Documenting Teachers and Students Experiences with Interactive Whiteboards in Ireland

This case study discusses the key findings from a pilot Interactive Whiteboard Project in Ireland which ran from 2005 to 2007. Eight primary and secondary schools were involved. The project exemplifies a bottom-up initiative as it was neither government funded nor supported. Findings indicate that Interactive Whiteboards were well received and utilized by teachers and students whose views on the benefits of IWBs reveal strong correlations. Despite a lack of national policy guidance and funding for this technology in Ireland, IWBs are becoming increasingly popular. However, there is a danger that this policy vacuum will create its own problems as schools increasingly rely on IWB suppliers for advice and direction on how to proceed. It may also have digital divide implications as more affluent schools are better able to fund this technology.

Technology Shaping a Democratic Classroom

This chapter presents a case study of how the educational potential of interactive whiteboards spread from one teacher to her staff, the district and subsequently to other teachers in a province in Canada. This initiative is unique because of the “bottom up” nature of teachers coming together and sharing their expertise and experience with interactive whiteboards, which in turn inspired other teachers. Over a number of years, Livingstone staff have observed, discussed and documented multiple ways in which IWBs support teaching and learning. These findings have been adopted and improved as the staff collaborate and change their authoritarian style to a more student-directed classroom. This case outlines the power and potential of this type of collaborative, bottom up approach among teachers and university educators rather than the more common “top down” approach typically identified with administrators requiring teachers to use interactive whiteboards.

Enhanced Interactivity in Secondary Mathematics

This chapter outlines the background to the development of changed pedagogy by mathematics teachers within a secondary school in England. It relates this development to the enhanced understanding of the use of interactive whiteboards, initially as a presentational and motivational support but then as the basis of more effective conceptual and cognitive learning by students. The experience of teachers within the school and members of a research group points to the importance of the integration of interactive whiteboards, desk work and thinking in the planning of mathematics lessons. It also discusses emerging evidence that effective whiteboard use requires an understanding of the role of individual learning style, gesture, and artifact use in reflective and stepped teaching and learning situations.

Effective Implementation of Learner Response Systems

This chapter is based upon research from the REVEAL Project - a REVIEW of Electronic Voting and an Evaluation of Uses within Assessment and Learning. The REVEAL Project was a two-year development and research project across the UK funded by the Bowland Charitable Trust, (UK) that focused upon understanding the effective use of one of Promethean’s Learner Response Systems (LRS) called Activote, across seventy primary and secondary schools within eleven local authorities. Led by the Learning Technologies Team, Midlands Leadership Centre, University of Wolverhampton, the project aimed to define and disseminate best practice in the use of Learner Response Systems, highlighting key uses and creative ways of working. This chapter summarizes the key themes and findings that have emerged from the project, providing an overview for teachers and practitioners including a suggested model of implementation for the Learner Response Systems. The work from this project would be beneficial to developments on classroom interaction and collaboration as well as teacher training and related continuing professional development for the effective use of interactive technologies within learning and teaching.

Interactive Whiteboards and Student Achievement

This study explored the effects of teachers’ use of interactive whiteboards on students’ reading/language arts and mathematics performance. Reading/language arts and mathematics achievement test scores of all students in the third through eighth grades in a small urban school district in northern Ohio, United States, were compared between students whose teachers used interactive whiteboards for instruction and those whose teachers did not. A statistically significant but not meaningful positive main effect of whiteboard use on mathematics achievement was found. A statistically significant main effect on reading achievement was not found, although the reading/language arts scores of students whose teachers used whiteboards were slightly higher than those of students whose teachers did not use them. In addition, statistically significant and meaningful interactions between whiteboard use and grade levels were found, leading to a more careful look at differences in the ways teachers employed whiteboards in their instruction. A within-group comparison of such usage between teachers whose students scored above the mean on standardized tests and those whose students scored at or below the mean revealed that teachers of high-scoring students used interactive whiteboards more frequently and in more creative and constructivist ways than did teachers whose students performed at or below the mean. The results suggest that the use of interactive whiteboards can enhance student learning of mathematics and reading/language arts when teachers use them in a manner that takes advantage of their unique capabilities.

The Impact of Interactive Whiteboards on Classroom Interaction and Learning in Primary Schools in the UK

The UK Government’s Primary National Strategy undertook a pilot programme “Embedding ICT in the Literacy and Numeracy Strategies” where interactive whiteboards were installed in the classrooms of teachers of 9-11 year old students in more than 80 schools in six regions of England. Research to evaluate this project collected multiple sources of data, including students’ attainment, structured lesson observations and the perceptions of teachers and students. Results suggest that the use of the interactive whiteboards did lead to significant changes in teachers’ practices in the use of technology and in aspects of classroom interaction, and that the perceptions of those involved were overwhelmingly positive, but that the impact in terms of students’ attainment on national tests was very small and short-lived. This raises questions about the integration of new technologies into classroom teaching and how such technologies might improve teaching and learning.

Designing Resources for IWBs

The following chapter will be of interest to all those involved in creating resources for the Interactive Whiteboard with a view to commercial publication, either via an established publishing house or via the web as an open resource. It will also inform those who are already involved in digital publishing or who are considering implementing a digital publishing strategy. It is not aimed at providing solutions, but at stimulating publishers and authors to ask the right questions and to consider the management of change that may be required within their company. The chapter will look at the challenge from organizational, creative, production and commercial standpoints. It will conclude with an examination of the emerging role of the teacher as an IWB materials writer, and how new paradigms are emerging which may increasingly mesh the parts played by the practicing user and the commercial publisher of IWB resources.

Interactive Whiteboards

This chapter reviews the literature that has charted the progress of the use of interactive whiteboards within schools, predominantly within the UK. It is concerned, firstly, with the way in which change is introduced, managed and supported. The literature has also shown the progress from presentation and motivation issues to a consideration of the pedagogic possibilities of the integration of the interactive whiteboard in teaching situations. This involves an understanding of interactivity in educational contexts. This chapter also investigates the value for money issues implicit in the use of technology in pedagogic change and considers discussions related to technology and educational effectiveness.

A New Interactive Whiteboard Pedagogy through Transformative Personal Development

This chapter examines how teachers acquire proficiency in the use of interactive whiteboards for the enhancement of whole-class teaching. It suggests that teachers are unlikely to make optimal use of the affordances of the technology through preparatory training alone, and that such an expectation could adversely affect the chances of successful implementation. A phased development of teachers’ capability is described during which those with initially limited technical skills can begin to explore the pedagogic potential of the interactive whiteboard and then progressively develop their technical skills in tandem with the evolution of their pedagogy. The author proposes a process of Transformative Personal Development (TPD) within which initial expert interventions demonstrate what is ultimately achievable and set the agenda for a more sustained period of collaborative work-based learning.

Using the Interactive Whiteboard to Stimulate Active Learning in School Science

This case study is set in the context of an extraordinarily rapid influx of interactive whiteboards in schools in the UK. The focus is on pedagogical strategies used to harness the functionality of this powerful technology to support teaching and learning in science. The study offers a vivid example of how one expert secondary teacher used the IWB technology and other digital resources to support “active learning” about the process of photosynthesis by a class of students aged 14-15. Collaborative thematic analysis of digital video recordings, teacher diary, field notes and post-lesson interview data from a sequence of six lessons yielded detailed, theorized descriptions of the teacher’s own rationale. The chapter concludes by highlighting a multimedia resource produced as an outcome of this case study in order to support professional development of practitioners working in other contexts.