By Ben Rimes - The Tech Savvy Educator, April 2011

I have a confession to make. About 4 years ago now I fell in love...with my interactive whiteboard. At first it was a mere infatuation, enchanted by all the fancy bells, whistles, and gadgets. As I begin to construct interactive lessons using the built in software I became smitten with the ability to drag and drop any type of media I wanted into my interactive workspace. My students were able to make notes and annotations next to rich media. Class discussions and notes could be saved digitally for the next day, week, or until the end of the unit for reflection.

Truly integrating disparate resources into one work space by tying imagery, text, video, and the ability to concept map over and with all of it became addicting. Student-discovered resources could instantly be cut, copied, and pasted into the work space, and to cement my new found love of my IWB, students could interact with the content directly in small groups, or individually. They could explore concepts visually in ways that would take me much longer to construct either online or using traditional methods of whiteboard markers and construction paper cutouts. 4 year later, and my love hasn't decreased.

Many elementary classrooms still eat, sleep, and breathe center based learning. It's a great way to get students to work in small groups, focus on a task, and provide the teacher with an opportunity to work one on one or with small groups of students to better evaluate how students are progressing with various learning concepts and goals. Most of the IWB vendors now have interactive resource and lesson sharing communities to help teachers find new ways to use their boards.

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Telecenter U is a Web-based system that connects and drives the equipment you already have in place throughout the school, around the campus and across the district. The system links all of your separate communication technologies-intercom/paging, PA/sound and emergency-in all of your locations to deliver a seamless, unified solution.

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