Other Uses

It has been really interesting having other classes come into the room to access the whiteboard when my class have been out of the room. The preps, (reception) class in particular seem to take to it really easily. Again the standard patter involves a talk about the projector and about not looking into the bright light, then safety around the board before showing them, (usually on some unsuspecting child's forehead), that the pens don't actually make a mark in the normal sense though on the board they create magic. Then it's onto exploring some of the attributes of the board eg the display of Flash interactives or thinking tools to something else hopefully related to their class work. In this way I hope that we are providing a sort of PD for the teachers as well.

This morning the Art teacher came in and enquired if there was any way that we could display digital images of the children on the board so that they could draw and shade around their projected image with pencil to have the sketchings of a large portrait. With a minimum experimentation we found images on the network and projected them onto some large sheets of paper blu-tacked to the board. 15 minutes later our test child had a very life-like torso portrait to work with. Result one happy Art teacher and we became a wandering class for the sessions that she has with the extension art group as they "draw" their portraits. A totally unexpected use for the board indeed.

On another occasion a visiting Canadian student teacher from another room enquired if he could use the board to run a PowerPoint presentation that he had made for his class. A quick show and do explanation and he was away, as of course was my class as we offered to vacate so he could use our room. (My children are becoming well practiced in packing up to decamp :)