At DD's (private) school all classrooms have IWB and Senseo machines also. The IWB are all posiioned low enough for children to use, even in reception. Yes, like all technology they have their limitations, but it is easily solved and most teachers have back up plans for if technology fails them.

I have seen IWB used exceptionally well both at primary and secondary level.

They are a teacher's tool. You still do other forms of learning - holding shapes, etc. But te IWB can enhance any lesson.

IMO a good teacher can make excellent use of an IWB and they can really enhance the lesson.

I am a teacher - in an FE college, so no long hols for me - and we have had active boards for about three years. We also have normal white boards in the classrooms too. They are great. I am a language teacher and they are fantastic for instant access to resources on the Internet. Also, when you write on the board there are loads of pages so you flip back and forth between the pages you have written on which can be really helpful for the learner. Wouldn't do without it now.

Promethean is rotting my brain

Has there ben any definitive research done on them in class? Or was it about the electronic frying brains or something?

I presume somthing must have been done to justify cost

Yes... sorry, in a haste to post before checking back.

Lot indignation here all round

Oh Peace yes!! Sorry! I never ever want to be agressive!!! Just get a bit defensive! Sorry.

Am annoyed your teachedrs aren;t helping ith fundraising though....

wind my neck in? Calm down?

Read my posts again...

Sorry, sorry, just seen your post! Peace! white flags!! {waves flag about]

My original comments were only ever meant to refer to my own child's school, so wind your neck back in mumble.

I'm happy to see the whiteboards, but the teachers would cope without them, that's all I said. Not so outrageous really. In my children's school the teachers don't get involved with fundraising. I wasn't making any criticisms about teachers in general. I have a lot of respect for teachers, so you can calm right down.

'Good teachers' can be even better teachers with a IWB! Being a good teacher is no excuse to have to do without resources!

Oh yes and that cool spot light thing....

well you arent paid for the summer are you?
they just spread your pay out.
dont you no nuffink?

LOVE them! Can do anything! Best thing that ever happened! Internet (including real-life videos, which is fantastic), putting sound to our stories, recording our sounds and adding pics, online games, immediate answers to our questions, the ability to conceal and reveal, colour to match the mood...... they're FANTASTIC!!!!!!!! I don't care if they're messing with my brain!!!!!

what ikea?

Teachers don;t get involved in fundraising?!!?!?

did you say SEVEN WEEK UNPAID?

OH NO! SOrry Maggie! Not meant at all! Serious chip on my shoulder after two peopple did the whole 'oh you've got 7 weeks off what are you tired for' things to me today.

Really sorry!

I have this thing where i work where i can not only blank all the kids' screens but also go ONTO their pcs and fiddle with their work and send them little messages ANd send the whole class a survey
I come over all les dennis

hang on guys, you're taking a swipe at the wrong person. I've bloody broken my back fundraising for two of them over the last year, and I'm very glad that my daughter is so happy that one of them is in her classroom. But all I'm saying is that I'm not going to participate in anymore fundraising because I think that they're not essential. That's not unreasonable imo.

I'm not a teacher no. The teachers don't get involved in the fundraising efforts in my dc's school. They would like to get 6 more eventually.

hee heeeee.

lol at " good teachers dont need one"

on that basis lets all teach in shacks

are you a teahcer?

But, yes. They are a funding nightmare.

Would you like to borrow mine while I work out how to use it?!?!?!!

Maggie - i have found it seems to be a competative thing. Parents often comment in our, soon to be old, building we don;t have as many IWB as other places...... In our new building every classroom wil have them.

Hmmm..... tRaining nightmare. WHilst packing.

Still think they are amzing though. I can add stuff to resrouces and save each classes own ammotations! And play music without faffing about with CD machines, and play dodgy mixy matchy games!!!!

Still think I'll use it as a projector and do less faffy stuff for the first term!

Also thy can store lots of assessmenty stuff.

WEll, you know what I mean mumble. we are always fundraising for them, and now I think they can share 4 IWBs between 8 classrooms can't they!!?!?

"good teachers don't need one"

Hmmmm. i think teachers as much help as they can get!

If kids are going to be exposed to good quality, mixed media and sources then it should be in the classroom not just on tinternet or TV.

Research says that a variety of teaching methods/using visual, audio, kinesthetic learning methods and making learning accesable is all good.

ALso may I put forward that as a diabled teacher they give teachers more access to teaching.... I can;t use chalk

They are a great resource and can be used for literacy and numeracy games and all sorts of other stuff.

The kids love them. They are fab imho.

I have never heard of any brain issues with them

Yes agree with others, they are just one resource of many.

