Interactive Whiteboards: The Advantages and Disadvantages

Interactive whiteboards are tools that are used in the classroom to link a computer to a projector and a touch-sensitive screen. This allows the user to control the input device and the computer functions via the touch screen, while projecting the computer images on a large surface. It is ideal for education settings e.g. in classrooms.

Whiteboards can be seen as the newest type of top class technology and are slowly being implemented in the top schools who are able to afford them as well as in disadvantaged schools by receiving these boards from the government. Although these interactive white boards can be seen as “the best technology”, there are both advantages and disadvantages of these boards which I will discuss in the next few paragraphs to follow.

The advantages of the interactive white board should be quite obvious and we might even think that there will be far more advantages than disadvantages, although, we have to take into account that we live in South Africa where technology are not as developed as in the rest of the first world countries. The advantages are thus as follows:

·         Students will be more engaged and will participate in classes.

·         The teacher can make the lesson far more visual and interesting by being able to show video’s and to go onto the internet to show images and information.

·         There are a far larger range of activities that the teacher can do with the learners.

·         By encouraging the children to be interactive the teacher will be able to keep the learners’ attention.

·         It is faster for a teacher to write (type on the interactive white board) than to write on a white board or a chalk board. This saves a lot of time.

·         A big advantage is the large amount of information that can be displayed at once and not to wipe things from the board the whole time to make space for new information.

·         The teacher doesn’t have to print a stack of papers to hand out in class with the activities on, as everything will be displayed on the white board.

No matter how many advantages the interactive white board has, there will always be disadvantages as well and especially in a country such as South Africa. The following disadvantage can be identified:

·         South Africa’s electricity supply is not as trustworthy as in other countries which mean that power failures might restrict effective learning.

·         These interactive white boards are relatively expensive and the software must be updated on a regular bases.

·         A technician should also be appointed as to sort out any problems that might occur during a normal day’s class.

·         These boards can easily break or dysfunction in which case there must be switched to the old technique of white or chalk board writing.

·         Some teachers will not be able to work with these interactive whiteboards and they might be technology disabled.

·         Teachers might have to attend workshops on how these white boards work which will take up their free time and weekends.

·         Learners will not always have a smartphone or tablet that can interact with the whiteboard.

Now that all the advantages and disadvantages have been identified, it is easy to see that implementing interactive white boards in South African schools are not an easy task and that we have to take all the factors, which may play a role, into account.