(39 of 50) CLT & Taiwan: 2nd Sign about a ‘Teacher’ Which Should Make You Worried [Use of Whiteboard]: Part (ii)

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Six Signs Which Should Make You Worried About a ‘Teacher’: 2nd Sign [Part ii]

Sign That You Should Be Worried 2

The school or teacher only uses a whiteboard.

So, let’s continue with the second posts about the use of whiteboards versus PowerPoint. In the previous post I talked about the three advantages of Powerpoint. The advantages are so incredibly obvious that every teacher should be using powerpoint. But so many teachers prefer to ‘talk and chalk’. Huh? What’s going on?!!!!

The obvious question is … why would a teacher not use PowerPoint? The obvious answers are that …

1. using PowerPoint takes equipment, and many teachers don’t want to pay for it. A whiteboard costs almost nothing.

2. preparing PowerPoint programs takes careful work and much time, and many teachers don’t want to do this. They are lazy.

3. the whole approach needs thinking and skill, and many teachers don’t have these, or are not prepared to use them.

4. the teacher has no method or approach, no plan or procedure, and thus doesn’t need any preparation or equipment or anything at all. For example, they just hand out material downloaded from the Internet, and get you to copy it again and again in class.

So, if a teacher doesn’t use a projector and PowerPoint, you have to wonder whether one, two, three, or all of these (1), (2), (3), or (4) points applies to them.

Well, the proponents of whiteboard-use would immediately get angry at all this. I wonder what they would say? How would they ‘defend’ their use of a whiteboard? Hmmm. I can only think of one thing.

The ‘Whiteboard’ ‘Talk and Chalk’ Teacher

“With a whiteboard, you can respond immediately to any question from a student, and flexibly write down words and grammar explanations to help the student immediately.”

Here’s my answer.

            The Efficient and Modern ‘Powerpoint’ Teacher.

You can also do this on a piece of paper in front of the student. But then if you want the whole class to get the explanation, then …

1. note the question down,

2. tell the students that you will answer the question in the next class,

3. prepare a more effective and thoughtful ‘CLT’ response on PowerPoint, together with pictures and interactive features which can REALLY help them learn,

4. in the next lesson, present the answer.

And, as an added advantage, you now have that Powerpoint program as a resource for that future question.

If you keep doing this, that resource accumulates, or grows bigger and bigger. [By the way, I’ll talk about this in the next post.]

Okay, let’s move on. The next post (and last of the ‘whiteboard/powerpoint’ posts) will draw some conclusions about the ‘powerpoint’ teachers, and sum up this issue.

Now, check that you know the meaning of the underlined vocabulary (also repeated below).

  • to be flexible (adj)
  • to be interactive (adj)
  • a proponent of [sth.] (n)
  • to accumulate (v)

If you want to find out more about me, go to aisielts.com .