Waterloo Lodge School in Chorley, Lancashire, is a coeducational day school catering for 11-16 year olds with emotional, behavioural and social difficulties. With 45 students, many taken from foster homes, the school’s biggest challenge is engaging these young people and helping them to reach their potential through dynamic teaching. The school purchased four Hitachi interactive whiteboards last year and has been very impressed with the results.
Gary Binns, deputy headteacher of Waterloo Lodge School, comments: “The interactive whiteboards have had a tangible effect on motivating the students. Just walking around the school, I could see how much more engaged students were in classes using the technology. Because we are a special education needs school with children who present challenging behaviours, we needn’t to minimise the risk of equipment being damaged and Hitachi boards were much sturdier and we’ve had no reported damage.
“We found them particularly useful to present graphics and pictures. Compared with textheavy books, this was very successful because many students had problems with reading – for example dyslexia – so use of imagery was more effective. We could also show DVDs on the whiteboards. In English classes for example, instead of reading Shakespeare’s scripts, the students could watch scenes on the whiteboard and then discuss the dialogue.
“In traditionally difficult subjects such as science, we used the whiteboards to teach about forces using an image of a wagon. The students had to guess how far the wagon would travel if we applied a specific force. This was a fun and rapid way to engage the students’ interest in learning physics.” For more information about Hitachi Interactive Solution products please contact Alex Goudge, Marketing Manager:
Tel: 020 7038 1030
Fax: 020 7038 1130
