Are interactive whiteboards really inevitable for a technical teacher?

Interactive Whiteboards - let us be open and above board!

What do I expect from "my whiteboard in the classroom"?

• I want to be able to show presentations and media that I prepared. I am talking mostly about Powerpoint (Microsoft), interactive mindmaps (mindjet mindmanager), movies, ChemSketch, etc., to make my lessons vivid, colorful and offer visual and auditive stimuli.
• I want to be able to highlight, make some notes, add some content (overlay), if students want to elaborate on the topic, chip in good remarks or need further explanations.
• I want to be able to scroll up and down, or forward and backward through my pages, should there be questions, because sometimes questions appear referring to earlier content.
• I want to be able to browse through those date later on and possibly "broadcast" them in one way or another to my students to assure that we are able to have them as a sound base for the next lesson.

Anything I forgot or anything you disagree with, dear reader? Please comment!

As a passionate user of technology in teaching, my opinion is: Don't waste your tight money on costly interactive whiteboard made by Promethean, cheaper versions coming from Mimio or any other brand.

 Stop rubbing your eyes and see where my suggestions will take you.

I have to say I was frustrated by lagging interactive whiteboards, frozen displays, calibrating the screen and other hiccups.

I say all you need is:

• a usual whiteboard - or a traditional German blackboard and projection screen combo.
• a smartphone or tablet with a good camera.
• and some free piece of software called EVERNOTE available at http://evernote.com/.
• install the software on your tablet, smartphone and your PC/ Mac.
• register for a free account, because this will already let you see if you agree with me.

What's next?

 During your lessons I take pictures of your whiteboard drawings, notes or remarks on my powerpoints etc.

• I save those pictures to special notebooks (I got one for each class that I am teaching), they are stored there as notes complete with date and location.
• Those notebooks are shared with my students, so we are able to reaccess past lessons or new students are able to catch up when they join

Here is a little sample, excuse the mediocre quality - but this notebook shows everything that I did so far and there is much more possible like embedding movies as well.

https://www.evernote.com/pub/daniel_ruckdeschel/biologieklasse8a#b=a2b1208f-723a-4a51-a3fd-1262f415d448&st=p&n=5398f120-806e-4ab5-a9ae-3344c697ebfd

If this should meet your demands - then there is no need to spend your budget on a spiffy interactive whiteboard.

For the brave ones, you could do the same with facebook basically. Just setup a facebook group like: Grade 8 biology 2012-13 and you will even be able to have interaction with your students.

I found blogging and moodle in that context a little bit too time consuming.

Please comment on what you think about this.