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Interactive Whiteboards Come Into Their Own

By: Diane Rapley

6/30/2008

Interactive Whiteboards Come Into Their OwnFive years from now more than a million interactive whiteboards (IWBs) will be installed in our schools, with at least one board in almost every school in the country, according to the recent America's Digital Schools 2008 (ADS 2008) survey of over 350 school districts on key technology factors driving change in schools. IWBs are already well established in countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, Mexico, and Russia, and now seem set to follow the same path into US schools.

The ADS 2008 report found that IWBs are making rapid inroads into our schools across all grade levels, including high school, and are increasingly viewed as standard equipment. Helping to drive the market forward are innovations such as multiple simultaneous pens, improved classroom ergonomics, and integration with other classroom technologies.

Interactive Whiteboards Come Into Their Own

Teachers' use of interactive whiteboards seems to be motivated primarily by student-centered considerations. The top three "extremely important" factors for using IWBs (among teachers who use IWBs) are student engagement (62 percent), student performance (53 percent), and student interaction (51 percent). Teacher-centered factors (like productivity and collaboration), while not unimportant, clearly are secondary to student learning when it comes to teachers choosing to use IWBs.

Despite some pedagogical misgivings that they promote a "sage on the stage" approach to education, IWBs appear to be popular with teachers and students alike. Research carried out in the UK shows that they save valuable classroom time and improve teacher productivity and job satisfaction, as well as student attention and motivation-- all viewed as important factors in student achievement (British Educational Communications and Technology Agency [BECTA], "What the Research Says About Interactive Whiteboards," ICT Research, Coventry, 2003).

For schools to take full advantage of their IWBs, ADS 2008 predicts that they will need to incorporate a broad range of multimedia-internet resources, lesson activities, and classroom content into lesson plans using their whiteboards. Subject-matter software and student-collaborative software will be particularly needed.

IWBs are making rapid inroads into schools, increasingly being viewed as standard equipment