Interactive Whiteboards

We have interactive whiteboards (aka IWBs) here at IH... most of them gathering dust, as they rarely ever get used, other than as glorified data projectors.

I'm yet to be convinced of their value myself -- so much so that, other than playing with them myself, I've yet to use one with students.

TechLearning has a free ebook The Why and How of Interactive Whiteboards, which includes a section on "Tips and Tutorials for Purchase and Use".

I quote:

Give students answers or questions on slips of paper, allowing them to take turns coming up to the [IWB]. This will keep them focused on the lesson as they wait for their turn to come.

Admittedly -- because of my lack of experience with the beasts -- I'm not the best qualified person to say so, but that sounds like how not to use an IWB to me.

Then:

Each student is given a part of a plant to label. When it is time for that part to be labeled, the student comes up to the [IWB] and either writes the name of the part or clicks and drags the name of the part.

That sounds like being slower, not time-saving, which is one thing technology ought to be.

And it also sounds like you (or your kids) could do exactly the same equally well on a normal whiteboard with a marker pen.

Could you do exactly the same without the technology...? Yes...? Then don't use the technology, I would suggest.

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Steal and photocopy... or draw your own images?

A monster in the Internet Room! It's got a tail! It's got 3 eyes!

Rebecca is currently taking the CELT YL course with us at IH Barcelona and brought this into the Internet Room before class... Wow! It's so impressive, and so much more so than a monster she could have stolen from Google Images.

She was going to get her kids to draw monsters too, and then say what body parts their monsters had got.

You could pinch the pictures off of the Web, but how much more engaging for your young learners to draw their own!

>> 1000+ Pictures for Teachers to Copy

Arts and crafts with your learners

More from the very excellent TeachingEnglish.org.uk site:

• A new article on Art in the classroom
  
• One on Arts and crafts with young learners
• Full list of articles

Looking for something to do with English teaching...? Don't go to Google! Go somewhere like TeachingEnglish...!

Technology (1).... Learning.

At the beginning of a session on our Trainer Training course, I asked the participants to "fill in the blank" in the following sentence with a verb, and then complete the sentence:

Technology [verb] learning if/provided/unless/when...

For example, "Technology enhances learning when the learners create, not merely consume content".

At the end of the session, partly to demonstrate how podcasting could be used for project work, we then recorded the sentences with a digital voice recorder.

The result of the exercise:




I particularly liked the idea that technology should be used in a "judicious, memorable and novel" way but in fact liked many of the other ideas just as much.

My thanks to Amra, Annemarie, Barbara, Carol, Constanza, Iván, Jo, Juliette, Laura, Mariela, Mariyana, Sierra and Vika for their excellent ideas.

Ever felt like chucking a PC out of the window?

It was a "Good Week" for justice, says The Week:

"Police in Hanover, Germany, refused to press charges against a man who was struggling with a balky computer late at night and hurled it out the window, causing a loud crash that woke some of his neighbors. "Who hasn't felt like doing that?" said a police spokesman."

I guess you all know the feeling, right?

Images, and where to get them from

Born to create... I could have stolen it, but created the image myself... Which is better for your learners?

My thanks to Jordi Castells, who came to a session I gave this morning, for suggesting the Hungarian site SXC.com for free stock photos, sometimes a very useful resource.

Free stock photos [definition] are basically ones you can use without worrying about infringing copyright. Jordi also suggested Wikipedia as another source, as Wikipedia uses images available under creative commons licence.

A single digital image, plus text
The subject of images came up as we were talking about a project which involved the learners producing a single digital image and a text to accompany (explain) it.

My suggestion was that the learners also produce the image, not just the text, with various possible sources:

• A digital camera
• Mobile phones
• Artwork (pens, crayons, etc) which is then scanned
• A photograph from home (eg. of when the learners were very young), and then scanned
• A program like Paint, which is very basic, but which young learners especially enjoy playing with
  

Alternatively, you could use a stock image from a site like SXC... But which is better, an image the learners create, or one they find on the web?

The worst option of all would, of course, be to steal it from Google-is-Evil... Who cares? Well, for starters, the learner doesn't care about the image if that's where it comes from. And caring is where real learning really starts...

See also

>> An example, "image plus text" project
>> Finding images for use in class

What's Second Life? What's an interactive whiteboard (etc)?

I've been teaching on "technology for teachers" seminars for the last three weeks (and a very late "Hello" to you all if you are attending!).

Many of the questions that the teachers ask begin "What's...?" Blogs, interactive whiteboards, ipods, mp3 players, podcasting, smartboards, Second Life... What are they, and how can you find out what they are?

Places to go to find out
Fortunately, there are places to go where you can find out what a particular piece of technology is. Note, again, how far down my list Google-is-Evil comes.

1. Ask a colleague, some in the family, one of your kids (your own or someone in your class)
   
2. Wikipedia, which is great for the basic information, and will provide links if you want to find out more. Wikipedia gets slammed for being inaccurate, but it provides you with information and has no interest in selling you anything, unlike Google and the sites that appear on it
   
3. YouTube, on which you can find great videos (ok, and some that are dreadful) of the technology in action
   
4. Teachertube, on which you will find the same, with videos designed particularly for teachers and teaching and learning
   
5. Somewhere else on the web, a blog like the one you are reading now, or a directory like TeachingEnglish.org.uk
6. Last and least, Google-is-Evil