Before we start talking about teaching with IWB, it is important to introduce a bit about IWB related software and supporting materials. Interactive Whiteboard companies and many other companies and projects have developed numerous supplemental instructional materials to exploit the interactive features of IWBs. It is these software and supplemental materials that make the teaching with IWBs more meaningful and student-centered. Without these software and materials, IWB “is just a big monitor and mouse.” (Granger, 2008) IWBs allow teachers to demonstrate concepts and ideas in an easy and efficient way.

Since IWBs can be used in so many different ways, it can be used in a variety of ways to assist math teaching and learning. Most commonly, an IWB can be used as a projector and support “Consider” type of math activities. Students can watch information from video clips, animation, presentation or other information displayed on the screen. An IWB can also support a discussion on a topic by connecting to a Classroom Response System (Clicker) and showing the polling results.

Using the interactive features of IWBs, teachers can demonstrate concepts and ideas very easily and efficiently. The following video shows how the teacher can use the Notebook Math tool by Smartboard:

The video below shows how an Algebra teacher wrote a function on the IWB and then the graph of the function showed immediately on the board with the ability of changing the shape of the graph with the change of factors:

Appropriately using IWB can make the “Practice” type activities interactive and interesting with the support of related Software.

For example, SMART Exchange is the community where SMART technologies related resources are shared. Teachers can go to this online community and then search for lessons, manipulatives, question sets, activity packs and gallery collections by grade level and key words. Use the filter on the left side of the screen to narrow down your search results.

IWB is also a very good tool for students to demonstrate their understanding about a math problem solving process.

In addition, IWB can capture your your students’ handwriting. can be seen in many classrooms to be connected to the computer and used as a projector to show the content on the computer.