Final Reflections

I learned in ED110 that using an IWB will enable me to create lessons in the format that 21st Century learner will relate to best and find the most stimulating. I will continue to practice and become more familiar with the Notebook software because it is a great tool for building interesting lesson for students. It will enable me to design lesson plans that are interactive, visually and auditorially pleasing for my students in addition to being educationally stimulating. It will be the primary tool for me to use when I build sample lessons for my future classes at Trinity.

My experiences in ED110 with technologies new to me like Wordle, Scratch, Prezi, iMovie and IWB Notebook, have given me the confidence to try new things with an eye on how I can incorporate them in creating lessons. These tools will be incorporated in IWB lesson that will surely stimulate students. I also learned that when using technology it will not go perfectly but that is OK! The important thing is how I deal with the adversity. It gives me the opportunity to model calmness and grace under difficult situations for my students and colleagues.

I loved how all the assignments introduced me to new software and teaching tools that I will be able to incorporate in my classroom. The use of the new technology reinforced the principles I learned in ED100 about creating non-differentiated lessons that will leverage each student’s primary and secondary intelligences so every student will have material presented in a way that they can understand and master. I order to educate 21st century learners I will have to embrace existing tools and continue to grow as our technological world evolves, because the state of the art methods used today will probably be obsolete in a few years and replaced by a new tool/method I cannot even image.

Interactive White Boards are Beneficial to Students

·         What is the impact of an interactive whiteboard on student achievement?

o    The use of IWB has the ability to improve the quality of education for today’s students and they have be shown to improve student’s overall performance

§  Robert J. Marzano quotes one study where it was found that using an IWB improved student’s performance by 16 percentile points versus a control group with no IWB.

§  The use of IWB with add-ons like a hand held voting device for entering answers; with the visual, interactive nature of IWBs and employing methods that reinforce accuracy with immediate feedback like adding applause all will improve scores an additional 10-15 points.

• The improvements noted above only work if the emphasis in the IWB lesson is to enforce understanding and mastering the material, not just on presenting information in a fun way. That is the challenge that will face teachers using IWBs. Teachers will have to create organized IWB lessons with a purpose and clear success criteria.  

·         What are the Xs and Ox for designing effective IWB lessons?

• IWB lessons are not much different from other lessons.
• It should start with a title page that clearly explains the lesson’s objective and method.
• The lesson should be interactive for the students. They should use the board more than the teacher.
• The IWB lesson should incorporate the following interactive elements:
• Pull down tabs to reveal or add important information. This little element of suspense help keep the students engaged.
• Drag and reveal question and answers are a fun and interesting method for students to understand and correlate material.
• Make the lesson visually appealing by maintaining a theme and using animated objects.
• The smart board is also a great tool for creating learning games for the students.
• One should not be afraid to experiment and try new things and continually update an IWB lesson. Through trial and error by keeping what works and throwing out what doesn’t 21^st Century teachers will be able to create an exciting and successful learning experience for today’s learners.