By Keith Vallis and Peter Williamson
Build Your Own Board
Brightboar
+ + +
Interactive whiteboards are all the Teachers can build and guide lessons from the back of even
rage in classrooms across the world the largest classroom or from the midst of group activities,
these days, and for good reason.
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and students can contribute to and construct their learning
Like most technology, they hold
individually or in groups without having to walk to the front of
students’ attention much better than
the room, where they’re forced to be the centre of attention in
a traditional lecture-and-blackboard
the glare of a bright projector.
lesson ever could. They also solve the
problem of having only one classroom
computer for 30 students by project- Hook up a Bluetooth-enabled pen
ing the screen at the front of the room, tablet and a wireless keyboard, and
and they make it easy and fun for both you have an interactive brightboard—
teachers and students to interact with a setup with all the functionality of a
educational software. whiteboard, at a fraction of the cost.
without having to walk to the front of
the room, where they’re forced to be
the centre of attention in the glare of a
bright projector.
Whiteboards have become so popu- To use a brightboard, the teacher
lar that students have begun to expect can bring his or her laptop to class
them in every classroom, and some and attach it to a docking station that
parents are measuring the value of is permanently connected to power,
schools as centres of technology excel- to the school network and Internet,
lence by the number of boards they to a projector and amplifier, and to
own. In some countries, departments one or more wireless pen tablets and
of education have even mandated that keyboards. The teacher can control
all schools have them. And teachers the laptop from anywhere in the room
without whiteboards are starting to with the pen tablet and enter data
feel as if they are on the cyberhighway with the keyboard. Multiple pen tab-off-ramp. lets and keyboards will work simul-
But are interactive whiteboards the taneously, so students working alone
best choice for every classroom? or in groups—with one student “driv-
ing” the tablet while another types on
the keyboard—can interact with the
software together. Teachers can build
and guide lessons from the back of
even the largest classroom or from the
midst of group activities, and students
can contribute to and construct their
learning individually or in groups
How to Make a Brightboard
Many teachers believe the only way
to project the contents of a computer
is onto an interactive whiteboard,
but this is not true. Any computer
can connect to a projector, and any
software can be projected onto a wall.
The computer can use the same
software a whiteboard would use, or
you can use any high-quality, tried-and-trusted interactive classroom
application that takes advantage of
the multimedia and calculating power
of your computer. Many software
programs that have been around for
a long time, like Inspiration, already
have interactivity built in. Anything
you can pull up on your computer,
including Web 2.0 programs, such as
Google Earth and Google Sketchup,
can be projected on a wall using
the brightboard setup. Other good
programs to use include Geometer’s
Sketchpad, any computer-aided design program, the Pintar VirtuaLab
series, and Poly (a free 3D geometric
shape manipulation tool).
Students can use Geometer’s Sketchpad, for example, to stretch, flip, and
turn shapes while the computer cal-
