TES ICT Blog: In the classroom: How to use on-screen keyboards with interactive whiteboards

22 March 2006 at 12.15

In the classroom: How to use on-screen keyboards with interactive whiteboards

In his fourth ICT blog MFL teacher Joe Dale unearths a handy tool that lets pupils type live onto an interactive whiteboard Interactive whiteboards (IWBs) can be great for engaging and motivating pupils. Pre-prepared digital resources can accessed quickly and easily in a few clicks. They help learners take a more active role in lessons and make work more memorable. To realise a board’s full potential can be a steep learning curve, but it’s a journey well worth taking. In a languages classroom for example wouldn’t it be useful if your pupils could type live onto an interactive whiteboard without having to resort to your computer keyboard? They could label or annotate images, edit text or simply write their name. Wouldn't it be a real timesaver? Blog number four is about a neat tool aimed at those teachers lucky enough to have access to an IWB. There’s nothing to download or install, so your network manager won’t need to feel at all insecure. In fact, as long as you’re running Windows XP, you’ll find this key utility is already on your PC ready to be launched. The Windows XP On-Screen Keyboard (OSK) is a useful whole-class teaching tool for the interactive whiteboard because: • the virtual keyboard allows pupils to enter text and numbers directly on the board • the utility can be configured to float over almost any application • it can be brought up automatically with shortcut keys • depending on the type of interactive whiteboard you may have, the OSK can be operated with a pen or finger • it can also be accessed remotely with a tablet PC or interactive slate. With special interest to MFL teachers, the language of the On-Screen Keyboard can be easily switched allowing foreign characters to be typed into any Microsoft Office document, web page or online form for example (See link below). I normally launch the On-Screen Keyboard when working on a gapfill exercise. Before the lesson, I create a web page with Hot Potatoes and write out ten sentences using the verb or verbs I want the pupils to practice. I replace each conjugated form with a gap, but leave the subject pronoun as a clue. If I'm testing different verbs, I write the relevant infinitive in brackets at the end of each sentence so pupils know which verb they need to conjugate. We could be practising -ER verbs for example and I'd want to see whether the pupils knew how to conjugate them correctly. I would ask one of them to copy and paste the infinitive from its bracket by highlighting and dragging it to the gap. He or she would then highlight the -ER ending and press bksp on the OSK to delete it. Finally the pupil would type in the correct ending using the virtual keyboard. While the pupil enters the answer by clicking on each letter in turn, the others write their responses on mini whiteboards which they then hold up in the air, so I can see if they’ve got it or not. Using the OSK saves time and increases the pace of the lesson as there's no need to return to my laptop. Everything is done instantly on screen. The virtual keyboard is useful for editing text or entering short phrases such as pupils’ names, simple answers and quick written feedback. The OSK is not suitable for creating longer pieces of texts which should be prepared before hand using a standard keyboard. In class, a pupil could always revert to the computer keyboard when he or she needs to do a lot of typing anyway. When appropriate, I feel the OSK helps the pupils to interact with the board and facilitates how they learn. Why not set up a class register in Microsoft Excel and let your pupils use the On-Screen Keyboard to type in that they are present when coming into the class? Just an idea. Launching the On-Screen Keyboard • Go to the Start Menu and click on Programs/Accessories/Accessibility/On-Screen Keyboard. Easier still, click on the Start Menu and select Run… Then type in OSK in the box and click OK. • If you want to create a shortcut on your desktop, right–click the desktop, select New, and then click Shortcut. The Create Shortcut Wizard should then appear. Type OSK in Type Location and click Next. Type a name for the shortcut and then click Finish. • To set up a keyboard shortcut, right click the desktop shortcut you’ve just created and click Properties. In the Shortcut key box, click a letter like Z and CTRL+ALT+Z will appear. That’s your customised keyboard shortcut. Click Apply and OK. Now hold down the key combination CTRL+ALT+Z and the On-Screen Keyboard should open before your very eyes! A potential downside of using the On-Screen Keyboard is that by its nature it will always obscure part of the screen. The keyboard can be dragged around by its title bar however and positioned in a more convenient location to reduce this problem. If required, you can even drag the keyboard to the taskbar (the strip at the bottom of the screen) where it will turn into a tab. When you want to use the OSK again, just click on the tab and drag it back into position. Beware minimising, and then maximising the keyboard though as the keys will disappear (for some reason not known as yet by the author). Final tips • It's advisable to set the keyboard as the standard layout which does not include the numeric keypad as this simply takes up more room than is necessary. • You can format the text which appears on the keyboard to the font and size you require. • Select the Always on Top option to keep your keyboard displayed on your screen even if you switch programs or active windows. Useful links To learn how to switch the language of the keyboard, read my post on the Linguanet forum archives To research other methods of inserting foreign characters, click on these links: http://www.mailbase.org.uk/lists/linguanet-forum/2005-06/0005.html (follow thread ‘Diacritics in Word’)http://www.specialeducationalneeds.com/accents/

