Whiteboard Challenge – Evaluation

Posted on May 19, 2008 
Filed under IWB Challenge, Interactive Whiteboards, SMART Boards




At the start of April I declared the Whiteboard Challenge open. My aim was to use my interactive whiteboard in two new ways each week and then write about what I had done. For the first three weeks my posts were pretty regular, then I hit an extremely busy patch in my life (which has included moving house and being away for several days presenting and attending conferences and a few other things) and so I have written about the most recent three weeks in one post.

I declare that the challenge was a success – and not just for me, which I am very happy to report. Isabelle Jones and Helena Butterfield challenged themselves as well. I’ve just been reading over their challenge posts and they have got some great ideas that I’m going to explore over the next few weeks. There is so much out there! Also, I’m going to try to read these blogs more regularly:

The Whiteboard Blog

Teachers Love SMART Boards

and catch up on a few podcast lessons from Ben and Joan at The SMART Board Lessons Podcast.

What I’ve learnt from setting myself this task -

The most valuable thing was that I forced myself to discover and use new things on my SMART Board. I had to because I had to write about it! Well, I must admit that they things I did were not things I had NEVER done before, it’s just that they were things I had been meaning to get around to using and hadn’t. I really liked using SMART Video and annotating a video with my Year 11s (they did most of it) and then sending the screen capture of their annotation to a Notebook file. I’d love to use lots more video in my class and I think that is a great tool for interacting with video.

It’s been great to make myself think about using the SMART Board, but also to be actively on the lookout for resources and ideas from other people. I started an Interactive Whiteboards in the Classroom group on Diigo and quite a few people have joined and are sharing links.

I’m starting to think a bit more about what using a SMART Board really means. I’ve got a post coming out on that so I won’t go into it much here. 

The challenge is not over!

Not for me anyway. I’ll continue to write my Weekly Whiteboard Workouts and include whatever ideas I’ve had for that week. They may not be new each time, but build on variations of activities I have done before. I’ve just this week managed to download SMART Notebook 10 without any hassles and am having a great time exploring some of the new features. More on how I’m using that in the future weeks.

Now that the my challenge is officially finished, I think I might wander over to Jose Picardo’s blog and take up his Animoto Challenge. A few weeks late, but better late than never, right? I also feel like setting myself a bit of a podcasting challenge. Hmm, always more things to learn…

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2 Responses to “Whiteboard Challenge – Evaluation”

  1.  interactive whiteboards fan on May 19th, 2008 8:29 pm

    Hi!
    I like your blog and would like to invite you, to join http://teachersplanet.ning.com

    It is an online community for teachers of all levels and curriculum areas.Your visit to the network will provide an opportunity for you to share your expertise with our teachers.At teachers planet you can start your own groups, start/participate in a discussion/ forum, add videos, music, RSS feeds, start blogs and do many more things.

    Thank you for your time and consideration

  2.  Marie-France on May 21st, 2008 8:10 am

    Hi, Jess
    I also did three weeks of the challenge. Did not write about week 4 as I had to rush to France to visit my mother who is ill. Will post my last post at the end of the week when I will have gained my senses

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