Crazy for Interactive Whiteboards
The American public school system may be falling for another educational fad, the interactive white board (IWB). One company of an IWB showcases their “interactive dual board” on their web site by displaying a picture of two students working together behind a smiling teacher. The company proclaims, “... is the first dual pen-input interactive whiteboard designed specifically to help turn classrooms into more collaborative learning environments ("einstruction - interwritedualboard," 2010). The collaboration the authors of the web site are referring to takes place between two children, and in the photograph, they do not bother to show the other students in the class, so it unclear if they are collaborating. The rest of the students in the class are certainly not collaborating with the IWB; the device is not designed to be used by more than two people. If this is the model schools think of regarding student collaboration, two students at a time, than perhaps American schools are full of well-intentioned, but gullible people (Oppenheimer, 2004) following yet another fad.The testimonials on the web site of the company who developed the IWB mentioned above, consist of three district administrators, two principals and three teachers ("http:// www.einstruction.com/products/interactive_teaching/workspace/index.html ," 2010). None of the educators talk about the IWB promoted on the web site; instead they each speak about a new technology developed by the company, the classroom performance system. The testimonials I am referring to are not listed under the new product, a classroom performance system, they are the only client testimonials on the entire site for all their products.
The classroom performance system provides a clicker device, that looks like a TV remote, to each student so that students may respond to questions generated by teachers by clicking a button. The results of the clicking devices are shown on a screen and tabulated for the teacher for later analysis. If you were a school official looking for testimonials about an IWB that you were considering purchasing from this company, you might question why the company is only promoting this new technology and not also promoting the IWB. Perhaps the company has realized that the promise of the IWB, a technology they hoped will change the pedagogy of the teacher and the dynamics of the classroom, has been broken (Oppenheimer, 2004).
In this paper, I will argue that the technology needed in the classroom should support a pedagogy that: 1.) enables student choice of learning context and pace, 2.) encourages students to collaborate with each other and outside experts, 3.) fosters extended writing experiences and 4.) improves classroom feedback systems. I will argue that an IWB maintains the traditional teacher directed model that encourages teachers to provide information, require students to use this information to answer questions, give tests about this information, and acquire grades to see what students have learned (Songer, Lee & Kam, 2002).
The Case for Laptops and NOT for Interactive White Boards
In a study conducted in a group of Chicago Public Schools, Newmann, Bryk and Nagaoka (2001), found that urban students could learn the basics if they were provided with high-quality assignments. In order for students to tackle these high-quality assignments, the researchers suggested that teachers change their pedagogy, which would require students to have extensive opportunities to write and discuss what they are learning. An IWB could not support this new pedagogy. Even the new IWB dual board allows only two students to write on it at a time and only with electronic pens or an on-screen keyboard. If students are to engage inextensive writing, as Newmann et al,., suggested than an IWB is not an option. Students need to use paper and pencil or a laptop computer.
When laptop computers are considered instead of an IWB or paper, student writing changes. Laptops support the changed pedagogy that requires students to write and discuss what they are learning. Besides writing in a word processor, students can write their ideas on their classroom blog/message board (Richardson, 2010; Wells, 2006), or wiki (Richardson, 2010). Researchers have found that students who publish their writing on a classroom blog (Wells, 2006) engage in an authentic task which may motivate them to continue working hard (Newmann et al., 2001). Writing on a blog could potentially expand the student’s audience beyond the classroom.
When students post their work to a blog/message board, the intended design of a blog is to promote feedback. This feedback, usually in the form of comments, can be provided from every student in the classroom in an anonymous format and when students receive feedback without the fear of a grade (Black & William, 1998; Roschelle, Penuel & Abrahamson, 2004), feedback has been found to be very important to learning (Black et al.; 1998; Popham, 2008). It can come from peers, a teacher or someone outside of the classroom when ideas are posted to a blog. When teachers use blogs with their students, they create a form of a classroom network designed to improve communication between teachers and students (Roschelle et al., 2004).
If a student presents their work in front of the classroom, on an IWB or some other physical medium, and feedback is asked by the teacher, that feedback is usually from the same children who always speak in class or not very helpful, because children are afraid they will hurt someone’s feelings (Black et al., 1998). A teacher’s use of the IWB as a feedback tool, does not enable a classroom of students to ponder the formative feedback in a private manner, since a student’s work is displayed for all to see on the big screen. A student who is able to sit alone with a laptop computer can read comments from their peers and teacher privately and this may reduce academic anxiety and actually encourage students to fix errors and improve their work (Roschelle et al., 2004).
