10 Benefits of Interactive Whiteboards in the Classroom
10 Benefits of Interactive Whiteboards in the Classroom
There are more than 49 million students attending public schools.
As every year passes by, it is a teacher’s responsibility to look at educational outcomes and figure out how to improve them. One way to do so is through new technology and increasing student engagement.
Luckily, there’s a tool that can accomplish both to drastically improve the educational outcomes you see in your classroom. Using interactive whiteboards has so many benefits for you and your students.
Ready to learn how this could change your life as a teacher in the classroom? Keep reading to learn more!
1. Enhanced Lessons
When you use an interactive whiteboard, you are automatically enhancing the lessons that you are giving students. It integrates multiple learning styles into one so that all students are engaged in the lesson.
How does this happen?
The interactive whiteboard allows students to use their sight, sound, and touch to interact with the board. When learning various materials, this can make a huge difference in how easily students learn the material. It is also an innovative way for students to learn.
The more interactive something is, the more likely students are to remember the lesson and the materials taught.
Accommodating Different Learning Styles
Because interactive whiteboards accommodate different learning styles, they can go a lot further and do a lot more than traditional teaching tools.
This allows students to learn in a way that best suits them. As a teacher, you don’t have to create plans for three different sets of students. Instead, you just have to implement several different features of the interactive whiteboard into your lesson.
For instance, if you are teaching a lesson about the American Revolution, you can incorporate a reading lesson, a video lesson, and a game or two into it. By doing this, you are reaching different learners in the classroom.
This will improve the success of your students.
2. More Flexibility
When teaching students, there are usually things that may hinder how creative you get with your lesson plan. When it comes to using an interactive whiteboard, there is more flexibility.
For instance, in a typical lesson plan, you may be giving students paper handouts. That, or they are on laptops or iPads learning the lesson you are teaching.
If you give a lesson with paper handouts, there is not much interactive ability to the lesson itself. You have what is written down on the handout.
This means that you are not able to show videos, have complex illustrations, move around on the illustrations, zoom in and out of maps, and so on.
But with an interactive whiteboard, you can have the flexibility to do so. So when would this come in handy?
Let’s say you are teaching geography. Having an interactive whiteboard would allow students to zoom in and out of the whiteboard if you display a map on the whiteboard. This gives them the opportunity to learn more about the areas you are teaching as well as learn in a hands-on way.
Let’s take another example. If you are an art teacher, you could have students look at photos that you display on the interactive whiteboard. You can have students mark up the photos and annotate them.
You can also switch photos as soon as you want to move to a different one. This reduces the amount of paper you have to print out to hang around the classroom. Instead, you have it all through technology that you can easily switch from one to the other.
3. Internet Connection
Gone are the days when you can teach a class or a lesson without an Internet connection. The Internet is a vital resource for students to use when they are learning new concepts and lessons. Students are able to look up definitions, information on a specific subject, and so much more.
Not only is this Internet connection great for students to look up different materials, but teachers can also utilize it to support the lesson even more.
For instance, if there is a reading lesson about something that happened in history, there would be a connection to show videos about the historical event. Teachers can also pull up images and other resources that have to do with the event as well.
With this interactive tool, teachers and students alike are able to thrive on the additional access to tools and resources that they would not otherwise have without the whiteboard.
4. Integrated Technology
Technology in the classroom is becoming more important. The use of technology can amplify lessons and make the learning that happens, happen quicker.
One of the ways that technology is incorporated into the interactive whiteboard is through other devices such as computers, microscopes, cameras, and more.
This means that these devices can connect to the whiteboard to enhance the learning and the lesson.
But how?
Let’s take science classes, for instance. If a teacher is trying to show students what something looks like under a microscope, it could take the entire class to have one student at a time go up to the microscope to take a look at what is under it.
With an interactive microscope, that doesn’t need to happen. You can plug in the microscope and have what’s under it displayed on the whiteboard for all students to see.
This way, you can save time. You can also all have a discussion about what you see and make it a more interactive learning lesson.
How else can integrated technology come into play? Here are a few ideas:
- Utilize the interactive whiteboard to display various websites that have interactive learning games so that students can see others’ progress as well (such as Kahoot)
- Use cameras to allow students who are remote or are learning online to see the interactive lesson and whiteboard
5. It's Effective
One of the biggest benefits of using an interactive whiteboard is that they are proven to be effective.
