Several districts I’m familiar with are launching interactive whiteboard initiatives, installing them in classrooms. So, in addition to reading Kobus van Wyk on interactive whiteboards, I thought I’d read more and stumbled flat-footed into this rant by Bill Ferriter. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s a rant that many will consider right on target…fellow ranters may assert that whiteboards are usually top-down decisions made by central office after being marketed to endlessly by interactive whiteboard vendors.
All that said, Bill’s points published at The Tempered Radical, a normally sensible blog, are worth reading. For me, they highlight several questions that should be asked before you move forward with an interactive whiteboard purchase:
- What is your vision for quality learning in classrooms?
- How does what teachers and principals do support that vision?
- Why aren’t less expensive technologies being considered as integral to that vision?
Some additional questions:
- Have teachers been trained in how to use IWB?
- Have principals been trained on how to assess IWB use in the classroom as part of the appraisal process?
- What will be the consequences for damage? How much is budgeted for replacement of damaged IWB?
- Has the Curriculum & Instruction Department revised all their curriculum guides that teachers have to follow religiously to reflect the new technology, or will the tech use be tacked on at the end of the guide as an after-thought?
- Will the C&I education specialists be responsible for modeling the use of IWB in math, science, Reading/ELA and generally, core content area instruction during workshops?
It may be that the school district’s perspective is as follows: "See, we’ve invested a lot of money in your classroom, so you better change to make the investment worthwhile." In my own experience, interactive whiteboards are used to their full potential by teachers who are using technology anyways…if I’m a stick in the mud teacher, I’m probably going to push the technology off to the side and keep doing what I’m doing. Worse, IWBs are so easy to complain about:
"That’s not the side of the classroom I need a whiteboard on."
"The technology doesn’t work when I need it."
What other ones have you heard?
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The Tempered Radical: Wasting Money on Whiteboards. . .
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Wasting Money on Whiteboards. . .
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Seen as the first step towards “21st Century teaching and learning,” schools and districts run out and spend THOUSANDS of dollars on whiteboards, hanging them on walls and showing them off like proud hens that just laid the golden instructional egg.
I gave mine away last summer. After about a year’s worth of experimenting, I determined that it was basically useless.
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I’d go even farther, though, and argue that even WITH time and training, Interactive Whiteboards are an under-informed and irresponsible purchase.
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Do we really want to spend thousands of dollars on a tool that makes stand-and-deliver instruction easier?
My biggest beef with Whiteboards, though, is that they are poorly aligned with the vision of instruction that most people claim to believe in.
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If those are the outcomes we most desire, then why are we wasting money on Interactive Whiteboards—tools that do little to promote independent discovery and collaborative work? Sure—you could argue that when used as an instructional center, whiteboards become more interactive, but that is one REALLY expensive center, don’t you think?!
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whiteboards have become a PR tool—a tangible representation of innovation that can be shown off to supervisors and parents alike.
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I think Sylvia Martinez—who writes over at Generation Yes—said it best when she wrote:
you can’t *buy* change, it’s a process, not a purchase. the right shopping list won’t change education
Most of the time, Interactive Whiteboard programs are nothing more than vain attempts to buy change. Rarely paired with a clear vision of the classrooms we’d like to see, a set of tangible objectives that can be measured, or any systematic attempts to evaluate outcomes, Interactive Whiteboards are sad examples of the careless decision making and waste that are crippling some of our schools and systems.
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And, then, a short time later, Bill rants on:
- the conclusions that Bob Marzano—edu-superstar himself—has drawn about whiteboards. Ed Week described Marzano’s conclusions like this:
That finding highlights one of Marzano’s key conclusions…The teachers who were most effective using the whiteboards displayed many of the characteristics of good teaching in general:
They paced the lesson appropriately and built on what students already knew; they used multiple media, such as text, pictures, and graphics, for delivering information; they gave students opportunities to participate; and they focused mainly on the content, not the technology.
Now, Marzano goes on to argue that he’s an ardent believer that technology can make good teaching easier—and he’s right. But Interactive Whiteboards don’t.
