GREENDALE -- All of the first-graders' hands go up in Room 135 at Canterbury Elementary School whenever teacher Emily Frentzel asks who wants to go to the board.

Perhaps it's because going to the board is another chance to use a special pen that writes in "electronic ink." And there's just something about the radiance of the large, brightly lighted screen known as an "interactive whiteboard."

The interactive whiteboard, introduced in 1991, is becoming an increasingly integral feature of classrooms, particularly as educators strive to educate children born in the digital age.

"Teaching needs to change to fit the kinds of kids we're teaching today," Frentzel says. "We're teaching digital kids."

An interactive whiteboard is a large, touch-sensitive screen that is hooked up to a computer and a projector. Users can call up Web pages, files, programs and photos simply by touching the whiteboard.

The other day in Room 135, "turning the page" meant clicking on an arrow on the whiteboard.

"The most interesting thing about it is that it lights up in the dark," 6-year-old Steven Novinkska says after he and his classmates had solved time and money problems at the board.

One problem had students click on and drag a clock's hour hand to make it point at the number corresponded with a particular time.

Steven says he also likes that if he has to erase something on the whiteboard, he doesn't have to worry about "all those little things that come off your eraser" when using pencil and paper.

Although teachers and students are generally enthusiastic about whiteboards, educators caution that the high-tech boards are no substitute for good teaching.

"A whiteboard is only a tool and is only as effective in improving student achievement as the teacher who uses it," says Anita Husby, director of instruction for the Greenfield School District, which recently installed its first interactive whiteboard at Maple Grove Elementary School.

Sharon Chaplock, an educational technology expert at Marquette University's School of Education, says interactive whiteboards -- commonly referred to as Smart Boards because that's the brand that dominates the market -- do more than just enable the teacher to project computer screen images.

"The advantage is that you can actually work it from the board," Chaplock says. "It makes it pretty explicit and very interactive."

Not all school districts are on board, so to speak, with interactive whiteboards. Some have multiple interactive whiteboards, while others are still contemplating buying them.

The Fox Point-Bayside School District has had four Smart Boards for the past six years, located in each of the district's library media centers and computer labs.

"They are in use daily -- all day long," says Rosalynn Kiefer, director of instruction for the district.

However, Kiefer says, the district has moved away from planning to use Smart Boards as classroom tools because they "tend to become expensive whiteboards for projection rather than interactive in nature."

In the Oak Creek-Franklin Joint School District, school officials are looking at purchasing their first two or three interactive whiteboards.

Oak Creek-Franklin Superintendent Sara Larsen says the whiteboards will be shared by teachers to determine whether the educational value is worth the investment.

That is a sharp contrast to the situation in the nearby Greendale School District, which has purchased several Smart Boards as well as 30 Activboards, which the district says it bought because of the interactive software geared toward elementary students.

The district plans to purchase even more as more teachers learn how to use them, says its technology director, Jeff Johnson. He says that with adequate training and support, both Smart Boards and Activboards are "easy and fun to use."

In Room 110 at Longfellow Middle School in Wauwatosa, science teacher Brian Theriault used a Smart Board for a presentation on fish. Students oohed and aahed as Theriault clicked on images of underwater creatures such as a lamprey, with its mouth wide open.

The images prompted questions, and the class had more of an informal, interactive feel than a lecture in which students simply take notes.

The students all seemed attentive throughout the 51-minute lesson -- one reason Theriault says he uses the interactive whiteboard "almost every day."