Students who use laptop computers can do more with them than just write on a blog. Computers also provide students with a sense of control over their learning. Rose and Meyer (2002) encourage teachers to design instruction that enables students to choose, or control, the context they are most comfortable with and so, some students may wish to watch a video about the transcontinental railroad’s affect on the United States and others may wish to read about it in a book or on a website. Teachers who only show a video projected on an IWB or a text-based web site prohibit students from choosing the medium in which they learn best and may restrict the pacing of learning for some students. Ng and Gunstone (2002) found that students who learned about photosynthesis and respiration using web resources in a computer lab found the experience positive because they were able to learn at their own pace. Laptop computers support a teaching philosophy that believes that students can and should control their own learning context and pace. Even though a teacher who uses an IWB may want to give their students more control over how they learn during a lesson, once again the design of the IWB does not allow a class of students that option.
Supporters of IWBs will argue that these instructional tools engage the children because children can come up to the board and manipulate objects. Here is an example of engagement that would not have been as successful on an IWB because it would have limited the number of opportunities all students in the classroom would have had to practice with supports (Rose and Meyer, 2002). Many third graders have a very difficult time representing place values. On the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives web site, http://nlvm.usu.edu/, there is a manipulative tool that enables students to represent place values with base-ten blocks. As the students drag two blocks of ten onto the workspace on the web site to represent the number 20, the computer presents the student with immediate feedback by displaying the number 20 which lets the student know if they are practicing effectively. The feedback is delivered to the student from an anonymous, non-threatening source, the computer. And, as was stated earlier, anonymity may reduce academic anxiety (Roschelle et al., 2004). The IWB, by its design, does not allow every student to have their own personal learning experience and feedback system.
I wish to conclude with one more example that illustrates the superiority of the laptop computer because it supplies every student with a chance to interact with an expert. Last year a second grade teacher and I decided to connect with a bat expert, who worked as a park ranger at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. Instead of the students sitting in their classroom and watching their teacher type in one question at a time about bats, we marched the students to the computer lab, where every student was able to post a question to the Park Ranger and over half of our students received a reply from her. Connecting to experts and other students may contribute to a student’s increased motivation to learn and thus improve their self-efficacy (Mistler-Jackson et al., 2000; Roschelle, Penuel, Abrahamson, 2004). The IWB, again by its design, would not have enabled all students to interact with a National Park Ranger. The students in the lab were able to write questions, read responses at their own pace and did not have to worry about being too far away from the screen to read the fascinating thoughts about bats.
The Proposal
I propose that we buy as many laptop computers as our district can afford for our Intermediate School, grades 3 - 5. Each laptop should be equipped with a built-in camera, access to the Internet and software tools that enable students to demonstrate their knowledge in multiple formats, such as podcasts (Yerrick et al., 2009), movies (Armstrong et al., 2004; Yerrick et al., 2009), blogs (Wells, 2006) and even the composition of music (Armstrong et al., 2004).
Challenges to Overcome
Teacher SkepticismHistorically, the push to integrate technology into classrooms has caused many teachers to resist the promise and potential of this initiative for a variety of reasons. Three of these reasons are: disruption of teacher-student relationships, a focus on basic skills and inadequate staff development. Some teachers believe that computers will disrupt an essential component of student learning, namely, student-teacher relationship building (Cuban, 1986). In many urban schools, according to Becker and Riel, (as cited in Songer et al., 2002) teachers believe that their classroom instruction should focus on a teacher-controlled pedagogy that emphasizes basic skills and so their students should only use computers to practice skills. Inadequate staff development has also been tagged as an issue because many training workshops were not hands-on and thus anything learned and not practiced was quickly forgotten (Oppenheimer, 2004).
Two Solutions to Overcome Skepticism
This resistance is not futile if schools change the way they train teachers to use technology. Typically, teachers en masse, are herded into a computer lab, shown some features of the technologies to be learned on a projected screen and then left to figure out how to use it in their curriculum (Oppenheimer, 2004). Instead of this shallow, one-size-fits-all model, the following researchers provided their teachers with atypical teacher training and thus, successful technology implementations. The researchers did not focus on teaching teachers how to use the technology for technology’s sake. Instead, they focused on teaching teachers how to change their pedagogy, which also required them to learn how to use technology to support that change. In the first example, two researchers included the teachers in the development of a unit. In the second study, the researchers offered extensive training before the implementation and throughout the school year.
