Hi everyone!

Thanks to Phil's invitation, I can write in this blog and start working with you.
As I have already told you, I teach English in a Primary School and I have children from 6 to 10-11. I knew the interactive whiteboard thanks to my second Comenius project, when I went to a project meeting in a Primary School in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, and I saw all the classrooms provided of interactive whiteboards. When the Headmaster of that school came and visit my school, we asked the local distributor to lend us a, IWB for a demonstration at school and we invited all the teachers and the office staff. The teachers were not so enthusiastic of that new tool, maybe because the headmaster showed only softwares, but I remember that my mind was going beyond the softwares and was already creating learning objects for my children. I was asked to gain expertise of it and I did it with much pleasure.
How do I use it? At the very beginning I decided to use it sometimes to add more fun and interest into lessons, but then I found it so useful that I decided to use it normally in my lessons. I use it a lot with storytelling, preparing stories which are told, acted and practised in an interactive way, but I like also creating CLIL lessons: Science or Art through English, for example.
My Smartboard is being used in a lot of ways: a shared place to create meanings, a normal whiteboard to write on , a big screen to watch films and cartoons, a "window over the world" when we do research on the Internet, but it never alone, as it normally used with the normal school tools, exercise-books, sheets and pens. When I work on stories, children work at the same time with the same pages printed from the IWB, while, in turns, they come to the board to do what they are asked. They love it and I must admit that since I have had it, I have solved many discipline problems and I have more attention and concentration.
Now I am working with cooperative learning and I have a new challenge: how can the IWB be used in a more cooperative way?
I am looking forward to knowing your experience and materials, I am sure I have plenty of new things to know.
I'll try to include my works in the blog, hope they are not too heavy! Maybe the idea of having a repository on line may help. Anyway, as we have different types of IWBs, we should share a way to see them all. I could transform my files in PPT ones, but there is not any interactivity in this way...What do you think about it?
Hope to hear from you soon.
Francesca