When there is more happening in the classroom to engage students, there is more student engagement. More student engagement leads to better results in terms of your student’s academic success.
This means that their test scores will improve, they’ll be better at reading and comprehending what they are reading, and they’ll learn more and remember it just as well.
Making learning fun can drastically improve the way that students learn in the classroom. Using an interactive whiteboard with integrated technology, a change of pace and typical learning elements, and more allows for this enhanced “fun” in the classroom.
6. Easy to Use
There are many different types of platforms out there that are difficult to use. Whether the technology is confusing, the platform itself isn’t user-friendly, or the instructions aren’t clear, the last thing you want to do is avoid new technologies and platforms that could be helpful simply because they are difficult to use.
That’s where interactive whiteboards come into play. There are actually easy to use, and you don’t have to worry about having difficulty figuring them out. It’s easy to set up and use.
Not only is there not much to figure out, but there is not a whole lot involved in using them either.
For instance, with an interactive whiteboard, you don’t need chalk or any other type of writing utensil like a whiteboard marker. You don’t need various colors of markers to highlight or edit what you put on the board.
Because of this, there’s also no mess. There’s no cleanup or time spent getting the board ready for the next day.
Instead, you can highlight with different colors to point important things out. You can erase or start over at any time. And your display is never going to stay there permanently – whenever you are done with what you are doing, you can simply exit out of it.
When you use a tool like an interactive whiteboard that is easy to use, it will actually speed up the lesson. Not only that, but you’ll spend less time planning and more time teaching. Because of this, students will learn more.
7. Reduce Classroom Costs
One thing that many people do not think about is how to change up the classroom to reduce overall costs and material expenditure.
Realistically, teachers and schools have to pay a lot for classroom costs. The markers, chalk, erasers, cleaning supplies, and other accessories that are used for just whiteboards can add up quickly.
In many schools, teachers have to pay for these supplies themselves. This can lead to teachers choosing not to buy the supplies that would be helpful.
This can negatively impact the students in the classroom.
Luckily, using an interactive whiteboard can reduce classroom costs. With an interactive whiteboard, you don’t need the typical classroom materials that are significantly impacting your wallet. The use of an interactive whiteboard means that you don’t have as many physical resources in the classroom.
Because of this, you are saving a lot of money and costs associated with teaching.
8. More Sustainable
One school alone can use over 320,000 pieces of paper every single year. This means that in the United States, students and teachers are responsible for more than 32 billion sheets of paper each year.
That’s a lot of trees being used for schools.
Using an interactive whiteboard can help save trees by being a more sustainable option. Instead of printing everything out on paper such as tests, lesson plans, writing assessments, and more, most of it can be done interactively through the use of technology and the whiteboard.
9. More Convenient
Convenience can impact a classroom in a large way. If things aren’t convenient, this can take time away from learning. Time away from learning can be detrimental to student success.
Using a whiteboard makes learning and everything else more convenient. For instance, reviewing concepts is a never-ending process. Instead of rewriting every time you have to hone in on a point for students to learn, you simply have to use the whiteboard and what’s already there.
This reduces the time you may need as a teacher to summarize points that you went over in the lesson.
Additionally, instead of needing to scratch out or erase when you have to make a revision, you can simply start over or delete what isn’t right.
10. Inspire More Collaboration
A huge part of learning is through collaboration and working together. This style of learning can impact a student early on. They’ll then take this knowledge and bring it with them into adulthood.
Collaboration is a key tool to success in the workplace, so learning young is really helpful.
Using an interactive whiteboard can be helpful for students to collaborate more often and more efficiently.
Using Interactive Whiteboards in the Classroom
If you are a teacher in the classroom looking to expand on how you teach your students, look no further. Using an interactive whiteboard in the classroom can be the change you are looking for.
This tool is perfect for addressing all types of learners. You have so many options when using this tool that students can thrive from. From Internet connectivity to access to more technological advancements, an interactive whiteboard will increase student engagement.
The great news is that you can create an interactive whiteboard simply by signing up for our solution! If you are ready to take your classroom to the next level, you can sign up here at HuddleIQ. Get ready to be blown away by the change you see in your classroom and the students you teach!