Comments (8)

What a brilliant idea .. many thanks! Helen

Posted by: Helen on 23 March 2006 at 19.26

On switching keyboards and inserting foreign characters see the following Web pages: Section 5 (Typing foreign characters) of Module 1.3 at the ICT4LT site: http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_mod1-3.htm The FrKeys Foreign Characters utility: http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/frkeys.htm This makes life a lot easier!

Posted by: Graham Davies on 25 March 2006 at 16.36

I like Joe’s blogs: useful practical information. However, why do I find it difficult to understand the essential differences between (a) a blog, as exemplified at this site, (b) a discussion list such as Languages ICT or the Linguanet Forum, (c) a website such as the ICT4LT training resources site? All three appear to have similar aims and functions, e.g. conveying hints and tips to the teaching community and encouraging a dialogue between teachers with common interests. But look at the comments added to the blogs at this site. Most are in single figures. Are there hundreds of lurkers out there who choose to digest the useful information and remain silent, or is no one reading the blogs? My experience as webmaster of the ICT4LT site is that there are thousands of lurkers. I know from the ICT4LT hit list that 1000-plus people on average visit the site every day – including spammers and nutcases, but most visitors are genuinely seeking information. As for feedback, however, I am lucky if I get half a dozen emails per month. I have perused quite a few blogs over the last few months. Some are amusing, some contain some great rants where the initiators and participants really let off steam, but most appear to address a very narrow audience of 200-300 people or - in some cases where a class of kids creates a blog, for example, on a trip to France - just 20-30 people. Is information on the Web really reaching a mass audience or do most people just regard the Web as a useful means of finding holiday bargains and online shopping? Regarding modern languages, I guess many of you will by now have read the story that Amazon is moving its European customer services centre from Slough to Cork, Ireland, one of the reasons being that they cannot recruit enough employees from the Slough area with appropriate skills to handle enquiries in European languages. Ireland is unquestionably ahead of England in terms of its population's language skills (v. the 2005 Eurobarometer survey), but I suspect another reason for the move is that Ireland offers great business incentives. Bear in mind that Slough's local Thames Valley University (TVU), which has main campuses in Slough and in Ealing, used to have well-equipped language centres, including computer labs, on both campuses. I was Director of TVU's Ealing Campus Language Centre. TVU's language departments closed down in the 1990s - along with the two language centres - due to lack of recruitment of suitably qualified students. Fortunately, I had the good sense to take early retirement (in 1993) before the crunch came. Ironically, at around this time I was employed as a consultant to the University of Limerick, helping them set up a new language centre - which is still going strong. There's a message here, I think... OK, Slough can continue to feed off its fame as the location for the TV sitcom “The Office” and John Betjeman’s famous poem beginning “Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough”. In fairness to Slough, I really appreciated being looked after by TVU’s student nurses during a recent stay in Wexham Park Hospital (north of Slough). Angels, all of them.

