Firefox is better than Internet Explorer. Full stop/Period.
One piece of feedback I’ve got from teachers who’ve started using Firefox on their Interactive Whiteboards in class, is that they now use the internet more than they used to do when they were using Internet Explorer. (I particularly recommend that teachers use Portable Firefox – you can run it off your thumb drive on any PC.)
So if you want to show your class some websites using an Interactive Whiteboard, use Firefox. Mainly because it adds to the ‘Wow factor’ that IWBs have. Here are your three Hot Tips:
Hot Tip 1: You can ‘prepare’ your Portable Firefox so that it automatically loads the pages you want to show to your class. You need Portable Firefox for this so that you can move Firefox (on your thumb drive) from your staffroom PC to the PC in your classroom.
Here’s how you set up Firefox to do this: from the main menu select Tools>Options>Main>When Firefox Starts>Show my windows and tabs from last time. So why’s this so hot? Because the web pages you’ve prepared for your lesson will open automatically when you open the browser in class. No more fiddle-clicking and ‘wait, let me just open the web page… (pause)…etc..’ while your class stares blankly at a loading web page.
So now you can set all the pages in your staffroom, close the browser, move to the classroom, open the browser and ALL the pages load automatically and neatly in separate tabs – looks cool, and now you’ve got more time to do something more important.
Hot Tip 2: If you need to look up a word or topic you can use Firefox’s customisable search bar. This is impressively quick and easy – an audience pleaser. Check that meaning, find that concept, get that picture – fast and easy. You can customise your Firefox searchbar: mine has Wikipedia, Google, Urban Dictionary, Dictionary.com, YouTube and a bunch of others.
Hot Tip 3: The best thing about Firefox on the IWB is the tabbed browsing. You can effortlessly move between multiple web pages in a fluid and seemless presentation of information by selecting the tabs with your Interactive Board pen. This on it’s own is enough to make Firefox the tool of choice for any teacher with an Interactive Whiteboard. (I recommend that you install the TabMix Plus extension and set your tab preferences so that new tabs open in the background).
