Beyond the Interactive Whiteboard

A seemingly unstoppable wave of whiteboards has washed over UK schools in the last five or six years, with an incredibly high proportion of classrooms now proudly boasting interactive whiteboards (IWBs). Aided by ring-fenced Becta funding, it has promised much, but opinion now seems a little more split as to whether this new dawn of interactivity has truly been successful in raising standards of teaching and learning.

In terms of hard facts and figures, IWBs have not had it all their own way, with some major reports questioning their ability to impact directly on exam results. For example, Newcastle University recently published a report via Becta, specifically showing that no significant improvements in KS2 SATs results are apparent with the introduction of IWBs. But these reports always seem to have qualitative caveats attached to them which outline overwhelming support from teaching staff for the new technology. It all leaves a slightly muddled picture, and maybe it is still too soon to be even attempting definitive answers on the impact of IWBs. Maybe it’s even the wrong way to be looking at evaluating their impact – SATs (to use the previous example) are often deemed more a reflection of direct instruction rather than long-term understanding of concepts, and it has long been felt that added interactivity and creativity will be most beneficial under these latter circumstances.

It’s also a mistake to look at the IWB in isolation. It’s been argued that they encourage a more didactic, front-of-class teaching style, the very approach that the technology was designed to help overcome. This may be partly true, but whole-class teaching is about so much more than the IWB, and always has been – perhaps the Becta funding, by being very specific about a board-based strategy, has obscured the bigger picture about whole-class teaching and what can be achieved. With so many other types of technology enabling additional flexibility and capabilities, the boundaries of ICT use across the curriculum can be fully expanded by changing the way we look at the IWB. Indeed, this has been a common theme in many of the debates in the educational media: that the IWB should be seen more as the hub for whole-class teaching, and less as a stand alone tool.

And perhaps this thought process should go further than that: maybe it’s more about areas of control within the classroom, with the IWB being one option for the front of the class, but not the only one. While trying to develop solutions on how to develop a whole-class teaching strategy, my philosophy has always been the same – to match the solution to the teacher, not the other way around. With all the choice, just leading with an IWB is outdated and prescriptive. It’s much more relevant to look at the classroom in five different whole-class teaching categories:

These categories try to give a more helpful guide as how to best match technology to pedagogy and I’ll be looking into each category in more detail in forthcoming blogs. There are a multitude of devices available, but it really is a case of deciding which best suits the needs of the school, department or even the individual – “mixing and matching” is no longer a problem, as all the devices will work in tandem no matter what the original manufacturer.

• Front of Class Display  (e.g. projection, plasma)
• Front of Class Control (e.g. IWBs, e-beam, overlays)
• Roaming Control (e.g. Wireless pads, Gyration)
• Group Interactivity (e.g. Interactive tabletops, Voting Systems)
• Whole-Class Enhancement (e.g. Visualisers, Audio enhancement)

The days of being told what technology to use, and how to use it, are well and truly numbered, as teaching, and not just learning, can be personalised with a broader approach to ICT in the classroom.

~ by gethnichols on August 27, 2008.