Reviewing trends and technology in education

Many schools introduce interactive whiteboards into their classroom by placing one per grade level or building, then add a few more each year. Budget concerns, lack of enthusiasm, and insufficient technical support are among the reasons many schools enter this market slowly.  This is not the case at the Waverly School in Eastchester, New York. Carol Fisher, principal of the Waverly School (K-1) talked about seizing the expansion opportunity in her district.  When a major expansion was planned for Waverly, administrators decided to equip during expansion, rather than retrofit a year or two down the road.  The result is that every classroom in this school presently houses a Smart Board.  

Karen Cosgrove began her morning math lesson by connecting to a BBC education site that delivered a musical animation about subtraction.  With a quick touch on the screen, an interactive lesson appeared that was developed using Smart notebook.  When students finished that lesson, Ms. Cosgrove again touched the screen and a scanned page from a math workbook replaced the previous lesson. Without hesitation, the students were on task, solving math word problems. Within a fifteen minute period, they had participated in lessons from the internet, Smart notebook and a page from their own workbooks.  Three media in fifteen minutes, without shuffling papers, pulling out textbooks, or squinting to see internet images on the more typical small screens. 

In Kathleen Dragonetti's class, students counted how many articles of gray clothing they had on.  Each student then moved a symbol onto the proper number line on a graph on screen. Graph paper was scanned into notebook so that the huge image on screen would mirror what students could do on paper.  In fact, with a poster size printer on site, the Waverly students could see a hard copy version of what they had just produced on screen.

Students still engage in several other classroom activities without the board.  The classrooms are fully equipped with books for journal writing, math manipulatives for counting, and markers and crayons for art centers. The Smart Board is seen as a valuable tool at Waverly, but only as one tool. It is used as a center focus, rather than always as the central focus. In yet another Waverly classroom, Joyce Garrett led her students on identifying and classifying word and word phrases on the Smart Board, while others were busy at more traditional classroom centers.

Technology Integration Specialist, Anthony Rich, can take a fair share of credit for some of the seamless lessons at Waverly.  A former classroom teacher, Rich can tap into his teaching experience to help teachers see effective ways to create meaningful lessons using Smart Board.  In Eastchester, there’s no one “right way” to train teachers.  Rich has done formal training for teachers, modeled lessons using the board while teaching his own lesson, and worked as a co-teacher with the regular classroom teachers.  Working cooperatively has resulted in teachers getting the specific insight they need on how to make the board the most effective learning tool possible.  It has also resulted in shared lesson planning, as teachers place their own successful lessons on the school server to be shared with other teachers.

The excitement surrounding Smart Board use has fostered a collaborative effort among staff members and students.  As each discovers new layers of interest or possibilities, sharing that news seems to be a priority.  Another priority  is studying the precise impact that Smart Board use has had on learning at Waverly. Ms. Fisher pointed out that “young children learn best hands-on and when lessons are interactive.”  The staff sees the improvement and senses student enthusiasm, but they'd like to know more.  Last year, they began formulating questions for an action research paper.  This year, teachers and administrators will start answering those questions and then take a serious look at exactly how this new classroom tool has changed their classroom and school community. 

Our report on interactive whiteboards paints a fairly optimistic view of the integration of these boards into classrooms.  The majority of classrooms visited for this report have been led by motivated teachers who have worked very hard to change their thinking about lesson preparation and presentation.  The districts we visited are, for the most part, committed to making the boards work for them.  The technology departments are ready to support the installation, maintenance and further development of interactive whiteboard systems. But most schools we visited are still grappling with grant writing processes, budget battles and philosophical disagreements about purchasing the boards.  What a visit to Waverly clearly showed is that buying the equipment is but one small piece of achieving success.  Full commitment to change, to technology and to supporting lesson plan development are all key ingredients to this vision fully realized.