Williams et al. (2002) included the teachers in their study in the planning process of their curricular and technology implementation; they called this a partnership model. The researchers met with the teachers to develop and revise the learning goals for a unit on Plants in Space. They found that “creating an environment of mutual respect” (Williams et al., 2002, p. 418), was important to the success of their project because both teachers and researches shared ideas about curricular choices in order to reach consensus. This partnership model led to improved student learning because the researchers and teachers worked together to diagnose and fix challenges that occurred during the year. Learning how to use the technology was secondary, albeit important, to a shift in teaching pedagogy.
Like Williams et al.’s study, Yerrick and Johnson (2009), offered a novel way to learn how to use technology to the teachers in their study. They called their staff development model
“responsive professional development” (p. 285) and they made this training available to middle school science teachers during the summer before their technology implementation and throughout the school year. Teachers in this study learned how to teach science using methods of inquiry which required teachers and students to use probes, podcasting software and computer-based communication tools. Like Williams et al., learning to use the technology was important because it supported the new pedagogy of teaching with inquiry.
Cuban (1986) stated that, “the impact of any technology pivots upon its accessibility, purpose, and use" (p. 37). The teachers in both studies were able to move from the potential and
promise of using technology to the pragmatic use of the tool because teachers were given access to expert users for long periods of time and a pedagogical purpose for learning how to use the technology. Both of these studies showcase staff development models that, when implemented, may begin to erode teacher skepticism toward technology integration.
Measuring the Effectiveness of Student Learning
The state assessments do not require students to blog (Wells, 2006; Richardson,2010), create digital products (Yerrick et al., 2009), use real-time data (Mistler-Jackson et al., 2000; Yerrick et al., 2009), collaborate with experts (Williams et al., 2002) and peers (Mistler-Jackson et al., 2000; Roschelle et al., 2004) or research information on the Internet. (Ng et al., 2002; Williams et al., 2002). So how does one measure the effectiveness of students who learn with computer technology? Researchers have used student interviews and pre and post assessments to accomplish this task.Mistler-Jackson and Songer (2002) administered a pre and post assessment to assess what students learned about weather before and after a technology implementation and found that the whole class improved significantly on the post assessment regarding weather content questions.
Williams and Linn (2002) also gave the students in their study a pre and post assessment, and like Mistler-Jackson et al., they found a significant improvement in pre and post scores after using technology.
Pre and post assessments are not the only way to measure the effectiveness of learning with technology, interviews can also be extremely beneficial. Ng and Gunstone (2002) interviewed students about using the World Wide Web to learn about photosynthesis and respiration and found that over 58% of the students preferred to learn using the world wide web because they felt they were more engaged in processing the information when researching on the Internet. Yerrick and Johnson (2009) conducted various interviews in their study to find what the students thought about changes in science instruction. During one of the interviewers, one of the students told the researchers they she used a probe to measure heat over time and felt that she learned a lot because the technology enabled her to see real-time data.
Encouraging Stakeholder Input
There are a number of stakeholders to consider in this proposal, but I believe that the two most important are teachers and students. There a variety of strategies we can use to garner their support. The most important stakeholder is the student, so I would like to share some strategies that have worked for others. In the first strategy, students are allowed to learn the basics of a new technology without adult assistance or any formal lessons. This idea was very successful with a group of poor urban and rural children in India. In a series of studies, called The Hole-in-the- Wall studies, Dangwal and Kapur (2009) placed computers in the slums and rural villages and observed how children taught themselves how to use the computer without the aid of an adult.Enabling students to learn from each other may relieve teachers of the anxiety of teaching something they know little about.
The second strategy requires that we interview students and teachers so that these primary stakeholders provide insight to challenges that may not be revealed through observation or the collection of artifacts alone. (Mistler-Jackson et al., 2002; Ng et al., 2002; Songer et al., 2002).
Without the teacher, learning is not going to take place, so it is important to support this stakeholder. Teachers need to feel like they do not have to teach the kids how to use the technology and that it will be ok if they learned with the kids. Exposing them to research that has demonstrated the effectiveness of technology integration (Mistler-Jackson et al., 2002; Ng et al., 2002; Songer et al., 2002; Williams et al., 2002; Yerrick et al., 2009) will help them feel that they are not alone in this new teaching adventure.
Encourage Mistakes and Learn From Them
References
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