I can easily say that the vast majority of classrooms I have been in since I became a teacher have some form of interactive smart boards. Of course, in all of these classrooms (in several states and countries) I have never seen any of them ever being used…this has led me to some reasonable conclusions about how schools everywhere operate (i.e. top down), and why this is such a great example of why this is a bad idea.
With this in mind, I found it rather strange to see a fluty of edu-blog articles presenting some quite negative perspectives about these ubiquitous classroom tools. Mind you, I don’t have much time for these pieces of technology either, but I know piling on when I see it…
This is not a problem about SmartBoards, but of the slow and comparatively mindless advances made by teachers and administrators towards technology. The vast majority of what I have seen in classrooms relates to unused to obsolete gear which never had much real impact for teachers or students.
I don’t really want to know how much money has been spend in hundreds of school districts for interactive white boards, for Windows 98 computers with floppy drives (maybe even Zip drives!), for various ‘teaching’ programs which are usually bought at a premium (it isn’t just the textbook industry which has a symbiotic embrace of the education industry!).
The good news in this ‘blind leading the blind’ era of classroom technology is that it may be overrun by a bottom up movement (i.e. students already have adopted technology more universally than teachers and administrators have). IT may be that the cell phone, the smartphones, and iPod touches in the possession of students today will bring whatever technology revolution in the classroom we have been expecting…
The Sheer Genius of SmartBoards
http://mrspripp.blogspot.com/2011/05/sheer-genius-of-smartboards.html
So really who is the board interactive for? The teacher who gets to touch it as the lesson moves on or the selected student who gets to come up and move a word around. Ooooh, now that is engaged learning. I don’t dismiss interactive whiteboards as classroom tools altogether but I do dismiss the notion that they are the ticket to reform our classrooms, to re-engage our learners, and teach our children. Instead they lead themselves to more "sage on the stage" type of teaching where the teacher is in control of all of the learning and the students just get to participate. That is not what school should be. So laud your interactive whiteboards as much as you want, but keep in mind just how they were sold to you. I think it is time we see them for they really are; tools, not solutions, not magic pills, just another tool, and one that comes with a steep price tag and a much too deep learning curve. This should not be the future of our classrooms.
Switching off the Interactive White Board for good
http://www.ictsteps.com/2011/05/switching-off-the-interactive-white-board-for-good
IWB’s have had their day. I personally can’t see any future for them in classrooms and the sooner schools stop buying into them the sooner the money can be spent on better educationally interactive tools.
The hype surrounding these boards is what makes removing them from classrooms difficult. Many teachers will reel in shock if they were told that their IWB will be removed but if you ask them what they really use the board for, you will discover that it in general, they use it just like a normal white board except they can ‘put the internet on it’. Occasionally you will meet those in teaching that use their boards as an interactive learning tool, creating content that engages their class. But this is not the norm. Most schools will have older IWB’s which only allow one user at a time, if you want real interaction you need to upgrade the board and that costs a lot of money especially if you are looking to upgrade the whole school.
Why are we STILL Wasting Money on Whiteboards?
http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/the_tempered_radical/2011/05/why-are-we-still-wasting-money-on-whiteboards.html
If you’ve spent any time reading the Radical, you know that I hate Interactive Whiteboards—and the companies that sell them as instructional silver bullets—with an unhealthy passion.
Recently, though, I’ve dialed back that passion. I guess that’s because—thankfully—conversations about teaching with technology have started to shift into healthier places.
I hear less and less from educators who just HAVE to have an IWB.
More importantly, I hear less and less from school leaders who are ready to plunk down their schools’ already limited technology budgets on a small handful of glorified presentation tools that do NOTHING to change teaching and learning in our schools.
That lull in the lunacy ended this week.
You see, I bumped into a friend who is a well respected instructional technology leader in his large middle school. He was completely jazzed because his principal had asked him to help spend the school’s technology budget.
