TECHNOLOGY MATTERS!

Interactive Whiteboards: a practitioner's view
An interview with Russell Stannard

MET: Is it right that many schools in the UK have Interactive Whiteboards (IWBs)?

Russell: Yes, it has been part of government policy. There has been ring-fenced funding (that is funding that can't be spent on anything else) that schools have used to buy IWBs. The UK is probably one of the leading countries in the world when it comes to IWBs in state schools.

MET: What do you need for an IWB?

Russell: Well, you need a computer to connect to the IWB, a projector to project the contents of the computer screen onto the board, and of course the board. To interact with the board you usually need a special pen, but some (more expensive) boards even work with your finger.

MET: So really it is just like being able to operate a computer from the whiteboard itself rather than using your mouse from the computer?

Russell: Yes and that is probably one of its biggest benefits. You don't have to keep moving between the computer and the screen. You can do everything from the screen. You can open up a webpage, write on the board, open up a picture, draw a circle around an image, highlight something, play a listening. You can do everything without having to move away from the screen. In IWB jargon this is known as “immediacy” and various researchers have alluded to it. Glove and Miller (2002) talk about the immediacy of response for example. You must remember, though, that there is not much you can't do with just a computer and a projector. The key factor is the ability to control everything from the screen and to get students to come to the board and interact with the board too. Plus of course you normally get special software with the boards that give your computer additional capabilities.

MET: Yes, this is one thing teachers are confused about. I have heard that the software that comes with one board can't be used on another type of board. Is that true?

Russell: It's a good question. Let me try and clarify it. Any CD, website or DVD will run on any of the boards. The board itself just allows you to run the software from the front of the class.

So any Word file, Power Point presentation or language learning CD you want to run will function with any board. Where the confusion lies is with the additional software that each board has. If you buy a SMART or Promethean board, then you are given extra software. This is rather like the extra software you get when you buy Windows (i.e. Explorer, Notepad, etc) This extra software doesn't always run on other whiteboards and of course anything you make with the additional software will also not run on other boards

MET: So what does this additional software do?

Russell: Basically it is a set of tools. It provides you with pens which allow you to write over the board. So, for example, if you have some text from the internet open on the board, you could highlight certain words or circle them, etc. You also get a library of images that you can open and close. These can be very useful as they are easily accessible and based around education.

You often get tools like a “spotlight” which allow you to darken out an image or text on the board. You can then move the spotlight around and focus attention on certain parts of the board, etc. There are other tools too. One of the ones that many of the teachers seem to use is the hide and reveal tool. It is like a “curtain” that you can open to slowly reveal the content underneath. You get an electronic flip chart which is just like a whiteboard that you can write on, add pictures too. The great thing though is that you can save it, then refer to it at a later stage. A lot of the research points to the usefulness of this tool and the fact that teachers can “jump back” and review that they have done at anytime. Each piece of software from each company is different, it's one of the ways they can compete and distinguish themselves from the competition, though in reality the basic tools are all the same.
MET: Do you think there is a lot of hype about these boards? Do you think they will catch on in ELT and become mainstream?

Russell: Yes, I think there is a lot of hype. You see, most of the things you can do with the boards you can do with a computer and a projector anyway. However they do have some very good aspects and uses. The key thing, though, is training. Several of the reports highlight the fact that if teachers are not trained they often end up using the IWBs like they do traditional boards. There seems to be various stages that the teachers go through and it's when they get to this third stage of what researchers called “enhanced interaction” that they really become useful as tools

MET: You said that they have some good aspects and uses. What do you mean?

Russell: Well the work I have done suggests they can be very good for presentations. A lot of the other research has also found the same thing. They are really powerful for demonstrating things. You see them being used a lot for teaching maths and sciences because you can produce animations and demonstrations of experiments. Say for example you wanted to see how the blood flows from the heart. You could play an animation on the IWB so that all the students can see it. But not only that. If the software is good, it will allow you to speed up and slow down the flow, so you can see, for example, what happens to the blood flow when you are running. This is where the IWB can come into its own. The teacher can ask the students questions, then get someone to come to the board and press a button and see the results. This can be very powerful and engaging. It is not only being used to “demonstrate” but also being used to engage and get the students thinking. There are also really nice for eliciting ideas because you can design activities in such a way that the teacher can ask some questions about something, then touch the board and reveal the answers or a picture. As I said before, this is often called immediacy. Games work well too. Studies have shown that this is quite engaging for the whole class, i.e. even if a student isn't actually at the board, they take a real interest in what other students are doing at the board, for example they might give instructions, call out, make suggestions, etc

Tip For an excellent summary of some of the best research findings and some interesting work on the role of language teaching go to

http://www.becta.org.uk/page_documents/research/bursaries05/interactive_whiteboard.pdf

MET: Aren't you limited to only one student coming to the board if you do activities with the IWB?

Russell: Not really. As I said it does seem that students take a lot of interest in what other students are doing at the board, but this of course might be a novelty factor. However you are not limited to just one person being at the board. You can easily design games that allow two or three people to be working at the board at the same time, how well the games run will in fact depend on the processing power of the computer the board is connected to.

I have seen a matching game where three students are at the board. Pictures flash up on the board along with the word and if they match, the students have to press the “match button”. Each student has their own match button. However, most of the software tends to only encourage one person to come to the board at any one time. Again this might need a bit of a re-think by the software designers.

