Whiteboard Desks: The Beginning

When I found out all my students would have iPads, I was ecstatic because I thought I would be able to foster my student's creativity and engage them easily.  Naive, I know.  My freshmen this year have tried me to no end.  They are, for the most part, academically capable.  They are not, however, capable of following basic instructions to complete a multi-part task, or creating a plan of their own to complete a project.  They have actually said, "Miss, iPads make things so hard, can't you just give us a worksheet?"  I could not figure out what else I could do to engage students who have struggled so long many have shut down, or who just came in 7th period after running a mile in PE.

Then I ran across this post by Nicholas Provenzano (aka The Nerdy Teacher) about his use of Ideapaint to create whiteboards out of his student desks.  I had heard about it before, but only from science and math teachers.  Since Nicholas is also a high school English teacher, I was interested to see how he used the strategy with his students. I sold my principal on the idea and got 2 kits ordered, which was enough to cover all my desks.  I spent weeks staring at this:  

I had to wait for spring break because it takes 4 days for the paint to cure.  So I spent Monday of spring break sanding, priming, and painting 36 desks (and my principal's office doors with the leftovers).

This Monday was the test.  I wanted my students to use them on day one, so using the lesson from Nicholas as inspiration, I had my students draw scenes from the novels we are reading. Once they had drawn a scene, they all had to find a new seat and write about the scene they found on their classmates' desk.  My honors class had finished To Kill a Mockingbird just before spring break, so I had them draw a scene they felt was important to the story.  They had to include 3 things in their write-ups:

• A description of the drawing on the desk
• Any information they knew about the scene
• An explanation of the importance of the scene to the novel

I also had my regular classes do this with The Hunger Games the rest of the day.  I was worried about them abusing the privilege or complaining about having to do something creative as they had all year, but I was pleasantly surprised.  My observations from the day: 

• Students loved the idea of writing on their desks
• Not one student complained about having to draw once I explained that it wasn't about artistic ability, but about being able to recognize an important scene and convey it through a picture
• Every single student was engaged the whole time
• Not one student drew anything inappropriate or messed with a classmate's drawing

Students completing write-ups of classmate scenes  in their iPads.

Students taking pictures of their drawings to submit in Canvas (the LMS I use)

On day 2, my freshmen were grumbling that we still hadn't finished The Hunger Games, and they expressed interest in using their desks again somehow, so I decided to have them write questions as we read.  I read a portion of a chapter and stopped at pivotal moments and told them to write a question.  The first day I noticed more engagement, but many struggled with forming questions.  By the end of the chapter, they had three questions written on their desks.  They took a picture of their desk and submitted it in Canvas (the LMS I use).  

This is an example of what I see in Canvas once the students have submitted their image. 

The next day when they came in, I displayed some of their pictures so we could discuss their questions.  This served two purposes: 

1. Basic questions they had about the reading were clarified through class discussion.
2. Students who didn't take it seriously now knew their desks may be displayed for the whole class to see. 

They actually asked if they could write questions while we read again because it helped them pay attention and it made them really think about the reading as we went.  

This is already making a huge difference in my classroom, both for me and my students.  Students who have trouble thinking outside the box feel more free to be creative, students who are naturally creative feel like there's less structure confining them, and I feel pressure to creative more interactive and engaging lessons to utilize this new tool.