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... the subject of the lesson. The groups of students, therefore, will be able to view and make decisions concerning interactive problems together. In addition, the use of interactive whiteboards will allow students working together on spreadsheets, texts (especially during the lessons of modern foreign languages), and other projects with their classmates. The interactive whiteboards will also allow connecting to video conferencing systems and the teacher or lecturer will be able to enhance educational process by making it more interesting.
Apart from that, the students and staff will be able to move around an interactive screen and they will have no need to use computer, as the screen is sensitive. The teachers and lecturers teaching modern foreign languages and secondary mathematics will also have an opportunity to use the interactive whiteboards in a traditional way, as they will be able writing directly on the whiteboards, highlighting and marking objects or labeling necessary elements of their educational material directly on the screen. Apart from that, the teachers will be able to erase the errors, but at the same time they will have a chance to save student's errors and print out the student's results, as everything will be stored in the interactive whiteboard's memory. In addition, the use of interactive whiteboards in mathematics and foreign languages will allow having an on-screen keyboards floating over the software, and each student will be able to enter text, comments or necessary data into almost any application. The use of whiteboards will also enable making modifications and editing on-screen, as well as enabling recording of additions and changes made by students and / or teachers. The interactive whiteboards also allow teachers providing their students with electronic flipchart's up to 99 pages that contain all necessary diagrams and comments.
There flipchart's can be saved as a file in HTML format and can be later used by the teacher or students across an Intranet. The comments can be stored and made available to those students who, by chance, missed the lecture or presentation. In addition, whiteboards allow the teacher to present students work to a wide audience and makes possible to examine the students work in details, explaining all mistakes and making comments concerning the work. The use of interactive whiteboards also allows teachers to show video clips. This feature is very useful while teaching and learning modern foreign languages, as the teacher can explain the most difficult concepts of the language, phonetics or grammar. In addition, interactive whiteboards are very useful for visually-impaired students, and students with special needs, as the teachers can offer such students to perform drag and drop tasks with visual graphics instead of test and text learning.
The notes, drawings and concept maps created by the teachers and students during the lecture or presentation can be then saved for future reference, or they also can be printed out and used as instant handouts for the lessons and lectures the teachers have just given. This feature is also very useful, as is enhances the process of adoption and understanding new educational material, which is very important in such complex subjects like mathematics and foreign languages. The use of interactive whiteboards also allows the teachers watching what the students have displayed on their screens and, consequently, making decision concerning whose screen should be displayed in wide audience in a networking environment. By doing this, the teacher is able to choose the screen of the student who has some difficulties with the task (or with the subject of the lecture), and provide him with additional explanations, clarifying the subject of the lecture. On the other hand, the teacher may choose to display the screen of the student who has best results (for example, in case the interactive whiteboards are used for testing), and highlighting the most efficient solutions to the mathematical tasks, and explaining the other students, why does this solution should be preferred. So, the interactive whiteboards can be used by the teachers to run online tests in mathematics (of linguistics, or modern foreign languages), as well as running opinion polls and displaying the instant feedbacks to the group of students.
However, it should be taken into account that not all interactive whiteboards offers such features, and in order to choose the most appropriate interactive whiteboards, the teachers should decide on which features they will need to be in their interactive whiteboards, in compliance with the requirements of their subjects (whether it concerns mathematics, or learning modern foreign languages). The Use of Interactive Whiteboards in Classroom Environments: The Issues to Be Concerned Although the benefits of using interactive whiteboards in teaching and learning in modern foreign languages and secondary mathematics are obvious, there are still some issues to be taken into consideration. Basically, there are some issues related to technical problems, functionally, cost, accessibility, security and convenience, as well as some pedagogical issues. It should be taken into account that the major technical issues are related to the tracking capability and image resolution. For the teachers, it is better to choose high resolution as well as high tracking speed, as lower resolution will cause difficulties to handwriting recognition, and low tracking speed will cause delays in execution of the drawings and writing on the screen.