MET: Are you saying that we should design software that works specifically for IWBs?

Russell: Yes, of course in reality most publishers always try to package software so that it can be used in all sorts of teaching situations. They say it can be used at home for studying, in class with the teacher and on an IWB. But the truth is, each learning situation is different and to really make good software it should be designed to exploit a given learning situation. Some of the studies have pointed out that there is a lack of quality software in the market, the teachers in the studies have themselves complained about a lack of materials.

MET: What things must whiteboard software do then?

Russell: Well, for example, if you design software or activities for IWB you must make sure that when you drag things that you really make use of the whole screen, to really make it kinesthetic. You need to think about the size of icons, make sure that all the text is large and clear. You don't want too much around the screen i.e. too many buttons. You want all the focus to be on the content. As I said you also need to think more about the dynamics of the lesson. For example you might listen to a dialogue and then have a series of questions that appear on the board. The students discuss the answers in pairs and then the teacher gets students to explain their answers. The teacher then touches the question on the board and the answer suddenly appears or is read out, again we are back to this “immediacy” idea. We do this when designing CDROMs but not to the same level. All this requires good design. You may devise activities where the students come to the board and circle certain things using the pens or the highlighter, so the objects need to have space around them. There are lots of considerations. You need to exploit multiple learning styles. So for example you might have a series of pictures on the board. If you drag them up, the word suddenly appears from underneath the picture and if you then click on the word it is read out. You need to try and make sure you deal with as many learning styles as possible.

MET: You mentioned mainstream education in the UK. Are there any good examples of software that have been produced in mainstream education for IWBs?

Russell: Yes, we could really learn a lot from looking at some of the material that is produced for primary and secondary education. It is quite a paradox really. I always like to think that ELT is ahead of the game in terms of methodologies and ideas. When it comes to ICT though, I think the tables have turned. In mainstream education there is a lot more material that is activity or game-based. In ELT we have tended to replicate the book but on the CD or the website.

MET: I have heard something about sort of pre-built “flip charts” that have been produced for IWBs in mainstream education. Can you explain more?

Russell: Yes, there is one phenomenon that I have seen in mainstream education that both interests and worries me. You see in primary schools in the UK teachers in the future will have to do some teaching of a foreign language as the government is introducing a second language into the primary school curriculum. Many of the teachers are not that competent in French or Spanish so the software designers have been producing materials that do nearly all the work for them. If you touch a sentence, it is read out in the target language, if you touch an object, the word appears on the screen along with the sound of the word. The idea is that the software does all the work for you, you hardly have to use the target language yourself. This is pretty worrying. I have seen a few demonstrations and it makes the lesson very teacher-focused but it does allow the students to have lots of exposure to the target language if the teacher uses the board well. The truth is this idea could be very appealing to countries like China where many of the teachers have poor spoken English and are not confident in using the target language.

MET: Yes, but surely that is very unlikely to happen.

Russell: You might be surprised. A lot of what is happening in ICT is government driven. If the boards become cheap enough, which could easily happen especially as countries like China are beginning to produce their own IWBs, then you may find IWBs begin to appear in all sorts of places. Mexico has ordered them in their thousands for example.

MET: So, do you think they are worth investing in?

Russell: Yes I do, but the key is the training. A tool does nothing alone. It is how we learn to use it that counts. The evidence suggests we still have a long way to go. There are various stages that studies have recognized in the use of the IWB. They have identified three key stages. Firstly, supported didactic, then interactive and finally enhanced interactive. So the key is getting teachers to the point where they are using the tools to enhance interaction in the class, to get students engaged in learning so that they help the conceptual understanding of the students. What people must focus on is what the boards do well. They are great for presenting language and producing very multimedia based lessons. They are great for adding pace to lessons, making correction easy and getting students to the board to interact with it. They are great for reviewing lessons because anything you save or write can be saved and reviewed in the next lesson. This is not completely different from the way we make some CDROMs but there is a clear shift in focus.

MET: What sort of training do we need?

Russell: You know in my opinion there is one key point about technology. In some of the studies it was found that those teachers who naturally use a variety of media in their teaching really liked the boards because they immediately had access to so much more material. Those teachers that tend to have very interactive lessons even without technology i.e. with lots of group and pairwork, normally find technology very appealing whereas those teachers who tend to be more traditional in their approach are often scared of technology.

My feeling is if we can convince teachers of the importance of interaction, engagement and the idea that we learn when we “construct” knowledge, teachers will “naturally” become interested in using technology in their classes. It is not a question of convincing teachers to use more technology, it is actually about them first believing in a more constructivist way of teaching and learning.

REFERENCES
Glove and Miller (2002)
http://math.unipa.it/~grim/21_project/21_brno03_Miller-Averis.pdf

Cooper, B and Brna, P (2002) Supporting High Quality Interaction and Motivation in the Classroom Using ICT: the social and emotional learning and engagement in the NIMIS project. Education, Communication and Information 2(2-3) 113–138.

Web:
For an example of some excellent resources that work well on Interactive Whiteboards http://www.interactive-resources.co.uk

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Russell Stannard is a senior lecturer in ICT/Multimedia at the University of Westminster. He is also a language teacher and writer and has worked on books such as Inside Out (Macmillan) and is currently working on the teacher's books for a primary series for China called Standard English which has recently been in the papers for selling over 100 million copies.

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