A big thankyou to Warwick at Inglewood High School who welcomed me into his Year 11 Geo class to observe their use of the Interactive White Board. What a fantastic teacher tool to create & share learning resources and to structure, sequence and stage the components of a lesson. Warwick is doing great things with it in his classes. He is building his curriculum delivery through the use of the IWB, incorporating a range of activities including sound, images, video, links into websites and simulations including Google Earth. He believes the use of the IWB caters for the different learning styles of his students through the incorporation of multimedia. If i was a teacher i would love this tool but i still struggle to see how students themselves can be more involved with the use of the board to drive their own learning apart from having it used as a delivery tool (a cool tool it is too) though definately engaging for these students. Teachers all around the province & i bet nationally too are having IWBs installed in their classroom - many of them are wondering what to do with them? I can feel some IWB ICTPD coming on soon & more visits to Warwick's classroom :-)So if the 20th Century adage is 'Talk & Chalk' How would you translate this to the use of an IWB in the same way - i have been racking my brains to coin a new phrase for this. Arti you are the wordsmith what do you think? Graham you might have an appropriate term too?
BTW does anybody know of any good classroom/teacher blogs with a particular secondary focus? Plz post a comment. Thnx
3 comments:
I dunno Rachel I think you ask a critical question - make a critical distinction if you like -
I've looked for a bit and read the available research literature including a masters thesis on their use in NZ schools - I am yet to be convinced that IWB are anything more than more than presentation technology - they are fabulous at presenting content and provocation when you see them being used by an effective teacher -
However, they are NOT the only presentation technology available or even the cheapest - In truth they are probably the most expensive way of sharing computer/ media information surfaces with kids. There are much cheaper options around with I believe identical efficacy for schools who are having to fund these things by themselves.
I have described IWBs previously as being an "immobilised by the screen" pedagogy Manovich's ubiquitous "rectangular surface that frames a virtual world.'
- perhaps from the kids perspective it is like being "frozen in the headlights" - yet another "sit in one place and all look this way" pedagogy -
so in the same way that we are asked to see ourselves through the "sage on the stage" "guide on the side", and "meddler in the middle" metaphors when we use IWB's with kids we are controllers of the light on the screen -
perhaps we should see ourselves as "visual illusionists" - "educational_light technicians" - I dunno will have to think about it some more - am stuck with images of logging trucks bearing down possums paralysed by the headlights
One thing I am tracking is the way in which whiteboard initiatives are being promoted and funded in different MoE initiatives around the country - is interesting to compare this with what happened in the UK - is even hitting the media there - will send you an article from the Daily Telegraph in January this year - "A 50 million pound scheme to replace school blackboards with "interactive whiteboards" has failed to improve children's results a government backed study has shown."
When we focus on the technology - we tend to focus on student engagement and forget to ask about any changes in the learning outcomes
Here is the link I provided for our cluster teachers on our Centre4 site
As we see IWB technologies being promoted in NZ schools it behoves us to read what others are saying about their impact on student learning outcomes. The following is an easy read for busy teachers and will provide much stimulus for professional discussion on the integration of ICTs
Whiteboards are turning pupils into spectators – article in the Daily Telegraph concerning a report from academics at London Universities Institute of Education that raises doubts over the long term benefits of using the equipment
“A £50 million scheme to replace school blackboards with "interactive whiteboards" has failed to improve children's results, a Government-backed study has found.Many pupils have been turned into "spectators" as teachers use the technology to create faster and more complicated lessons, it said.”
I should've responded to your call a while back but after a day's worth of IWB stuff including a 2 hour workshop for teachers (where I gave a show'n'tell to 20 teachers using an ACTIVboard that didn't work) then a 4 hour leaders conference day, I could see the "possums paralysed by the headlights" effect on the assembled school leaders comtemplating spending federal $$ on this technology. Arti knows how tortured I've become over this technology - and there's plenty of evidence to show that she's right - a diagram shown by our devil's advocate mediator showed a diagram showing the evolution of seating arrangements in a primary school, from rows in the 60's to table groups, and back to yes, you guessed rows again when the IWB makes its appearance. I can't even begin to think of a phrase for you, I'm sorry. There's value in all different types of technology in classrooms - it's probably because of their expense, their nirvanic status for non-techie teachers, its similarity to traditional classroom tools that they are subject to much more scrutiny than other technologies or ideas that also may also be reinforcing old ways of doing things.
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