7 Tips for Using Interactive Displays In the Classroom

The Install

Interactive displays aren’t inexpensive, especially when you compare them to conventional whiteboards,Tomei says. “You’re spending a lot more money, especially when you consider the cost of getting interactive displays installed. You could outfit three rooms with whiteboards for the same price of one room with interactive displays,” he says. What you’re getting with interactive displays, though, is “quality over quantity.”

Tomei has several pieces of advice for administrators interested in purchasing interactive displays in the classroom.

First, get a lot of teacher feedback on the technology. A successful implementation really depends on how instructors want to use interactive displays. Are they more interested in a conventional pressure-sensitive board or a flat-panel display? Do they want to use a pen or their finger to write on the interactive display? If you don’t choose a solution that is comfortable for your teachers, they aren’t likely to use them.

Pay attention to the expertise you’ll need for maintenance and repair. “People in the audiovisual department have long been regarded as ‘slide projector people,'” says Tomei, who notes that administrators need to focus on sourcing highly talented professionals who can help with more advanced presentation technologies.

Work with someone who’s qualified in audiovisual design. Administrators who want to create a genuinely user-friendly system won’t just put interactive displays on the wall, connect the computer, and walk away. “This leaves teachers fumbling with remotes and cables everywhere. You need to look at the audiovisual system as a whole,” says Tomei. A good solution can be a simple touch screen to turn on the projector, adjust volume, and switch the display between computers in the room.

Give teachers, students and parents a sneak peek. If you want to get buy-in for the technology, considering hosting a time for key stakeholders to come in and see the displays in action. One idea is to create a sample lesson and show them how it will work. “When they can visualize how this all comes together, teachers, students, and parents can really see the value,” Tomei says.

Training

It’s a mistake to just throw an interactive display into a classroom. In order to get the most out of your investment, teachers have to have a solid understanding of how to effectively integrate the technology into their lessons.

“The most expensive piece of technology is the one collecting dust. You don’t want that,” says Dee Turner, also a former educator and today a training specialist at CCS Presentation Systems.The user interface for an interactive display feels a lot more like our smartphones and our tablets, which means that training isn’t as scary as it once was. “It used to be that teachers were afraid to get in front of their peers with this technology; they were afraid they’d break it,” she says. “Today, everything is a lot more intuitive, and that’s largely due to the fact that many teachers have smartphones and tablets themselves.”

Advice from Turner and Baker on training teachers to fully utilize interactive displays in the classroom follows:

Each classroom has its own “personality.” It’s critical to realize that each classroom has different technology tools and different skillsets, on top of teaching different subjects. The whole thought of having technology in the classroom is it’s supposed to be in the background – technology shouldn’t be driving the learning.

Keep it brief and keep it about teaching. Training can consist of just spending time with the classroom teacher and giving them maybe three helpful hints. If it takes teachers longer than two minutes to figure out the technology, they won’t use it in the classroom.

Consider a “train the trainer” approach. In this scenario, administrators can cherry pick a few tech-savvy teachers who are eager to incorporate interactive displays into classroom instruction. Baker points to a few pilot projects in Arizona where she’s been involved as a trainer. In these projects, teachers applied to be a part of the pilot, and then she works one-on-one with them on including interactive displays as instructional tools. These “technology champions” can then train their teacher colleagues.

“These teachers are awesome,” says Baker. “They’ve dedicated so much of their time – on top of what they do teaching. These teacher-trainers are going from classroom to classroom, and helping teachers on a one-on-one basis, rather than one big training session,” she says.

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