Visualisers are becoming more common in classrooms and they’re brilliant bits of kit.
When I was at school, our teachers used to wheel in the overhead projector (classic) and write directly onto the laminate slides that they’d prepared for the lessons…oh how times have changed.
I’m not a huge edtech fan (mostly because I’m technologically inept) but I have to say using a visualiser has added another dimension into my teaching.
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But you can quickly run out of ideas when it comes to projecting on to the screen. I’ve been trying out some different ways to use this bit of kit, and I’ve seen some amazing practice in the classrooms of others.
Here are a few of the more unexpected ways in which visualisers can be used:
As a microscope
Due to the incredibly high resolution of nearly all classroom visualisers, you’re able to zoom in really closely. If you’re using picture sources or stimulus, or even doing an activity like dissecting in science, having the capability to highlight minute details to students opens up a whole extra world of discovery.
Whereas previously, you may have used static images or huddled them around a table, using your visualiser to zoom in on details means that you can pick out details that were previously difficult to access.
Get students to do work on the board
Teacher modelling is a pretty common way to use a visualiser, but giving the floor over to students so they can model for their peers is a great way to add another dimension to your class discussions.
Rather than explaining how a problem is solved by projecting the common worksheet the whole class is working from on to the board, you are able to reduce the extraneous load of the students by minimising the variables.
The information that is modelled by their peer is in the same format as the one they are looking at, making the modelling even more accessible.
Time lapse tasks
Showing students a process from start to finish can be time consuming. By using a visualiser to record a student or a teacher completing a process, maybe a type of drawing or labelling a type of graph, and then speeding it up, you can significantly reduce the time taken but still achieve the desired outcome.
One example of this that I really enjoyed was in an art lesson where the teacher was showing how to use colours to shade in different intensities. It was such a helpful tool to give students that extra bit of confidence to know where they were aiming.
Video modelling
The magic of a visualiser is that you can save video clips. A few years ago, a great maths teacher I know started making live casts of him doing maths questions which took students through how to solve problems step by step.
It was a great way for students to learn when they were at home or studying without the teacher, but the recording of these clips required some setting up and some special equipment.
With a visualiser, you have all the tools you need to record yourself doing exam questions and if you’re lucky enough to have a microphone too, you can add in a commentary.
You can then make these clips accessible for your students - a great way to heighten the impact of your teaching and an innovative way of students revising how to answer questions for exams.
Visualisers can open up so many new avenues in your teaching and different teachers use them in so many ways. Hopefully these ideas will start you thinking about how you can use this tool in your own classroom.
Adam Riches is a senior leader for teaching and learning, specialist leader in education and head of English. He tweets @TeachMrRiches
