Here’s a quick video I made (just over a minute) comparing IE6 with Firefox on a Promethean Interactive Whiteboard. It’s aimed at teachers who’ve only ever used Internet Explorer on IWBs (like some of the teachers I work with). It shows off tabs as the main advantage – of course there are many other advantages to using Firefox, but this is the main one.
Chrome works well on an IWB. The small UI means that you get more web content on the whiteboard. Good use of whiteboard screen real estate. The tabs work nicely too, as you’ll see from this short video I made.
Oh, and I was using Portable Google Chrome running off my thumb drive. Get it from Caschy’s blog here
I was listening to Buzz Out Loud this morning (ep. 801)and it appears that Chrome is faster than other browsers. And much faster than IE7. Here’s a link to some graphs.
I’ve tried it out on an interactive whiteboard in a classroom. I like the way it looks, but I think that the tabs in the title bar might be a bit of a stretch to reach for the vertically challenged teacher or student. Oh well.
The title bar/tab thing does look rather good tho. Here’s a screenie comparison, first there’s Chrome:
Then there’s Firefox (I’ve got lots of tabs open, I know):
Earlier today I watched an interesting and useful presentation where Peter Kent from ACT Department of Education & training demonstrated best practice in the use of IWBs.
He emphasised that good IWB slides will stimulate intellectual quality by generating quality discussions. He showed how the best IWB slides do this by allowing students to come up with more than one possible answer. A very good point, very well put.
He showed how IWB slides can be made relevant/significant by adding content that is from the students’ context. For example, photos of them, photos of their daily environment, examples of their writing, examples of their art, etc…
He also showed a few very neat ways to do the class register/roll call at the start of a lesson: using photos of students and audio of their voices. This was a nice way to help them identify with other students in their class and see where they fit in.
He also showed how IWB slides can be used to illustrate performance criteria. His example was a series of three videos which together formed a rubric showing different levels of performance (in this case it was of kindergarden kids learning to form a line).
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).
Twitter: Markhamster
