Inter­ac­tive dis­plays are some of the hottest tech in the class­room right now. You prob­a­bly already know that an inter­ac­tive pan­el is a dig­i­tal touch-screen dis­play that allows teach­ers and stu­dents to inter­act direct­ly with it. 

Inter­ac­tive teach­ing meth­ods help pro­mote stu­dent engage­ment by mak­ing learn­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive and pro­mot­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion among stu­dents. But some­times, for edu­ca­tors, new tech­nol­o­gy can feel intim­i­dat­ing. When you don’t know where to start, imple­ment­ing inter­ac­tive dis­plays into every­day lessons can seem less appealing. 

That’s why we’ll offer you a guide with some tips and tricks to make you feel like a pro!

1. Getting started with your interactive panel

Inter­ac­tive dis­plays play a key fac­tor in encour­ag­ing stu­dents to col­lab­o­rate and engage with the con­tent being pre­sent­ed to them. They can appeal to visu­al and audi­to­ry learn­ers in a way that read­ing from a text­book can’t. Edu­ca­tors use inter­ac­tive pan­els in a vari­ety of ways for dif­fer­ent lessons and pre­sen­ta­tions. But we know if you haven’t used one before, it can be a lit­tle daunt­ing to fig­ure out where to start.

One of the best ways to famil­iar­ize your­self with some­thing is to just take a leap of faith. Turn on your inter­ac­tive pan­el and begin to explore. Inter­ac­tive screens are made with heavy-duty mate­ri­als that will with­stand the chaos in the class­room, so you (prob­a­bly) won’t break them by press­ing the wrong but­ton. You could start sim­ple by cus­tomiz­ing your pro­file or jump right into the inter­face. An inter­ac­tive dis­play that is ful­ly Google com­pat­i­ble and EDLA cer­ti­fied might be eas­i­er and more famil­iar to begin with—but if you’re more com­fort­able with Win­dows, you can con­nect your com­put­er, or we have add-on options with our displays!

Think of an app you can down­load on the Google Play Store—you can now also add it to your inter­ac­tive pan­el. Now there’s a start­ing point—next time you hold a review ses­sion, make it an inter­ac­tive ses­sion by let­ting stu­dents come up to the inter­ac­tive dis­play to sub­mit answers. If you’re not a fan of down­load­ing apps, inter­ac­tive pan­els work well with web­sites like Bam­boo­zle that let you build your own teach­ing game or play games made by oth­er teach­ers, too. 

Once you cus­tomize your board, don’t wor­ry about your data being lost—interactive pan­els that save your pro­files are easy to log in to. Espe­cial­ly dis­plays with NFC sup­port for logins. Tap once and you’re in! Cus­tomize your inter­ac­tive pan­el in the way you want; the pos­si­bil­i­ties of col­lab­o­ra­tion are endless.

2. Start Your Lesson Planning

Inter­ac­tive pan­els are best used for col­lab­o­ra­tion and explo­ration! Plan­ning your first les­son on your inter­ac­tive dis­play doesn’t need to be com­pli­cat­ed, and you don’t have to use it for the entire­ty of the les­son either (but you could). First, think about your sub­ject mat­ter. Here are some ideas to begin: 

  • Social Stud­ies: Check if what you’re study­ing has a free vir­tu­al muse­um tour. For exam­ple, the Smith­son­ian Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry in Wash­ing­ton, DC has plen­ty of vir­tu­al tours on its web­site. You can let stu­dents use arrows, zoom, and explore exhibits all from the com­fort of your classroom.
  • Math: Inter­ac­tive pan­els with split-screen options could make for a friend­ly race of mul­ti­pli­ca­tion facts between stu­dents. Stu­dents, each giv­en a sty­lus pen or using their fin­gers, can start solv­ing when giv­en the “Go!” The first one to com­plete their set of math facts wins!
  • Lit­er­a­ture: Do a col­lab­o­ra­tive lit­er­ary analy­sis with stu­dents in real time. Ask them to come up to the board and high­light some­thing that stood out to them in the pas­sage, or in the inter­ac­tive white­board app, they can add post-its with lit­er­ary themes they noticed.
  • Sci­ence: Down­load an inter­ac­tive solar sys­tem app like Solar Sys­tem Scope as a fun way to allow stu­dents to explore our solar sys­tem and oth­er objects in out­er space!

The Bundle­Board i even comes with built-in fea­tures such as a float­ing timer, a zoom fea­ture to mag­ni­fy your con­tent, a stop­watch great for group work, a spot­light option that draws atten­tion to cer­tain items, and a free white­board soft­ware so you can eas­i­ly cre­ate and save your lessons. If you’re look­ing for a board that makes things simple—check it out!

3. Rinse and Repeat!

Inter­ac­tive learn­ing in the class­room makes learn­ing fun, more vivid, and encour­ages more engage­ment. Stu­dent engage­ment with inter­ac­tive pan­els can make the dif­fer­ence between pas­sive lis­ten­ing and active learn­ing. It makes stu­dents not only have fun with a les­son, but also enhances com­pre­hen­sion with tan­gi­ble exam­ples and explo­ration. We can’t promise you’ll fit inter­ac­tive pan­els into every les­son, but there’s a func­tion for the major­i­ty of them. New tech­nol­o­gy doesn’t have to be com­pli­cat­ed; you just have to find the tech that will work with you, not against you.

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