No Chalk Needed: Schools Use Interactive White Boards

From playing math games to editing writing assignments, interactive white boards are engaging students in their work at Spring Street School in Massachusetts.

The interactive white boards project a teacher’s laptop and turn the mounted white board into a touchscreen, according to Spring Street School Principal Bryan Mabie. A stylus is used to manipulate the objects on the screen. The technology can be used across subject areas, from displaying a morning message to the students, to playing math games, and displaying and editing writing samples.

Connor Simmons and Gregory Hurter, both students in Sandra Travers’ fourth-grade class at the school, recently worked on their multiplication facts skills while playing a baseball math game. They used a stylus to roll a pair of dice and then had to multiply the numbers rolled and use that answer to get ahead in the on-screen game.

The students are “completely engaged,” when using the interactive white boards, Travers said, adding “It’s incredible. I think every teacher should have one.”

And that’s the goal, according to Mabie. Spring Street School currently has a total of four interactive white boards—one each in Grades 1 through 4, he said.