It should be also taken into account that different types of interactive whiteboards and software packages offer different types of functions. This is very important for the teachers and lecturers in such areas of study like secondary mathematics and foreign languages, as, for example, teaching mathematics and foreign languages will be easier and more efficient, in case the students and teachers will have an opportunity to write or draw on the interactive whiteboards using different colors or, for example, using fingers. Not all whiteboards are able to print our or save the results of the presentation or project to the personal computer. Apart from that, as not all students have a perfect handwriting, it should be taken into consideration that not all whiteboards's oftware packages allow using advanced letter recognition systems that can convert the handwriting into the text that can be edited easily. There are also models that do not support feedback and remote voting. Although remote voting is not very important in the process of learning, the feedback is quite an important feature that allows the teacher to trace the results of his lecture and make corrections or providing additional explanations, in case necessary.
In addition, there are models of interactive whiteboards that do not allow storing sequences of screen prints for playback (this feature can facilitate the math lessons), or controlling computer applications using the screen interface (this can be used both in teaching foreign languages, and secondary mathematics), or customize the screen appearance. As it was already mentioned, the use of interactive whiteboards in teaching and learning mathematics and foreign languages due to easy control functions make these devices very useful for students with physical and visual impairments. What concerns security and convenience, the interactive whiteboards can be free-standing or fixed. Although the free-standing interactive whiteboards are portable (this is the advantage, as the teachers have more options concerning the desired location of the board), they are vulnerable to theft. In such a way, some additional security measures should be taken to avoid theft.
Fixed whiteboards are more secure, however, they are less flexible and students will have no possibility to adjust them and to place them more conveniently. The cost is, probably, one of the most important issues, as the interactive whiteboards are relatively expensive. Although the cost depends on the technology employed, the average cost of such a whiteboard ranges from 750 to 1500 pounds. Apart from that, the students should be instructed not to use ordinary markers on the whiteboards, as they can cause damage the surface. Conclusion Although the use of interactive whiteboards has some disadvantages, the advantages of using them obviously overweight all possible disadvantages. Interactive whiteboards indeed create a wide range of learning opportunities and opportunities for interactivity in lessons, and can enhance the nature of teaching and learning in modern foreign languages and secondary mathematics (Interactive Whiteboards).
The interactive whiteboards are learner-centered and highly motivating, especially when they are integrated innovative ly by the teachers into the process of learning. Interactive whiteboards offer quite a powerful facility for integrating various media elements into teaching secondary mathematics and modern foreign languages, as they allow the teachers to enhance educational content and support collaborative learning that, in its turn, encourages students to learn and provides additional perspectives in the process of education. Apart from that, the use of interactive whiteboards can enhance mathematical thinking and promote accelerated learning. With the use of the whiteboards, the students will evidently have an increased interest using the new technology, thus providing additional factor of interest able to enhance educational level and academic performance within the students. However, as the interactive whiteboards are still not used by the teachers to their full potential, the teachers should undertake all efforts to make students more familiar with the whiteboards. The interactive whiteboards are essential in learning secondary mathematics and foreign languages, as they are especially efficient for use in small groups of students, where the students can gather around the whiteboard during the discussion of the subject related to the foreign language (for example, grammar, or linguistics, or complex mathematical tasks), and interact with the whiteboard as the students develop ideas and suggestions.
The students can also work with applications, or image (for example, when studying foreign languages and trying to guess the foreign analogue to the English word or image). It should be taken into consideration that those educational institutions, where the number of students learning secondary mathematics or modern foreign languages is quite large, the use of interactive whiteboards may be faced with difficulties, as the interactive whiteboards suit best for the use in small groups, while they are not very good investment for working with large groups due to limited opportunities for interaction within a significant number of participants (students). Yet, in these cases the interactive whiteboards may be equipped with a number of hand-held devices which will extent the usability within the large working groups. References Interactive Whiteboards. (n. d. ). Retrieved December 7, 2007, from web ISC, t.
J. (2002). Interactive Whiteboards In Education. ISC, the Joint Information Systems Committee. Music, D. , Reynolds, D. (2005).
Chapter 3. Interactive Teaching. In Effective teaching: Evidence and practice. London: Sage. Williams, M. , Burdon, R. (2001).
Chapter 3. What do teachers bring to the learning - teaching process. In Psychology for language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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