India is expected to reach $18.64 billion by 2027. It is growing at a CAGR of 11.7% between 2022 and 2027, fuelled by interactive display adoption in schools. While traditional whiteboards have been schoolroom staples for years, providing simplicity and ease of use.
Technology has brought Interactive Flat Panels (IFPs) into the picture as a replacement for conventional whiteboards. The panels guarantee improved engagement and interactivity, driving development and interactive learning.
Let’s go through the details below to see how interactive flat panels vs traditional whiteboards benefit.
What is an Interactive Flat Panel (IFP)?
An interactive panel is a large touchscreen display used in classrooms for engaging learning and presentations that incorporate on-screen content. These flat panels come in different sizes, from 55 inches to 98 inches.
Some of the following features of the interactive flat panels are:
- High Resolution Display: It presents clear visuals for better understanding and interactive learning.
- Touchscreen Functionality: It helps teachers and students to write, draw, and interact directly on the screen.
- Multi-Device Connectivity: The flat panel helps to connect laptops, tablets, and smartphones wirelessly.
- Content Saving and Sharing: The interactive flat panels instantly save and share lessons with students.
- Support Regional Languages: It makes learning easier for students and teachers in their preferred languages.
Such features allows teachers to create engaging classroom experiences for students.
What is a Traditional Whiteboard?
A traditional whiteboard is a dry-erase surface for writing or drawing that is not digital. It assists teachers in depicting ideas and communicating with students. It is less interactive and multimedia compared to contemporary digital solutions.
| Traditional Whiteboards | Interactive Flat Panels |
| Ease of Use: Easy to write and erase content. | Ease of Use: Use of simple touchscreen and interactive learning |
| Content Storage: achers can’t re-store content in whiteboards. | Content Storage: Lessons can be easily saved, edited, and shared digitally. |
| Multimedia Support: Whiteboards can’t display videos, images, or digital content. | Media Assistance: Teachers can integrate animations, videos, and online content. |
| Student Engagement: Lessons on whiteboards are mostly lecture-based. | Interactive Learning: Students can have interactive lessons and encourage real-time participation. |
Interactive Flat Panels vs Whiteboards: What’s Right for Modern Learning?
Let us know how interactive smart boards are more beneficial as compared to traditional whiteboards.
1. Ease of Use
- Traditional Whiteboards: Traditional boards are easy to use and do not need pre-training. Teachers can easily write and erase information, making them ideal for instant explanations and impromptu discussions.
- Interactive Flat Panels: Interactive panels take pre-training to effectively utilise their capabilities. After pre-training, teachers can use a broad range of tools to support their teaching.
2. Engagement and Interactivity
- Traditional Whiteboards: It Offer only minimal interactivity. Student engagement is heavily driven by the teaching delivery and auxiliary material usage.
- Interactive Flat Panels: Deliver highly interactive classrooms. Students directly engage through touch inputs, teamwork, and multimedia material, translating into greater levels of engagement and retention.
3. Multimedia and Visual Learning
- Traditional Whiteboards: Limited to static content. Adding multimedia involves extra hardware, e.g., projectors or screens.
- Interactive Flat Panels: Integrate seamlessly videos, animations, and interactive simulations to support different learning styles and facilitate better understanding.
4. Integration with Educational Tools
- Traditional Whiteboards: Do not support integration features with digital platforms. Sharing or saving content requires physical means, including taking a photo of the board.
- Interactive Flat Panels: The flat panels support popular teaching apps, cloud storage and learning tools to make lessons.
5. Accessibility and Inclusivity
- Traditional Whiteboards: It can be challenging for visually or physically impaired students because they are static and depend on physical presence.
- Interactive Flat Panels: Facilitate capabilities such as screen magnification, audio output, and remote access, which foster an inclusive learning environment for all students.
6. Maintenance and Durability
- Traditional Whiteboards: Tend to stain with age and need frequent cleaning. The markers and erasers must be replaced quite often.
