The Educators I am following through Blogs and on TwitterB

Blogs:
Social Studies and History Teacher's Blog I like this blog because it gives me a different perspective about history that I normally would not look to find. It also provides links to PowerPoint presentations, video clips, and other useful tools.

LJHS Social Studies Blog I am subscribing to this blog because I like the way the teacher has set it up to help guide students through the year. It is a classroom blog that I would like to model my own classroom blog after in the future. It allows has a ton of useful links.

HistoryTech This blog shows you how to combine technology with social studies, a key combination for my future.

Mr. Little's Social Studies Blog I am following this blog because I am aiming to be a 7th or 8th grade social studies teacher.

USHistoryBlog.com This blog provides me with a good, useful tool: with one click I have access to random U.S. History Facts

Twitter:
pbsteachers I am following this twitter account because of the access it gives you to using multimedia resources and gaining professional development for classes ranging from k-12.

scholasticteach I like this twitter account based on the fact that it provides teachers with scholastic teaching resources. Also, many teachers follow this account and post their own ideas, tips, and links to more resources.

teachers20 This account is very useful tome because it focuses on teachers using web 2.0 and preparing students for the digital age. Though I am good with technology, web 2.0 is an area of weakness and I hope this will aid me to become better with understanding and teaching it.

teachersnet I am following this account because it gives me access to blogs, articles, lessons, and anything else a teacher may need in the future.

teachersnetwork This account allows me to find information that supports teachers, worldwide, with professional development opportunities and tools that connect them with information and each other.

Understanding IWB Literature is need to Understand its Role

Last article that I am going to blog about for my research paper is “Reviewing the Literature on Interactive Whiteboards” by Steve Higgins, Gary Beauchamp, and Dave Miller. I found this article to be extremely helpful because it looks at the tremendous amount literature that already exist on IWBs and summarizes a lot of the key issues. This article gave me a firm foundation in understanding the role, questions, and benefits of using IWBs in the classroom. More importantly, the structure is perfectly designed to aid in my research topic because it looks adoption of the technology first, pedagogical impact second, and empirical evidence lastly.
One advantage that was found when using IWBs is that allows teachers to incorporate written text, video files, sounds, etc. into one presentation file. Therefore the teacher can open a single notebook file and simply use that one fill to access anything that is needed to make the presentation meet the content of that lesson. It also makes it much easier for the teacher to reach the different learners that fill up each classroom. As evident in other sources, these researchers found that successful integration of IWBs into the classroom have to be used with structured lesson plans, instead of simply being used as the new teaching fad. Thus, just like using any teaching tool, a teacher must first create a lesson plan of the content for the lesson AND THEN find the best tools to make that lesson engaging and educational.

Using IWBs to Support your Content and Lesson Plan

The next source I am going to blog about is entitled "A Study of teachers' integration of interactive whiteboards into four Australian primary school classrooms" by Sue Bennett and Lori Lockyer. I found this source to extremely helpful because it gave me an insight into how IWBs were being used in four different classrooms all in one source! Furthermore, all 4 teachers that are being looked at in this article having different degrees of experience with technology and teaching. All the teachers stated that they saw an "immediate practical benefits" such as saving time in accessing electronic resources, assisted in the routine teaching tasks, and many other classroom activities.

The most important thing that I found in the article is that each teacher used the IWB to support content and learning objectives instead of fitting lessons that work with the IWB. This idea is at the heart of where I want to my paper to go. I want to be a teacher that plans what the required content is first, and then I will work on ways to integrate the IWB or other engaging tools/activities. Once I become adapt at integrating the IWB like teachers in this source, I will be able to mesh lesson plans with IWB smoothly and correctly.

