The Interactive White Elephant in the EFL Classroom – Session 3.1 10.25-11.10

Presenter: Steven Bukin

The presenter started by explaining his analogy of whiteboards being considered the obvious expensive big object in the room which is hardly mentioned. He gave very bright and simple ideas how an interactive whiteboard can be used in a language class. He highlighted some interesting functions, such as drag and drop, screen shade, insert links, hide and review, besides templates including pictures, photos and matching exercises. The exercises were mostly useful for vocabulary and grammar learning and teaching.

Steven demonstrated how the drag-and-drop feature in addition two pictures of two boxes and a cat be used in teaching prepositions. The same feature can be used with matching graph items in IELTS. The screen-shade feature can be used in vocabulary elicitation. The hide-and-reveal feature can be used in negative prefixes matching exercises.

Additional features can be used with the whiteboard. For example, clickers that allow students to vote and interact with the whiteboard can by really handy. In addition, wireless mouse and keyboards passed around the class can add a lot of interactivity to the class. These are just a few of many other great ideas to make the White Elephant interactive in a language class.