IWBs are costly investments that do little to automatically encourage innovative teaching. Described by honest companies as a bridging technology designed to bring digital tools into traditional classrooms, they do more to facilitate existing practices than they do to transform learning. Sadly, this pattern has become all too common in digital integration efforts.

For many teachers, the immediate feedback offered by the sets of student responders often paired with interactive white boards is invaluable. With little effort, teachers can collect formative assessment information that can be used to inform practice in the moment. And while this kind of work is responsible and intelligent, it can lead to an over-reliance on lower-level multiple choice questioning techniques.

To avoid this trap, begin using your student response systems to ask open-ended scale style questions in your classroom. Then, give your students a range of common perspectives to choose from. After you’ve initially surveyed your class, encourage students to share their perspective and deliver a lesson connected to the content that you are studying. When your lesson is finished, resurvey your class and see whether or not student perspectives have changed. Encourage students who revised their original thinking to explain the reason for their revisions. By doing so, you can ensure that your infrared interactive whiteboard promotes higher-order thinking in your classroom.

One of the most valuable tools often bundled with interactive whiteboards are wireless slates or tablets that can be used to control the IWB infrared touch frame from anywhere in a room. Slates unchain teachers from the front of the class and allow them to move freely throughout their room to monitor and manage the progress of their students while continuing to present key concepts.

Slates become even more valuable, however, when they are put into the hands of students. Consider having students use slates to work out different solutions to a common problem. Ask your class to watch for mistakes or misconceptions as a peer completes a task transparently. Create comparison/contrast activities that allow groups to consider the common characteristics of a concept that you are studying in class by manipulating a collection of important vocabulary words. Whatever you do, recognize that student-centered IWB activities depend on your willingness to put IWB hardware into the hands of your students.