4 ways interactive screens can boost education

The popularity of interactive screens as teaching aids doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. But, are you aware of how (or why) these devices support your teaching?

This article looks at the many areas in which interactive screens can be used to support today’s teachers, including active learning, improving collaboration and increasing that all-important student engagement!

Let’s take a look…

1) Active learning

This type of learning is all about engaging with content and participating in the learning process in a hands-on way. Active learning tends to consist of projects and activities, and really benefits from the use of interactive screens by both teachers and kids.

The core elements of active learning are demonstration, collaboration and experimentation. Interactive screens can help support these in a number of ways:

a) Demonstration: When you put students in the teaching hot seat by asking them to show and explain their ideas, this process actively engages them in the learning process. Set them a task or a project, allocate groups for them to work in, and ask them to present their findings to the class.

Using an interactive screen gives them the opportunity to add video or audio clips and annotate or highlight key information as they go along (e.g. by zooming in). You might be surprised at how effective this role-reversal can be!

b) Collaboration: Interactive screens are awesome tools for encouraging collaboration. They offer a platform for kids to exchange and brainstorm ideas, present information or work their way through activities like experiments or learning games and quizzes.

c) Engagement: When it comes to STEM subjects, interactive screens come into their own. The features they offer can really bring these subjects to life. For example, use them for biology lessons to study virtual 3D representations of animal, plant or bacteria cells.

2) Critical thinking 

The future job market is likely to demand that individuals are able to demonstrate a high level of problem-solving and critical thinking skills. Now more than ever, thinking on the spot and the ability to observe and analyse is a huge asset. Traditional-style learning can fall short when it comes to teaching kids these skills. Interactive screens, however, are great tools to support these.

3) Concept visualisation

As with collaboration, traditional teaching methods sometimes struggle when it comes to explaining complex topics in a way little folks can understand! Interactive screens are a fantastic option for taking topics related to subjects like science and geography and bringing them to life using virtual reality and media such as video. Sometimes, all students need to make something ‘click’ is to see it with their own eyes.

4) Inclusion

Interactive screens can also help bridge the gap between different types of learner. Lessons where kids are actively using the screens mean that kinaesthetic learners are getting up from their seats and moving. For visual and auditory learners, video clips, voice overs and multimedia hold real appeal. Interactive screens can also bring advantages to SEN students, with features like text-to-speech software.

Finally, interactive screens are user-friendly and teachers can get up and running with little training. There’s also a sense of familiarity amongst teachers with this technology that doesn’t exist with other types of EdTech. For teachers used to projectors and standard whiteboards, interactive screens offer many of the same benefits and a whole lot more!

To discover creative ways to use interactive screens in your classroom and learn about our flexible rental packages, call on the experts at Utility Rentals.