Do you use an Interactive Whiteboard (IWB)? Are you interested in exploring new ways of getting more out of using your IWB?

Why not join the Interactive Whiteboard Challenge to collaborate with other educators to improve your IWB skills while participating in discussion about how they can best be used. (Photo used with permission from Mrs Smith’s 4th Grade’s Class)

What’s involved

The Interactive Whiteboard Challenge, organised by Jess McCulloch, consists of seven tasks and you have a fortnight to complete each task. Making connections, collaborating and learning together are the essential aspects of these types of challenges — so don’t stress if you get behind you can always catch up later .

Here are the tasks:

• Challenge 1 (by Jess McCulloch) – You and Your Voice (to be completed by 15 Sept)
  
• Challenge 2 (by Danny Nicholson) – Cloning (to be completed by 29 Sept)
• Challenge 3 (by Danny Nicholson) – Using Transparency (to be completed by 13 Oct)
• Challenge 4 (by Ben Hazzard) – Record, Capture, and Extend Thinking (to be completed by 27 Oct)
• Challenge 5 (by Chris Betcher) – Containers (to be completed by 10 Nov)
• Challenge 6 (by Lauren O’Grady) – Capturing Reflections (to be completed by 24 Nov)
• Challenge 7 (by Tom Barrett) – TBA (to be completed by 8 Dec)

Each challenge involves firstly you creating something for your students to use and then your students using the tool to create something for themselves.

The Challenge is open to any educator, anywhere — just add your name to The Challenger’s page (or if unsure how to add your name leave a comment on this post and I will pass it onto the organisers).

Documenting Your Learning Journey

Recording your reflections of what you are learning and getting others to share their views is an important aspect of these types of challenge. So you’ll need to write a blog post once you’ve completed each task to discuss:

1. How you used the tool you’ve learned about
2. Whether you thought the tool was good or not.
3. Ideas for improving
4. How your students with their own creating

If you don’t have a blog – don’t stress! Contact one of the Challenge Task Master’s and they will organise an alternative to writing blog posts for you.

For those new to blogging make sure you:

1. Visit the Getting Started with Edublogs page – for manuals and videos that will help you
2. Read Here’s My First Five Tips For Writing Better Blog Posts — What Are Yours?

Remember to include the challenge number in the title of your blog posts and tag the post ‘whiteboardchallenge’. The participants will also be bookmarking their posts in Diigo (but I will explain how to do this in a later post).

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