When explaining to someone what a Mimio board is, you can start off saying it's a step up from an overhead. The pen that you use for the whiteboard stays charged for 16 hours and you can save notes written on the board for the next day or send them to students who were absent that day. Teachers can sit down or be in the back of the room while still being about to control and add to the interactive whiteboard using her tablet. Software for the board is free and all the information from the board is saved on the "bar" put on the board. This "bar" can also sink with new software from a computer USB.
When trying something new as big and diverse as a Mimio Interactive Whiteboard, it's important that you have a culture of experiementation and have teachers and staff who are open to try new things and take it as a learning experience. To train teachers in this school to use the whiteboards, they first had an hour and a half session and then followed up by one hour trainings, along with an inservice day. Their librarian was very knowledgeable about them and open to help any teacher who had questions or needed assistance. Although some things are more time and work for teachers, hopefully if the right devices are chosen smartly, in the end it will end up benefiting the students learn, and hence come back to reward the teachers as well.
When observing the class use the whiteboard, they often used things called Flipcharts, which we created an example in class. For our example my group and I created one about animals and insects you might see in the Zoo and how to identify different specific ones. In the class we observed, they used ones working with their calender, attendance, lunch they were eating that day, writing, games like jeapordy testing their knowledge, math activities, vocabulary, and reading by using an elmo's camera to display the text larger on the screen. By enlarging a books text on the interactive white board, it can make reading easier as it is described below by it's photograph.
Although every piece of technology has the risk of not working properly, I would feel extremely lucky to have any kind of interactive whiteboard in my classroom. I now am aware of so many more ways in which I can manipulate it to make it beneficial, fun, and an effective, collaborative tool for my students!
In the following photographs taken by me personally while observing, faces were "blacked out" to secure the students' and teacher's identity.
Here students are taking turns showing if they are having "hot" or "cold" lunch for the day which is also used for attendance and a transition between activities.
Here one student is taking part in an inveractive whiteboard activity.
Conveniently today, instead of buying "big sized books" so all students can see the pictures and words on each page, teaches can take any book they already have regardless of it's size and project it using their elmo camera and their interactive whiteboard. Teachers can mark on the board which give the illusion it marks on the page to highlight certain words, sentences, ideas, or parts of the pictures.
Another aspect I liked about using the interactive whiteboards was the experience students got to have by calling on other students which give them slight power in choosing who goes next and owernship in the answer the contribute to the board. It gets students up, moving, engaged, and focused on the fun activity at hand!
Our flipchart cover about the Zoo and it's animals and insects!
Here is an activity slide from our zoo flipchart I put together, instructing students to identify which animals shown are fish and then using the interactive whiteboard pen, they must drag it to the it's natural habitat, being the body of water.
Here is a video showing one way in which you can use an interactive whiteboard to help educate your students using adjectives from YouTube!
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