Interactive White Boards

Imagine walking into a class of 30 Digital Natives students with a hand drawn teaching materials,handwritten notes and chalk.How would they respond?They probably would feel helpless and try to engage with the lecture.The teacher would use the materials to lecture on the subject matter as students listen,respond and finish tasks.

The teacher returns to the lesson plan and writes on the reflection sheet,It was a good lecture on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.Students know about Coleridge as a writer of this poem.The annotation exercises were handed out as homework.

Another hard day at work done the teacher feels the lesson was O.K. and feels happy.Ten days later the teacher asks Peter to talk about Coleridge in class.Peter retrieving from memory,racking the whole lot of stuff in there goes,"Coleridge ,Whats that".I heard it somewhere".The teacher then comments that Peter has not been diligent enough to read and refer the lessons at home and hence cannot remember Coleridge.Few others feel the same about Coleridge and the lesson.The teacher decides that the lesson must be reviewed again and goes again.The reflection sheet of the days says,students can remember the lyrics of Eminem but not a taught poem.They do not like Coleridge,he must be boring or difficult for them.Must revise because it is an exam question.

More talk and more chalk and Peter remembers the teacher as Coleridge after 10 years but actually nothing about Coleridge.

The same teacher gets to class with ICTs based teaching plans and links up lesson to the real time resources on Coleridge;pictures,list of works,biography table etc as warm up. Introduces a learning federation object url of the Antarctic letting students see slides of the cold continent and know about famous expeditions and explorers.Then with a click on the mouse displays the poem,Rime of the Ancient Mariner and presents the poems structure,linguistic devices, critical appreciation.Interactive board exercises then will consolidate that learning through tasks and the lesson closes with a clip of sounds from the Antarctica for students to contrast the feel of the poem.The reflection sheet will then read, Peter wanted to know if Coleridge has ever been to Antarctica,Shane wanted to develop a piece of music on his synthesizer and wanted info. on copyrights,Jack will never want to go to Antarctic because his health suffers in cold climates but Sam would try and develop a thermal suit for Jack.

It is very probable that after 10 years Peter and others would have made progress and gone on to do what they set out after the one Interactive lesson on Coleridge.

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The above scenario mirrors the ideas of Sara Bradshaw and explicates the transition effort from chalk to tech and compares that effort with the end result of constructivist application.The students are not passive agents but active contributors to society.The emphases on simulated situations,multiple perspectives,active learning and collaboration in the above lesson has made the transition effort from chalk to tech fruitful.It is evident from the teacher reflection,student comments and implied ideas that the Global community of learners is a reality not idle talk.
It only requires us to discard the chalk and take up tech, facilitate than teach,collaborate not challenge.Peter will then have a name of the teacher etched in memory.