Introduction

The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors was the setting, on 24 May, for a lively discussion on the educational merits of interactive whiteboards.

Interactive whiteboards – large, touch-sensitive computer screens that replace a traditional blackboard or whiteboard – have been adopted in British classrooms at a dizzying pace. Actively promoted by the DfES and Ofsted, they are now used in both secondary and primary schools throughout the UK.

But has all this happened too soon? Do interactive whiteboards enable teachers to transform learning, through engaging and motivating learners, as their proponents argue? Or are they just a technological fad, an expensive and glossy veneer on old-fashioned chalk 'n' talk? If, as the government plans, we are to move towards a more personalised approach to learning, where learners have greater influence over their lessons, a discussion about the role technology can play in bringing about change is crucial.

In reality, the four speakers who took part would all agree that the answers are not clear-cut, but for the purposes of the debate, they were invited to present a case that highlighted either the pros or the cons. The idea was to give both the audience and the speakers an opportunity to discuss problems and propose solutions.

Speaking in favour of interactive whiteboards were Albin Wallace, Group ICT Director of the United Learning Trust (ULT), which is a major sponsor of the DfES Academies programme; and Carey Jewitt, a Reader in Education and Technology at the Institute of Education and co-author of a DfES-funded report into the effectiveness of interactive whiteboards in London secondary schools.

Representing the case against were Guy Underwood, Senior Adviser for ICT in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham; and Steve Kennewell, Principal Lecturer in Education at Swansea Institute of Higher Education, and Director of the ESRC/TLRP project Interactive Teaching and ICT.

The case for

Interactive whiteboards enable pupils to take a more active part in the lesson, and teachers to take account of different learning styles, such as the kinaesthetic and the visual, according to the speakers in the pro camp. They also make it easier for teachers to pace their lessons according to the needs of different pupils, and to create opportunities for collaborative learning. In other words, they are ideal for helping schools take a personalised learning approach.

Wallace, who has overseen the introduction of interactive whiteboards in the ULT’s academies, argued that they have captured the imagination of both teachers and pupils. Teachers, he said, feel very comfortable with the technology, while children enjoy the greater involvement in the lesson the interactive whiteboard makes possible: “There is nothing better than reception or Year 1 children clamouring in a lesson to put their work on the whiteboard.”

The real benefits of interactive whiteboards, however, are the opportunities they offer for engaging with material in a different way. They connect users kinaesthetically with content, he argued, in a way that isn’t possible with traditional whiteboards. They’re good for modelling – showing pupils clearly how things work. Particularly useful, said Wallace, is the Activstudio software, which enables teachers to present electronic flipcharts that display shapes, text, images and video and can be annotated using an electronic pen.

Jewitt’s findings among London secondary schools supported Wallace’s account of the experiences of teachers and pupils in academies. “Interactive whiteboards have been welcomed with open arms by teachers,” she argued. They benefit pupils, too, by enabling them to interact with displays and to navigate across applications and screens via the internet: “The dynamic representation of curriculum concepts enables students to see things differently.”

This was particularly true in maths and science lessons, added Jewitt, where objects could be manipulated on the interactive whiteboard: “In a science lesson, if you’re looking at the topic of states of matter, solids, liquids and gas, you can make the particles in those representations dynamic. So what happens at that point is that you’re looking at particles moving. That’s an interesting pedagogical shift. It solves the problem of students thinking that the particles in a solid are different from particles in a liquid, which are different from particles in a gas.”

Not only are interactive whiteboards good at helping students understand visually concepts with which they might otherwise have difficulty, they can encourage a different, more collaborative kind of teaching, argued Jewitt. In English lessons, an individual piece of work can become a whole-class enterprise: “There were times when students’ texts were scanned, put on the board, manipulated and annotated and worked with collectively, so that an individual’s work would become a collective type of product.”

The case against

Guy Underwood and Steve Kennewell made a spirited case against interactive whiteboards. Underwood said that any decision to introduce new technologies in the classroom should always begin with the question, “What problems are we trying to solve?”

Barking and Dagenham, he said, had resisted pressure to use interactive whiteboards, because they would disrupt the schools’ established and successful pedagogy of interactive teaching, which was based on talk around a shared stimulus. This was via an overhead projector located centrally in the classroom and a large screen. To best support extended dialogue, pupils are seated in a horseshoe arrangement with good sightlines to both each other and the screen. The flexibility this arrangement allowed gave pupils greater opportunity for interacting with each other in a variety of ways – in pairs, in small groups, or as a class.