Instead, they are disarmingly insidious gadgets—so stinking sexy to people making purchasing decisions that they’re almost irresistible whether or not there are proven strategies for meaningful implementation.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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Stand and deliver easier! A whiteboard is a tool for learning. The power is in the hands of the educator who sets up learning opportunities for students. My grade 3 students use our Smartboard for collaborating together. The board is not only used in shared reading and shared writing experiences but also as a workstation for group learning. Don't put down whiteboards, look more carefully at the pedagogy of the teaching. It's not about training on the how you use a whiteboard, it's about collaborating with educators on the best teaching strategies! Teachie Ang.
Stand and deliver easier! A whiteboard is a tool for learning. The power is in the hands of the educator who sets up learning opportunities for students. My grade 3 students use our Smartboard for collaborating together. The board is not only used in shared reading and shared writing experiences but also as a workstation for group learning. Don't put down whiteboards, look more carefully at the pedagogy of the teaching. It's not about training on the how you use a whiteboard, it's about collaborating with educators on the best teaching strategies! Teachie Ang.
Hey Miguel, Glad something that I wrote caught your eye! I respect your thinking, that's for sure. I think one of the defining moments in my conversations about whiteboards came in last weeks Educhat. I asked what I thought was a pretty simple question:How do your schools measure the impact that whiteboards are having on learning?There were no replies—and that's what scares me. Now, don't get me wrong—I'm sure the driven teachers that you talk about in your post can do wonderful things with whiteboards. No tool is useless in the hands of a prodigy.The problem is that we're pouring thousands to put whiteboards into every classroom, which seems like a real waste to me. Does any of this make sense?Bill
Hey Miguel, Glad something that I wrote caught your eye! I respect your thinking, that's for sure. I think one of the defining moments in my conversations about whiteboards came in last weeks Educhat. I asked what I thought was a pretty simple question:How do your schools measure the impact that whiteboards are having on learning?There were no replies—and that's what scares me. Now, don't get me wrong—I'm sure the driven teachers that you talk about in your post can do wonderful things with whiteboards. No tool is useless in the hands of a prodigy.The problem is that we're pouring thousands to put whiteboards into every classroom, which seems like a real waste to me. Does any of this make sense?Bill
Good points. I'm glad I'm not the only one to see that the emperor's new clothes are less than effective.People always praise the IWB, but I see it as misplaced technology. I am already loath to be locked into the front of the room, teaching from the board, and here we have a device which forces one to do exactly that. Indeed, what administrator brags about the teacher who teaches from the front of the room!Give me a wireless tablet that works and I'll be in heaven. Better yet: Give me netbooks or small tablets in the hands of all students (or student groups). It may be different in the elementary levels, but as a middle school teacher, I honestly don't see the IWB to be the panacea it is made out to be. Far from it, in fact.Technology can and should change teaching, but this just make outdated teaching flashier, shinier, and easier.
Good points. I'm glad I'm not the only one to see that the emperor's new clothes are less than effective.People always praise the IWB, but I see it as misplaced technology. I am already loath to be locked into the front of the room, teaching from the board, and here we have a device which forces one to do exactly that. Indeed, what administrator brags about the teacher who teaches from the front of the room!Give me a wireless tablet that works and I'll be in heaven. Better yet: Give me netbooks or small tablets in the hands of all students (or student groups). It may be different in the elementary levels, but as a middle school teacher, I honestly don't see the IWB to be the panacea it is made out to be. Far from it, in fact.Technology can and should change teaching, but this just make outdated teaching flashier, shinier, and easier.
We had two IWBs here at school. One was designed to hang on the ledge above the old-style blackboard, and one was a freestanding board on rollers.The first is sitting behind one of the desks in the technology department office, I think. The freestanding one is in the physics lab, where it is used for stand-and-deliver style instruction. It's not BAD instruction – we have a great physics teacher – but it could be done with an ordinary white board.Meanwhile, we have at least a dozen classrooms that still have chalk boards and traditional erasers — which means that we have huge number of students and teachers who don't know how to use color as a tool for delivering instruction.
We had two IWBs here at school. One was designed to hang on the ledge above the old-style blackboard, and one was a freestanding board on rollers.The first is sitting behind one of the desks in the technology department office, I think. The freestanding one is in the physics lab, where it is used for stand-and-deliver style instruction. It's not BAD instruction – we have a great physics teacher – but it could be done with an ordinary white board.Meanwhile, we have at least a dozen classrooms that still have chalk boards and traditional erasers — which means that we have huge number of students and teachers who don't know how to use color as a tool for delivering instruction.