Get inspired – 10 tips for teaching with interactive whiteboards

1. Reach every student in class: Involve students of differing learning styles in lessons—interactive whiteboard tools stimulate and engage learners, whether they are tactile, visual or aural.
2. Share lesson activities and ideas: Collaborate with other teachers in your school or in your district to come up with interactive whiteboard classroom activities and lesson plans, or visit our teacher wiki to get ideas, find links to great educational websites and share your own ideas with other teachers.
3. Demonstrate, practice, assess: Create flow in your classroom demonstrations by using the interactive whiteboard to convey a concept; then switch easily to practice mode by pulling up examples for students to practice and master application of the concept; assess comprehension by pairing a student response system to allow students to answer questions individually with the handheld remotes.
4. Use animated models: Create animations with ease to help students visualize difficult concepts and to enhance understanding. Use the models in a variety of ways, including to tell a story, explain history, play interactive games or teach sign language.
5. Go on a learning journey: Let student interest and curiosity guide discussions, even if it’s not where you planned to go. Add a projector, and use the interactive whiteboard like a big computer monitor. Quickly look up information and answers to questions by accessing websites projected onto the surface. Include students in the information-searching process.
6. Save notes from the class: Keep absent students in the loop by saving notes from a class, and emailing them to the students or posting them to a class website. Access saved notes to review concepts with the entire class or with students struggling to master understanding. Keep parents involved by giving them access to lessons covered in class.
7. Make class time more relevant: Plan purposefully for a teacher absence, without worrying that the class will get off track. Create lessons and activities for substitute teachers to use on the interactive whiteboard to advance student understanding and cut down on busy-work assignments.
8. Save time in class: Use toolbars included with RM Easiteach® educational software and the integrated controls (TS Series) or remote control (Walk-and-Talk™) to pull up frequently used content tools (graphs, number lines, shapes), cutting down on the time you would have used to draw or write the information.
9. Annotate on programs or presentation: Write notes or draw on the board over presentations, activities or images to emphasize or expand upon a point.
10. Model a process: Give students a step-by-step example to follow for solving a problem, learning an art technique or conducting a lab experiment by projecting a video demonstration on the interactive whiteboard.