To match and extend an interactive solution the schools and LEA invested time in developing a bespoke interactive technology toolset consisting of a personal computer, interactive slate, sound system, large projector screen and a Visualiser (a digital overhead projector that magnifies documents and objects that appear on the screen). Teaching staff and pupils can control what happens on the screen with their slate and pen, which means that they don’t have to walk to the front of the classroom to make a change. They can also capture in real time documents and objects from the Visualiser and display them on the large screen for discussion by other pupils.

Teachers have the flexibility to walk around with the slate, said Underwood: “We’ve got teachers away from a chalkboard and into the space in the middle of the classroom where they interact with and face the pupils.” Pedagogy determined the solution, he said.

By contrast, he argued, interactive whiteboards are much less flexible. At any one time, part of the board would not be visible to some children, and when children come to the front to write on the whiteboard, it has to be moved to accommodate their differing heights. While the slates enable pupils to write in their normal handwriting, which is then magnified by the projector, interactive whiteboards require pupils to write using unnaturally large letters. Advice from the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) on the use of interactive whiteboards is that pupils sit with their back towards the projector beam, which again limits the possibilities for group interaction.

“I am not a Luddite; I have promoted ICT as an aid to learning for over 30 years,” said Kennewell. But he attacked much of what happens at the interactive whiteboard as “mundane and routine”. He tackled two claims made in favour of interactive whiteboards, namely that they could accommodate different learning styles and were better at motivating and engaging pupils. He showed video clips of lessons in which the pupils were engaging visually and kinaesthetically with the interactive whiteboard. In one clip, a teacher showed how an interactive whiteboard could be used to measure amounts of fruit, by moving images of fruit into groups, rows and columns. Kennewell pointed out that this method bypassed the “powerful tool of counting” and could result in pupils “missing the cognitive development that allows them to transfer learning to another situation.”

Engaging with the question of whether interactive whiteboards engaged and motivated pupils more effectively, he showed a clip of children learning about symmetry through the manipulation of geometric shapes on an interactive whiteboard. He argued that the more traditional method of teaching pupils about symmetry – giving them mirrors and tracing paper – was a more effective way of engaging them and helping them understand the concept. And while advocates of interactive whiteboards tend to point to the opportunities it offers for pupils to come to the front and work with the board, Kennewell described this as “turn-taking for the sake of it after the potential of learning has been exhausted.”

Moving forward

There was agreement among all the speakers that technology such as interactive whiteboards can only be successful if it is implemented thoughtfully, with an understanding of the pedagogical reasons for using it. Above all, interactive whiteboards need to be used flexibly, enabling pupils to work at their own pace and in their own style.

Underwood argued persuasively that schools had been rushed into using interactive whiteboards without a national debate on the subject of 'interactive technologies'. There is a danger that schools are forced into a 'one-size-fits-all' approach without recognition of differing local needs and pedagogical approaches. As Jewitt pointed out, secondary and primary schools are very different environments, and the success of interactive whiteboards in different subjects, such as maths and English, relies on teachers taking different approaches to their use.

All the speakers emphasised the need for training. Wallace said that a key reason for the success of interactive whiteboards in the ULT schools was that teachers were trained properly in their use, in special training days rather than after-school sessions. These training days focused on the pedagogical uses of interactive whiteboards as well as the technical details of how to use them. Jewitt stressed the importance of training that is subject-specific rather than generic and reflects local needs.

Jewitt and Wallace agreed that, while interactive whiteboards have the potential to make good teachers even better, weak teachers would be exposed. Wallace said that the ULT puts weaker teachers on a supporting programme to improve their use of the technology.

The speakers were also emphatic about the need to understand the benefits and the drawbacks of interactive whiteboards. The ULT, said Wallace, has a continuing programme of qualitative research to assess the views of both teachers and pupils on the use of interactive whiteboards in the classroom.

If interactive whiteboards are to be successful, then research into best practice and an understanding of where their pedagogical benefits are greatest has to continue. The feeling among the speakers, and from the floor, was that the widespread introduction of interactive whiteboards is not in itself the end of the story, but the beginning: the process of research, training and assessment has to continue.

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