Whiteboard #18

I cannot believe that it is the end of the semester and I have not blogged about the biggest technology boost in my entire teaching career...the Promethean Board (whiteboard) that was installed in my room last January.
I cannot tell you the changes in engagement that have happened from this one technology tool and the change in my lesson planning. My students love to learn with the whiteboard. It also gives me so many wonderful teaching tools and opportunities. My students are able to manipulate sentences, solve math problems, and have many more opportunities to have hands on problem solving.
I am able to make flipcharts (which are like Power Points) to make lessons run smoother and I am able to save these flipcharts which save me time and allow me to use these lessons for years and years. I can also build on these flipcharts and share them with the rest of my team and even the rest of the district through an open K drive. There is a wonderful site, http://www.prometheanplanet.com/, that I often use to find an enormous amount of resources. It has resource packets and flipcharts that you can download for use in your classroom. I often am able to tweak them to fit the needs of my students as learners.
Another aspect that is wonderful about having the white board as a teaching tool is that I can show short movie clips or animated math problems using programs such as United Streaming or our math textbook, which has an online counterpart. The students love to watch any kind of movie, so I try to use that as much as possible in learning environments.
I have loved using the whiteboard and finding different ways to teach the kids of this technology driven generation.