- Interactive Flat Panels: Built with longevity in mind with low maintenance. Software revisions and occasional tech support guarantee seamless functionality.
7. Cost and Budgeting
- Traditional Whiteboards: Offer a low initial cost, making them suitable for institutions with low budgets. Yet, there are recurring costs for consumables that can add up over time.
- Interactive Flat Panels: Involve a high initial cost but provide long-term value through improved functionality, lower consumable costs, and potential gains in learning outcomes.
How to Choose Between a Whiteboard and an Interactive Flat Panel?
Selecting between an interactive flat panel and a whiteboard is based on your teaching objectives and classroom environment.
If you want to have smarter lessons, real-time collaboration, and visual engagement, then an interactive flat panel is the superior investment.
Let’s see how:
Evaluate Your Teaching Style
If your teaching includes student interaction, multimedia, or real-time collaboration, IFPs facilitate this much better than static whiteboards. Interactive panels are best suited for activity-based, visual, and technology-enabled teaching styles.
Understand Your Classroom Infrastructure
If your classroom is Wi-Fi enabled and has a simple digital setup, the transition to IFPs is simple and immediately effective. You can use existing infrastructure to provide a seamless teaching experience with minimal setup.
Consider Curriculum Needs
Contemporary curriculums in line with NEP 2020 stress digital learning, hybrid content, and interactivity ideal for IFPs. Whiteboards don’t cut it when visual or multimedia content needs to be incorporated.
Long-Term Goals and Investment Vision
Investing in IFPs puts your school in the long game for success through teacher training, digital upgrades, and scalable instruction. They’re not like whiteboards; future-proofing your classroom for future education needs to change.
What Do Teachers and Students Prefer?
Interactive Flat Panels are the preferred choice in modern Indian schools. Teachers can easily plan, save, reuse, and edit their lessons without having to rewrite them every day.
Example: Ms. Anjali R., a science teacher in a private school in Pune, said, “Since I adopted interactive panels, I save more than 4 hours a week on lesson planning. All the tools I require are a tap away.”
Students perform better in an IFP environment. Live interaction, multimedia-based lessons, and touchscreen group activities drastically enhance attention and engagement.
5 Reasons IFPs Outperform Whiteboards
The following 5 reasons interactive flat panels are better than traditional whiteboards are:
- Better student attention and retention
- Seamless digital content sharing
- Inclusive teaching for all learning types
- Supports remote and hybrid learning
- Aligns with India’s Digital Education Vision
Boost Your Classroom with IFPs and Smart EdTech Tools
Teachers can instruct both in-person and remote students using IFPs and video conferencing. Students’ devices are used to share lessons and content in real time.
- Merging IFPs with video conferencing facilitates hybrid models: Interactive whiteboards integrate perfectly with video conferencing to serve both in-class and distance students.
- Real-time collaboration and screen-sharing: Teachers are able to screen-share, highlight, and work together with students in real-time with online teaching platforms.
- Perfect for collaborative projects and parent-teacher collaborations: IFPs facilitate the presentation of group work by students and enable teachers to visually demonstrate progress to parents.
Ready to Upgrade to Interactive Flat Panels?
Start creating smarter classrooms with Senses Electronics, trusted by 8,000+ institutions and with 70,000+ panels installed across India.
Book a free demo today and see how Senses Interactive Flat Panels make teaching easier, increase student engagement, and save you time.
Frequently Asked Questions
Interactive flat panels are not hard to use. It is easy and simple touch-based interfaces that require little training to get started.
The lifespan of IFP lasts 50,000+ hours and can be trusted for 8-10 years of classroom life.
Yes, whiteboards and IFP can be combined. It is used for written notes, while IFPs are used for interactive lessons.
Yes, the majority of IFPs accommodate several Indian regional languages as content and as interface settings.
Yes, IFPs work well in all grades and can be adjusted to age-level learning requirements.
