When students watch the projected image of a student-created story that was created on an interactive whiteboard, and (1) see the changing comic strip panels, and (2) read it, and (3) listen to it, and (4) hear any emotion in the reader’s voice (without probably even noticing it), we at that point are approximating for our students something akin to normal speech. The high amount of repetitions that occur in the rest of our lesson lead to excellent gains in reading, greater gains than those that occur in the reading of novels.
Interactive whiteboards move the language acquisition equation in our classroom from one or two dimensions to many. The image supports the speech, the emotion in the narrated voice supports the focus on meaning, and the speech supports the reading. The fact that the little film was drawn by a student about something that the students created speaks directly to our curricular objectives of more and more student involvement in our classes.
What happens with interactive whiteboards is what happens in stories – the students think that they have full artistic control of everything going on but all they are doing is answering our questions and drawing what happens. When they are thus engaged, discipline problems evaporate.