I remember when these were first coming in in schools. It sounds as though they are being used much better now - all our teachers just used them as projectors for powerpoint slideshows, or typed because their writing was terrible. I thought it was a bit pointless. I think they are good when used properly, but if the teachers are technophobic but want to use it for the novelty value it's a bit naff tbh.

fundraising for them never ends. The school won't rest until it has one in every classroom I think.

My dd has one in her classroom. She calls it Mr G's magical white board. They watch Mr Ben, the klangers!, google earth, marine life, you NAME it. She LOVES school, loves her teacher,loves the white board.

But, I still think, good teachers don't need one, and I need a break from fundraising for a while.

In secondary its mainly used as a blackboard with it access

LOl
bad news

is it wireless you were worried about? that i have heard about

Surely like any tool - can be used to help or hinder.

Same when power point got trendy and we had to survive loads of boring power points with crappy clipart....

We had a geogrphy teacher who used a flipchart and his lessons rocked.

personally [in my music teacher mode] I look forward to having music clips, video clips, pictures and tinternet on hand...but it won;t stop me working hard to make sure all kids are involved etc. ..

That is if a can turn the bugger on...

I did a fab lecture once on mind mapping, where I planned the lecture in interactive whiteboard form using a dynamic mind map, and then saved it as a little film so the mind map unfolded behind me as I lecutured. But I agree, all too often they seem to be used as TV screens, or as a polychromatic but pedestrian alternative to blackboards.

To drag across the board the children need to make a fist and use the flat side to move things. Works for us!

Ones that go up and down sound good.

Does noone have the same problems with little fingers not being able to use them and wandering minds etc?

Helsbels4 your comment about colour pens did make me smile - just like real life in fact

I was ready to hate them 5 years ago but think they have so many uses now. Our YR children use them for copying the actions for Aerobics and it's useful for introducing topic work. If they are practising a song for assembly, the words can be displayed. It's probably on for an hour a day. Agree - the visualiser is great for using as a magnifying glass or for sharing children's work. Our boards are quite high but all the classrooms have wide steps that the children can use to get to the board.

When I was first a parent helper in ds' class, they didn't have the whiteboards but when they were introduced, the teachers, children and parents thought it was fantastic! The children loved the novelty of coming to the board and writing things or clicking and dragging things and ime, the children were totally engrossed in what was being taught to them. I thought they were amazing and still do

I agree that a visualiser is great-much more effective than holding up a book.
The IWB is just an extra resource in the classroom-it isn't instead of other things. The great advantage to me is that you can save things and have different pages. The old blackboard, or ordinary whiteboard, was very restrictive because you had to rub things off if you ran out of room.

What RustyBear says.

A good teacher uses pictures - and other resources on the IWB - to stimulate the pupils' imagination, not stunt it.

We've had them for a while now & the teachers no longer plan round them as in 'let's use the IWB' - they are simply accepted as a way of delivering the content of the lesson, not necessarily the only way - for example the teacher might use the foam letters mummyloveslucy describes as well as having them on the IWB

One very useful thing to use with the board is a visualiser - like an overhead projector, but the image is shown on the board, either directly or through a computer. It's incredibly useful for demonstrating how to do something, eg in craft or art work & you can record everything you do & play it back as often as you want. Or you can show a child's work in their book, and annotate it on the screen to show the class.

Even the most technophobic of our teachers wouldn't like to be without their whiteboards now - though they are all perfectly capable of holding a class's attention without it.

Well, to be honest, I am only basing that view point on one private school I saw who said they didnt get the same ict funding state schools got when I questioned their poor ict faciities!

"Mine have watched lots of films and cartoons at school that I wouldnt necessarily choose to let them watch at the age they are "

Yurtgirl - you should have been asked to give permission for anything that isn't a U certificate.

The independent schools we looked at had them in all classrooms... just as the state schools here do too. I have never heard of them being a problem unless people are not using them to enhance T&L.

There was definitely some research recently - from the Institute of Education I think - which questioned how good they were.

I thought the iwb in ds' class when they were first introduced were brilliant!!! I was so in awe of how they worked and how the children loved going up and doing different things with them.

You can pick up a certain colour pen and it will write in that colour - amazing!!!!

<<stumbles away, as obviously very easily pleased>>

Hercules, my point is that children get so much given to them nowadays that there's not as much need to think and imagine. For example, if the teacher constantly puts up pictures to illustrate what she's saying, children don't have to imagine in their mind what they're saying. It's a bit like seeing the film of a book, where how you'd imagined it before was completely different.

Am not expressing myself very well here.

geronitus - I cannot see how in any way a teacher using an interacive whiteboard is going to affect a child's imagination.

Mummyloveslucy - your private school probably doesnt have them as they are expensive and state schools get separate ICT funding (or used to anyway).
We looked at a private school for dd and the lack of ict equipment like whiteboards put me off and helped make the choice much easier to go to her far better equipped state school.

Interactive white boards are a very good teaching tool.

