Interactive whiteboards

A whiteboard is a white glossy surface where non-permanent markings can be made. Today, whiteboards are also referred to as interactive whiteboards. These whiteboards are widely used in offices, meeting rooms, classrooms and other work environments. A whiteboard can also be used as the projecting medium for an overhead or video projector.



An interactive or electronic whiteboard connects to a computer. The computer connects to a projector which projects the computer's desktop onto the board's surface. Interactive whiteboards make it possible for users to interact with the screen by using a pen, a marker, a stylus, or even a finger. These modern units are apparently replacing the chalkboards in classrooms, boardrooms and even athletic training rooms across the globe.
The interactive feature of whiteboards allows them to be used in everything from teaching a lesson and highlighting a crucial point on a presentation, to editing a movie and demonstrating how a particular play is intended to be carried-out or performed. With a whiteboard, the amount of information that can be shared, presented and saved is fabulous. Any form of information, whether it is from the Internet, a newspaper, or even few jotted lines from a notepad, can not only be viewed on the board, but can also be printed.

These high tech units represent a new and effective system of teaching, with the benefit of creating your own customizable lessons with unlimited sources of information at your fingertips. These products are also useful for collaborative use of software such as project scheduling or computer aided design (CAD) software.
There are six types of interactive whiteboards including resistive, electromagnetic, infrared or optical, ultra-sonic, optical and infrared or IR whiteboards available in the market today. Interactive whiteboards are generally front or rear projection. In front projection whiteboards, video projectors are located in front of the whiteboard. Conversely, in rear projection whiteboards, projectors are positioned behind the whiteboard.

If you're looking forward to buy a interactive whiteboard, you must visit http://www.interactive-education.co.uk/ This site carries an impressive selection of high-quality whiteboards and their accessories manufactured by renowned brands like Panasonic, Hitachi, 3M, NEC and more. With such an exciting variety of whiteboards available, I am sure you will definitely make a right pick.

Explore about the Interactive Education

Interactive Education provides an educational and technological environment that motivates the students to learn, advances the interaction between teacher and student. Equipped with ICT (information and communication technology) devices such as computers, interactive whiteboard, visualiser (also known as Document cameras), digital projectors, audience response system and educational content, this interactive education environment allows teachers to interactively communicate a heap of information and content to the whole class. Interactive Education environment enhances the learning and teaching environment by utilizing potentials of these information technology tools for training. The central point about interactive education is the maximum use of information and communication technology to deliver the lessons bringing interactivity. Teachers can display multimedia, power point files, animation, motion video and other interactive contents to their students with bigger image of their Laptop or computer on the interactive whiteboards or projection screen with digital projectors. The educator can show the details of books, notes and documents to the entire class with the document cameras. Teacher can do live annotations on the paper or use interactive whiteboard to annotate on the real time object with the document cameras. Teacher can do formative and summative assessment of students with help of interactive response systems. Teacher gets individual feedback about the topic, gather information for reporting and analysis of student using student response system. ICT based educational content has taken the world by storm in past years. This educational content may be in the form of the visual images, audio, video with sound and animation. Teachers are taking advantage on this fact to captivate students’ interest to create learning environment which is purposeful and entertaining.

Use and Fact of interactive whiteboards

Interactive Whiteboards for Education and the use of Interactive Whiteboards in schools, colleges, universities and training. Currently, nearly 80% of high schools and 90% of primary schools in the UK have Interactive Whiteboards installed in their classrooms.

Interactive Whiteboards for Education and Training aims to be one of the first high quality collections by a recognized international press on this major subject of relevance to instructors across the educational spectrum, from schools to universities and training organizations.

Whichever multi-media activity, video, ppt presentation or website you want to show your students, it looks simply great. However, for this very reason, the danger of having the board as the main focus of everyone’s attention in the classroom cannot be lightly dismissed.

Now, The fact is that whiteboards depends on the way we use them. The activities we propose using WB should lead to greater student involvement and participation and actually their use should become something so integrated to our lessons and so naturally used that we almost *forget* that we are using it. It seems to me that we shouldn't make such a fuss of whiteboards- just give them their proper space in the classroom as we should give to books, media video or other more traditional tools.

Interactive Whiteboards Benefits

Interactive Whiteboards works in conjunction with a laptop/desktop computer and a LCD projector. It is an electronic version of a traditional whiteboard. That is why it is also known as electronic whiteboard or digital whiteboard.Some of the benefits are as follows:-

1.Interactive whiteboards are suitable for learners and instructors of all ages.

2.They allow students to participate in a collaborative environment.

3.They can be easily adapted by even those teachers who are not so techno as the interactive whiteboard just looks like the traditional whiteboard.

4.Electronic whiteboards are considered best for classroom presentation as there display area is much bigger than a computer monitor. Consequently, students don’t need to circle around a PC and crane there necks to see what is on the computer screen.

5.Interactive whiteboards help in developing a personalized learning environment as they allow instructors to adopt and customize learning styles to meet the needs of an individual student.

6.An digital whiteboard provides interactivity by allowing a user to integrate different types of media formats like audio, video, text, graphics, RSS feeds, pod casts, animations etc.

7.Teachers can save and share there work through a whiteboard software which is included in the interactive whiteboard’s cost.

8.A digital whiteboard can be used to conduct brainstorming sessions in a classroom or board room.

9.Through electronic whiteboards, teachers can effectively use learning resources and motivate and engage students.

10.The whiteboard can also be used to carry out video conferencing.

Learning through interactive whiteboards

Teachers should use digital technology like interactive whiteboards if they want students to get engaged in the learning process in a fun way. It has been scientifically proven that the students who learn through ICT solutions grasp even difficult concepts much more easily than the students who learn lessons using traditional technologies. It has also been noticed that the use of Visualiser helps students to visualise topics and situations and improve there analytical abilities. Mr. Amit Sinha one of the teacher from Wolverhampton (UK) who took part in the last year project on ICT products said “You should have seen the excitement of the students when they were shown the brand new digital-whiteboard being installed into there classroom as part of the classroom of the future program. They were touching the display screen of the whiteboard, holding the marker pen (which they called the magic pen). One of the most useful digital resources we came across was ‘whiteboard lessons’. We also bought one interactive whiteboard-game which teaches students how to perform simple arithmetic operations like additions, subtraction, multiplications and divisions. Our competitors have been using these ICT products for years to share learning resources like lesson plans. Through electronic-whiteboards one can take virtual tours of outer space, galaxies or places which are hard to reach like Death Valley. We are also planning to purchase 500 different types of classroom furniture for our new science classes. As an educator it is our responsibility to redesign schools to develop classroom for the future