Whiteboards Everywhere!

G'Day Mates!  The first podcast that I listened to was through The Virtual Staffroom  - Conversations with teachers about technology in the classroom.  I was listening in on Chris Betcher as he was at the 4th annual Interactive Whiteboard Conference in beautiful Gold Coast, Australia.  In this podcast, we follow along as Chris Betcher interviewed delegates and we listened in as he had a video conference with Ben Hazzard of Canada. Aside from Chris having an amazing Australian accent, it was very interesting to listen to!


This was a big conference in Australia that attracted educators and vendors from as far away as Hong Kong, New Zealand and Christmas Island.  There were about 450 people in attendance and they were able to choose from an astounding 116 sessions to attend.  All of the people that he interviewed were very interested in incorporating technology such as SmartBoards into their classrooms. Some of the comments that stuck out to me were as follows: "Professional Development is needed when a school decides to purchase Interactive WhiteBoards (IBW). We don't want to invest all this money and then have teachers who are too afraid to use them. We need to train our teachers."  The Director of Immanuel College, which hosted the conference, stated that IBW's are in use in all of their primary classrooms and most of their secondary classrooms. He said that in the primary grades, IBW's are used interactively as opposed to secondary where they are mostly used to lecture.  He would like to see all of the students, both primary and secondary using them interactively because it is so much more engaging.


The last part of this podcast was happening during one of the sessions where Chris was Skyping as a videoconference with Ben Hazzard, Canada's own IWB guru. For me the highlight of this part was the idea that students could Skype with another classroom across the world and be able to talk in real time.


The use of IWB's is changing the face of the classroom, and it seems that the teachers who embrace this technology will be the teachers who will be able to make the greatest impact with 21st century students. I am really looking forward to using one in my future classroom.