ICT Scoil – sharing IWB links

Faced with the exciting prospect of having a new Smart Interactive Whiteboard in my classroom in September I took it upon myself to become armed with a host of internet resources. I opened up Google and typed in “Interactive Whiteboard resources” only to find that there were 1,480,000 links. Where to start? There is a myriad of websites and software to use with Interactive Whiteboard and if one is not careful it is very easy to become swamped, give up and return to the traditional method of chalk and blackboard.

The Interactive Whiteboard is probably the biggest and most exciting change in education for decades. It completely changes the dynamics of the classroom and the focus of learning for children. There is a renewed vigour from both teacher and child alike as a new world opens up. The opportunities are endless but the learning curve is steep and slippery.  Many become disheartened and rely on the couple of tried and tested resources. With this in mind I decided to see what I could do to help teachers with an Interactive Whiteboard.

It is very easy to spend hours trawling the web in search of good resources and end up getting frustrated. From my own searching and recommendations from a variety of forums, including educationposts.ie, I built up a collection of good resources which I saved and this collection continues to grow. Instead of keeping these to myself I decided to set up a website, ICT Scoil (http://ictscoil.wordpress.com/), where I could let my fellow teachers know about them. The website reviews any website or piece of software that I have found useful in my teaching and I hope others will too. As any school principal can verify, the coffers of the Department of Education and Science are well and truly shut, so it is only free resources which I have reviewed on the website. If any other teachers have suggestions of websites, I would be delighted to hear from them.

http://ictscoil.wordpress.com/