educator to use this tool to enhance and promote student learning, student interactions, and discussions. Not to assume that the tool will do the teaching for them. Incorporating interactive technology into the classroom can have positive effects on student learning as long as teachers are willing to learn how to use new technologies, use the technology as a tool to enhance instruction, and allow the students to interact with the technology.