My experience in using the Active board

From the first year in my teaching experience, instead of using white boards or chalk boards, I started working on the active board as the main tool for explaining and presenting the lessons. Once I started preparing and designing my lessons in Biology and Chemistry, It was somehow heard to me because it took too much time to prepare for the next day. So I had to sit from 4 to 6 hrs every night in front of my computer to prepare for the 5 or 6 instructional hrs at school. After that I start thinking about the way for presenting the new concepts and the most difficult part in after choosing the appropriate method for explaining is to prepare an effective introduction that can grasp students' attention, and of course at this point technology will stop, because you cannot depend on the active board in the planning process.

Actually, I used to feel that those 4-5 hrs that I spend every night in preparing the lessons are really helpful in saving too much time during the class periods. For example instead of wasting time for drawing schematic pictures on the board, I just unhide pictures, graphs or documents either scanned from the book of brought from other sources. Also it is very useful instead of wasting time in explaining some new concepts and not visualized things such as bacteria, antibodies, and white blood cells and so on; I just use to show them videos that illustrate such concepts, at the same time I feel that there is no need to speak too much in explaining the lesson. I just used to ask my students to explain what they did understand from the videos. And once they see the videos everything had to stick in their minds. I had noticed that from the results of the exams. If there is a question in the exam related to what they had watched in the class, most of the students used to give exact correct answers.

Also there I had enough time to make cooperative lessons, and to evaluate the groups. Most of my chemistry classes were cooperative lesson classes, in which the students used to work together and sometimes they used to make small expedites in the class. But in most cases I use to show them the experimental methods in biology and chemistry through videos, especially if the experiment cannot be done easily and if the equipments are not presents.    

Besides that my students were highly excited to share and especially if there are some answers needed to be written on the board, they always asked for permission to use the laser pen. And nobody feel that he/she is not in the class, because all the students can see clearly what is presented on the board from any corner in the class.