Motivated students and fewer exam nerves

An electronic whiteboard combined with advanced education software provides Rita Houmann, senior lecturer at Randers state school, the possibility to try out innovative teaching methods. And Houmann is enthusiastic.

The classic teaching scenario, where the teacher stands at the blackboard in front of a class of passive students waving a pointer is a thing of the past. In any case it is at Randers secondary school, where senior lecturer, Rita Houmann, has long since left the old methods behind and now uses modern IT to facilitate all her teaching.

Rita Houmann teaches Danish and English and combines the NetOp School teaching program from the Danish IT company, Danware, with a so-called “interactive whiteboard”; an electronic whiteboard that works like a computer.

This gives Rita Houmann countless new possibilities: She can see all the students’ on-screen displays together on her own screen and guide each individual student electronically. She can also give electronic tests to the students, and in this way quickly identify their strengths and weaknesses. And if a student’s work can be used as an example for the rest of the class, Rita can quickly show and go through the student’s text or test on the interactive whiteboard.

“The technological tools invite the students to demonstrate their creative abilities, for example, in student presentations, where they can experiment with texts, pictures, light, and sound. I also experiment by swapping the teacher and student roles around, so that the students take turns in having responsibility for the whole teaching session, while I am just a “student” with the rest of the class. Recently, a group of students analyzed the hip-hop culture in their Danish lesson and they used the IT in such a focused way that we completely forgot that we were in the middle of a teaching situation. The old expression that the ’teacher will appear when the students are ready’ proved to be true,” explains Rita Houmann, Randers state school.

In addition to the student presentations, Rita Houmann stresses the advantages of using NetOp School to teach languages:

“With this system, we can quickly change the classroom into a language lab, where I can control the course of events and guide each individual student in the correct pronunciation and articulation. And when a student nails it, I can quickly play the sound clip back to the rest of the class. It is actually a dream scenario for a language nerd like me,” says Rita Houmann.

The interactive whiteboard increases overview and decreases exam nerves
This summer, Rita Houmann was the first teacher in Denmark to give an exam using the interactive whiteboard. The exam was in the form of a student presentation on the electronic board, where the teacher and the examiner didn’t just hear the student’s bright ideas, but could also see – and could ask questions about—the notes in the text that formed the basis of the presentation.

“After using the interactive whiteboard for three years for teaching, it was interesting to see the positive role it played in the student’s exam presentations. It was very clear that the students felt at home because they were using the same board that they had used throughout their preparation. When a student got stuck, both the examiner and I found it much easier to help with clarifying questions because we could see from the student’s notes and crossing out on the interactive whiteboard how they had reached their conclusions. And I could see that the students were noticeably less nervous than normal,” says Rita Houmann.

The IT advance in the classroom has also had its disadvantages, however. For example, the students can be tempted to surf the Internet while the class is in progress. But this doesn’t happen at Randers state school anymore.

“I can always follow what a student is doing on the computer. If a student has gone onto a website that is not relevant for the lesson, I can bring his or her attention to this – and if it keeps happening, I can close down the Internet access for that particular student for a shorter or longer period,” explains Rita Houmann, Randers state school.

According to the lecturer, Danish upper-secondary schools are generally a little slow to incorporate new electronic supplementary materials into lessons. Rita Houmann is therefore using articles, speeches, and workshops across the country to inspire her colleagues to throw themselves into the wonderful world of teaching with IT.