Isn't there a problem now though, that children are stimulated so much (pictures, videos, bright colours, interactivity) that when there's no IWB or it's just the teacher talking they're going to find it a struggle to concentrate? And isn't giving children pictures all the times removing the need for them to develop an imagination i.e. there's no need to imagine because it's all there in front of them?

I think they're brilliant. All my dc have them at school.

Better than blackboards. Teachers used to lob board rubbers at us when I was at school. A couple of teachers were crack shots. The new boards have got to be safer

In my placement school, the IWB is moveable, so it can be lowered to floor level in Foundation Stage, and highered for older ages. I love mine.

I think a good teacher will use them in many different ways, including using it like a blackboard and a projector screen.

What would make it unsafe?

I do not like IWB's unless they are used in precisely that way, i.e interactive.

Too often I see them being used as a giant TV screen, or a white version of a black board. There does not seem to be too much interaction with the children getting up and using them.

Also I think they dictate too much how a lesson will go. Sometimes planning is done around what IWB resources there are rather than using imaginative ideas presented in a more old fashioned way.

1dilemma I insisted my IWB was sited at ground level so the children could use it the installers were appalled at the extra work it caused them. I think most schools accept they have to situated where the installers say. The board in our Y2 class is so high the 6'2" teacher can't reach the top!
I use my board everyday but wouldn't be heartbroken if I didn't have it.

mummyloveslucy we have IWBs in our nursery and I recently visited another nursery where they counted 5 !!!

The school she's at now is private and very traditional. They don't have them in the junior or senior schools either.
I'm not saying that's better, just different. She will be going to a state school soon, after she finnishes nursery. I don't think there are any state schools without them now.
I'm glad it's not just computor based learning.

They don't do one or the other mummyloveslucy! They still hold the shapes etc.
I love them-you can do so much. There is no point in worrying -all schools have them now in the way that they used to have blackboard and chalk-you ould be hard pressed to find anywhere without.

but they don't "do it all" on the computer screen. It is as large as an old fashioned blackboard and the kids get to go up and write on it or press answers. tbh I'd be surprised if her current school doesn't use them further up even if not in nursery (I doubt many schools woudl in Foundation stage much). It is a teaching tool, but just one of many in a classroom. They may well use tactile materials etc too.

The head of my daughters nursery isn't impressed by them, she says children learn better though holding shapes and exploring letters etc. She has foam letters that the children hold and make up words.
Doing it all on a computor screen just seems wrong to me.

Interesting that the teachers like them so much.
I don't know about developing brains but they are in most schools round here and presented as a positive thing however I saw part of a lesson and thought it was just awful.

It was probably a reception class one little girl was by the white board trying to do something like move spots onto a dalmation, she couldn't reach (and was by no means the shortest), then her poor little finger couldn't drag the spot so everyone else was plainly bored after about 7 goes the teacher either did it or told her to sit down, the entire class was talking precipatated mostly by someone who was presumably assisting someone with special needs who was sitting on her lap whilst she talked to him.

It did not make a good impression on me (and this school is in the good schools guide and very highly thought of)

I have subsequently seen it used for some phonics and it was better but I was still a bit ho hum (however it did strongly remind me of the first occasion)

Oh that's o.k then. It was the mums talking at nursery about them that made me wonder.
I'm not that good with technology, so thought I'd ask.
I don't think they've been proven safe or unsafe, but it looks as if they're unavoidable.

My lo's school has them in every classroom as most schools do these days

I can see the benefits but I do have one complaint
At my lo's school they are used as a babysitter - a lot!
Its playtime, its vaguely raining - never mind we will stick them all in front of the white board with a dvd

Mine have watched lots of films and cartoons at school that I wouldnt necessarily choose to let them watch at the age they are

You are worrying over nothing. Talk about pfb.

Interactive whiteboards have been around for years, and they are a good thing. How exactly could they be bad for developing brains?

How strange. Have you been reading the tabloids or something?

I'm a teacher and I love mind. So much more scope for different things in lessons.

I think you may struggle to find a school without them soon, I love mine.

I have never heard that about developing brains.

I can say that they can make the lessons more interactive and interesting for the children.

I think you're worrying about nothing, TBH.

I don't suppose chalk dust was good for our lungs in the old days, or solvent from whiteboard pens....

Never heard that. Why would they not be good?

I have used them as a teacher and a TA, and they are used in all the schools I have been in, including DD's school.

I like them. They have so much scope to make the lessons more interactive and engaging when used well.

Certainly the children I have worked with, and my own DD, enjoy using them.

My daughter is due to start primary school in January. Her school has these interactive white boards. I've heard that they might not be good for our childrens developing brains. I'm a bit worried about the long tern effects of these.
Does anyone have more info on these? I'm probubly worrying about nothing, what do you thik?