Chalkboards are a thing of the past

By DAVID ERICKSON

Whitefish Pilot

These aren’t the classrooms of your childhood. Long gone are the once-familiar shrieks of chalk scraping on chalkboard. In their place is only the sound of clicking, as students wirelessly send their answers to brand-new, high-tech “digital chalkboards” — all without leaving their desks.

Good-bye chalkboard, hello electromagnetic field.

The Whitefish High School district has purchased 30 InterWrite interactive whiteboards over the past two years. The new gadgets utilize patented electromagnetic digitizing technology that recognizes handwriting and uses education software that includes thousands of images and resources to create interactive lessons.

A typical lesson goes like this: The instructor clicks a button to show a question on the board, along with images to correspond with each answer. Each student uses a handheld clicker to select an answer. Within seconds, a bar graph appears on the screen showing how many students in the class selected each answer.

If the overwhelming majority of students pick the right answer, the teacher can move on with the lesson. The names of the students who gave the wrong answer are recorded so the teacher can go back and help them later.

“These real-time statistics make grading easier, allow more time for instructing, and because they are anonymous, the kids are more apt to participate,” Whitefish Middle School teacher Josh Branstetter said. “It’s all very user-friendly.”

Students can walk up front and use a special pen to drag words across the screen to answer fill-in-the-blank questions, something that seems to excite the youngsters.

Two years ago, the school district passed a technology levy to fund improvements in Whitefish schools. These interactive whiteboards have proven to be the most popular and important classroom tool purchased with that money. They cost about $3,400 each, including software updates and support, but they more than pay for themselves in saved time and learning efficiency, according to technology director Chris Deister.

“We have had only extremely positive reviews from all the staff and students,” he said. “They learn new things about them every week.”

The gadgets also feature a document camera, which can instantly take a digital picture of any worksheet and flash it up on the screen, where the instructor can write over it and instantly erase it with the click of a button. The boards can be written on with a permanent marker and be completely erased.

Branstetter said he’s also hoping to get classroom audio-recording equipment, so he can record an entire day’s lesson, post it on the Internet, and students can review it at home.

“It has made my job a lot easier,” he said. “The kids really love it too. They’re very effective teaching tools, and I can’t stress enough about the interactivity of it. It allows the kids to be more involved, and anything that is more technological they love.”