Posted by: Graham Davies on 09 April 2006 at 16.13

Dear Graham, When I first starting researching what blogs were. I couldn’t see the difference between them and posting to a forum, but now I would argue they are quite different. I’m conscious of the number of potential readers of the blog and as a result, I spend a lot of time drafting and redrafting each post to make it as clear, helpful and encouraging as possible. I think forums are much more efficient for exchanging ideas quickly and finding out about the latest thing. I’ve tried to make my blog more measured and reflective as the posts are less frequent. For this reason, I’ve tried to choose topics which I feel even for members of Linguanet and MFLresources should inform them of something new. Forums are brilliant ways of keeping up to date with what is happening and for swapping opinions. Blogs are more individual expressions given over a period of time I think. People can leave comments, but it is the main poster who should set the tone. Some teachers prefer just to read messages rather than write comments, some like to express themselves openly and some hide behind pseudonyms when posting. I think there should be room for everyone as long as posters don’t use anonymity as an excuse to berate others and make personal comments about them. What do you think? Best wishes Joe

Posted by: Joe Dale on 10 April 2006 at 14.25

I don't object to lurkers or teachers hiding behind a pseudonym - I can point to teachers being pressurised by their superiors not to display their own name or the name of their school in blogs and discussion lists. One teacher wrote to me to say that she was convinced she was passed over for promotion as a result of a controversial contribution she made to a discussion list. Hiding behind a pseudonym is, however, of no use if someone decides to sue you for bringing their reputation into disrepute. See the recent case where a college lecturer was successfully sued for smearing a politician in a blog http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/story/0,,1737445,00.html I guess it is up to the blog administrators to ensure that potentially libellous material is filtered out. I can see that a blog has the advantage of a personal topic being introduced and then followed up, but then quite useful information appears to get lost in archives - which you have to search carefully. Cataloguing and making the archived material more accessible would help. I recall seeing useful material in blogs but then I have had problems finding it 2-3 months later.

Posted by: Graham Davies on 10 April 2006 at 15.31

On screen QWERTY keyboard is a standard on the Onfinity CM2 through COMPUBITS. It also has a virtual whiteboard that can REPLAY the comments written and pause at stages for emphasis. See the unit at www.compubits.com and www.onfinity.info. It is a hell of a lot less expensive than a whiteboard solution and allows anything on the PC/Laptop to be interactive on the wall, curtain, tablecloth, sheet - whatever you have available. You really do not know what you are missing.

Posted by: harry on 12 April 2006 at 09.26

Dear Harry, This looks interesting and for about £500 is certainly cheaper than an interactive whiteboard. However, for those who already have a data projector and or IWB the attraction of the On-Screen Keyboard is the fact that it’s free and is probably all ready on your computer, ready to use.

Posted by: Joe Dale on 12 April 2006 at 10.13

Harry, I've put in links to the Onfinity device in ICT4LT Module 1.2 and Module 1.4 at http://www.ict4lt.org I've also emailed the EUROCALL, Languages ICT and Linguanet fora about it. This could be just what presenters at international conferences, e.g. EUROCALL, CALICO and IALLT, are looking for. So far it has not proved easy finding venues set up with a range of compatible IWBs. Compatibility is a major problem because of the different types of IWBs. Consequently, presenters hesitate to demonstrate good IWB materials. Compatible data projectors used to be a major problem too, and one often saw presenters trailing a wheely case containing their own mini-projector as they didn't have much confidence in what they would find locally - and rightly so (I write from experience!). This has now ceased to be a major problem - more or less :-)) Remember the massive BARCO projectors? IWBs might go the same way. IWBs are not suitable for demonstrating to a large audience. I often have to talk to 200-300 people at a time and then a large screen is essential.

Posted by: Graham Davies on 14 April 2006 at 13.51

See mention on Whiteboard Web Forum here