Tech Thursday: Say Hello to my Little Interactive White Table

Interactive whiteboards are standard for many classrooms now. Be prepared to potentially meet their younger, hipper siblings - the Interactive Table this upcoming school year.

Interactive tables are great for fostering collaborative learning. Students gather around the table to conduct an activity. They use the table like a giant tablet. Each student touches the screen to take part in the lesson.

Additionally they can be used for a variety of activities from teaching students how to dissect a frog -without touching a real frog's guts - to taking apart engines or solving a word problems. With many of the lessons, the students need to reach a consensus on an answer before they can enter it.

This encourages group interaction.

While they have been around for a few years, I suspect more schools may adopt them because better, sleeker models are coming out that also interact with any digital device - i.e. smartphones, computers, tablets, and their older siblings interactive whiteboards.

Here’s a video from a more recent model from Promethean.