IWBs Are a Great Tool, When You Know How to Use Them

The next article under review for my research project is entitled “Teaching and learning with an interactive whiteboard: a teacher’s journey” by Sue Hodge and Bill Anderson. Sue Hodge is a teacher at primary school in New Zealand (http://www.epsomnormalprimary.school.nz/) and fell in love with IWBs from the first time she saw one being used. She was drawn to the power that the IWB can provide to visual learning, and I completely agree that this new piece of technology can change the way teachers incorporate visual learning into their daily lesson plans. Much like my last article I blogged about, this article follows another teacher’s journey, development, and teaching using the IWBs in the classroom. I found it important to use both articles because it allows me to get a chance to see how two different teachers, in separate parts of the world, have grown and learned about their teaching while incorporating a new teaching tool.

In this latest article, I found that the most important part of implementing an IWB into your classroom is not the fact you are using a new technological tool, but it is to be confident when using that tool. The article shows me that once I have come accustomed to what I can do with an IWB and how to use it on an everyday basis; I can take the much needed steps to create lessons that are fun and interactive to stimulate the learning of my students. Furthermore, it drives home the fact that using a technology for the sake of using it. As a teacher I need to remember that the learning of my students comes first and foremost. So if using the IWB is the right way to reach the students, than it is a great tool. It is my job as an educator to know my students and teach to their strengths while I develop their weaknesses using the best tools for them, not ME!

One Teacher's Journal is Another's Blueprint

Now that I have done the due diligence and examined what the creators of SMART Boards and IWBs believe that they offer to improve education, it is now time to look at my sources regarding the role of IWBs in the classroom. The first source I came across centers on teacher keeping ongoing journal of experiences she has using the IWB in her class. I choose this article for two key reasons: the 1^st is that this teacher teaches history at the same grade level I look to do so and 2^nd this article will hopefully give me some insight into how her class changed (positively or negatively) with her using the IWB.

So as I read through the first few pages of this article, I begin to hope that the journal kept by Elizabeth Mohon (http://www.huntcliff.co.uk/) will provide a much needed insight to how the role of IWBs are in classroom. All and all, the article, to me, almost works like a blueprint about using an IWB in the classroom because it is highlighted with the tentative first steps taken by Elizabeth and the progress made as she gets more accustomed with the IWB. This process is something that will be a focus of mine in my research paper. When a teacher is first given a new tool to use to educate, it takes time for the teacher and students to get used to how the teaching will begin to change. During this time of accustomed to the tool, learning can take a wrong turn or the class can fall behind. It is my hope that this research paper will better prepare me for this period and allow a smooth transition so that no learning time will get lost and the class experience will benefit from the IWB from the first day of class.

The Role of IWBs in Today's Classroom

The purpose of this blog is to help me better understand my sources for an upcoming research paper for EDU 523. Before I get started in talking about my sources, it is appropriate for me to disclose my topic: The role of Interactive Whiteboards in the classroom. I choose this topic because IWBs are one of the newest tools to be used by teachers in the class and I would like to learn how others are using this tool so I am be better prepared in the future when I have an IWB in my classroom. Yet before I started doing any research, I decided to play around at http://smarttech.com/ to get some idea about SMART Boards from SMART Technologies.

By doing so, I got a good glimpse about the educational inputs that SMART Technologies believes their products can provide for the classroom, but it also gave me valuable insight into how to critically read the sources I need to complete this paper. Since IWBs and SMART Boards are such a new and desired educational tool, a lot of the available sources are created to “talk up” the technology so that those who already purchased the product and will purchase it are satisfied with the new tool that is being added to the classroom.

Through my in-depth look at the website, it allowed me to read customer stories about the effect that SMART Boards and IWBs have on the learning of the students, but it also created an idea to compare to of sources against. The first two sources I have found, dealt with tracking the teachers’ relationship with the use of the IWBs in the class and how the technology changed the dynamic of the classroom learning structure. So thanks to the SMART Technologies website and information they have provided, I can now examine the sources I have found and selected for any bias information that would impede me from getting to the true subject of my research paper: the true role and benefit that IWBs provide to teachers, students, and the entire education process.