If I answer “I don’t know…” I pretty much have conceded. If you hear a long whinyish (lol spell check hated that word!) southern drawl “I don’t know” come from me it either means I give up or it has stressed me to my limits but I’m still on the case. Right now I’m in that stage – the stressed to my limits but still working on it.

Interactive white boards. Man, these things are “cool.” They are expensive. My last instructor in my EdS program was a Tech/Curriculum guy from New Jersey. I was only one in there from Alabama (class was in Georgia, where school systems are not doing so hot) and I wish you could have seen his face when I told him we only had one in my entire school, and it was mostly used for ACCESS distant learning. I could just read his mind “You hick.” He even brought a video on how to make one from a wii remote the next class. IWB are just cool, if you like to play with technology, you want one.

I spent yesterday in a PD on how to use them. Did I get to use one? No. But I’m not going to dwell on how PD should and shouldn’t be taught. *stepping down off soapbox before I even start* But we did spend time learning how to use the activstudio program. Love the flipcharts, great for kids. Mostly learned how to use it as a teacher. How to use it for instruction. That is somewhat where I have problems with the IWB. Bryan Phillips told me yesterday that he didn’t like them because it put a teacher on a leash. That really got me thinking. I then realized the lady teaching the class NEVER moved from the front and center.

During my class we do have “lecture/discussion” time. I teach American History and Earth science. When I do have those days I make sure I do not talk the entire time. I like to mix up the mediums taking place. I show pictures from internet, videos, and give them passages to read. Most of my “lecture” information does not come from me – I assume that would be boring. So when I got the grant to receive the IWB I was glad that I would have the access to flipcharts to organize the media I normally use. You guys know my hatred of PPT, so organizing this beyond have 100 tabs opened can be difficult (sometimes I embed wiki). But that is a lot of money to spend on something that I only would use a few days a week. To me it it does “unleash” because I’m usually having to go back and forth to the laptop to open the media.

BUT (yes you know I was gonna throw that in here) education is changing. Pedagogy is going from teacher lecture to student centered learning. I do a lot of PBL in my class. Especially in history. I like for kids to look at their feelings about a situation more than learning just facts. I also like kids to think “discovery” when learning science (very hard to do with Earth science by the way, most think a rock is a rock). This cannot happen when I am just standing there “showing” stuff.

Sooooo how am I going to do this? How am I going to use that PBL pedagogy with this pretty pricey piece of equipment? How? Iiii Donnn’t knoooooow.