Interactive Whiteboards: Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages:

• The interactive whiteboard allows a large group to sit and participate comfortably in a presentation as opposed to a group crowding around a smaller computer screen.
• You can enhance any presentation or lesson by easily integrating video, animation, graphics, text and audio with the spoken presentation.
• You can display material from a number sources such as CD-ROMs, websites, DVDs, VHS tapes and television.
• Notes, diagrams and entire lessons or presentations can be saved, archived and added to the internet or disk. This means that presentation or classwork in progress can be saved ready for the next period or school day.
• Creates an environment of collaboration and interaction, allowing the students to be more engaged and therefore more likely to learn and remember the information.
• Able to link to a response system that displays responses immediately to the board, much like an iclicker, which allows for quizzing and surveys.

Disadvantages:

• Teachers may focus more on the new technology than on the lesson.
• The technology of the whiteboard may distract the students from the actual lesson if the whiteboard is used as the focus instead of the aid to the lesson
• It could potentially slow the lesson down
• Technology always has the opportunity to fail, and if the teacher is using the technology as a crutch, the lesson would not be able to continue.
• The technology is expensive