SmartBoards and Other IWBs

In one study, a team of researchers from Keele University (Miller, Glover & Averis nd) investigated the use of IWBs by mathematics teachers. They found that teachers pass through three pedagogic phases as they learn to use IWBs effectively. In the first phase, the supported didactic, teachers use the technology in the same way as an ordinary whiteboard. The second phase, interactive, involves deeper understanding of the technology and results in teachers using it to enhance traditional teaching rather than as ‘the driving force for conceptual understanding and cognitive development’ (ibid).By contrast, those teachers who used IWBs most effectively were in the enhanced interactivity phase. These teachers used techniques to:offer the same idea in different ways until … all the group understand, and this requires meticulous planning and the need for continuous assessment so that whether answering at the IAW (IWB) or on their own whiteboards, whether using individual or small group work, and whether working on examples or investigations, pupils are challenged not only to say what but also why (ibid).Where teachers were working at the enhanced interactivity phase, three underlying principles seemed to be present:1. The technology was used to support a lesson structure based on an introduction or starter, a developmental phase based on a sequence of learning incidents, and a plenary to review learning and contribute to metacognitive learning of the subject.2. Most teachers were undertaking lesson planning that had a sequence of discernible cognitive aims and a series of activities to explore, develop, explain and reinforce both developing concepts and subsequent understanding.3. There was a high level of teacher recognition that pupils learn in different ways and the IAW was used to promote diversity of aesthetic, verbal, numeric and kinaesthetic experiences (ibid).