Posts made in April 20th, 2008

YAYTD

Posted on Apr 20, 2008 in Interactive Whiteboards | 0 comments

or.. Yet Another You Tube Downloader

ConvertTube is yet another website that will let you download YouTube videos and save them as different file formats to use offline. Again, handy for teachers that can’t get YouTube at school.

http://www.converttube.com/

Thanks to Lisa Thumann for the link.

IWB Research

Posted on Apr 20, 2008 in Interactive Whiteboards | 0 comments

I’m using this post as a bit of a brain-dump to collate some research articles. I haven’t read any of them yet, but am linking them here to remind me to start going through them.

The ICT Impact Report: A Review of Studies of ICT Impact on Schools in Europe.
http://insight.eun.org/shared/data/pdf/impact_study.pdf

MILLER, D. J. (2006). The magic box – enhancing interactivity, Mathematics Teaching, 197, pp. 28-31. http://www.atm.org.uk/mt/archive/mt197files/ATM-MT197-28-31.pdf

MILLER, D.J., GLOVER, D., AVERIS, D., & DOOR, V. (2005). From technology to professional development: How can the use of an interactive whiteboard in initial teacher education change the nature of teaching and learning in secondary mathematics and modern languages? Training and Development agency, London. Report made to the Teacher Training Agency.
http://www.ttrb.ac.uk/attachments/0d65acf3-488a-4fca-8536-918d6dafd694.pdf

MILLER, D.J., GLOVER, D., & AVERIS D. (2005). Developing Pedagogic Skills for the Use of the Interactive Whiteboard in Mathematics, British Educational Research Association, Glamorgan
http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/ed/iaw/docs/BERA%20Paper%20Sep%202005.pdf

MILLER, D.J., GLOVER, D., & AVERIS D. (2005). Presentation and pedagogy: the effective use of interactive whiteboards in mathematics lessons. In Hewitt, D. & Noyes, A., Proceedings of the sixth British Congress of Mathematics Education, BSRLM proceedings, vol. 25 (1), pp. 105-112. London: British Society for Research into Learning Mathematics.
http://www.bsrlm.org.uk/IPs/ip25-1/BSRLM-IP-25-1-14.pdf

GLOVER, D., MILLER, D.J & AVERIS D. (2004) Panacea or prop: the role of the interactive whiteboard in improving teaching effectiveness, the Tenth International Congress of Mathematics Education, Copenhagen
http://www.icme-organisers.dk/tsg15/Glover_et_al.pdf

Interactive Whiteboards and Learning: A Review of Classroom Case Studies and Research Literature
http://dewey.uab.es/pmarques/pdigital/es/docs/Research%20White%20Paper.pdf
(SMART Technologies Inc. , Apr 2004)

MILLER, D.J & GLOVER, D. (2001) Missioners, Tentatives and Luddites: leadership challenges for school and classroom posed by the introduction of interactive whiteboards into schools in the United Kingdom, part of the Symposium: New Technologies and Educational Leadership at the British Educational Management and Administration Society Conference, Newport Pagnell, UK.
http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/ed/iaw/Missioners.pdf

Delivering E-Learning Using Interactive Whiteboards
http://www.e-learningcentre.co.uk/eclipse/Resources/whiteboards.htm
(E-Learning Centre, United Kingdom, 2004)

Do schools kill creativity?

Posted on Apr 20, 2008 in Tutorials and Guides | 0 comments

Here’s an inspring talk by Sir Ken Robinson. Robinson points out the many ways our schools fail to recognize, much less cultivate, the talents of many brilliant people. “We are educating people out of their creativity,”

I don’t think we know the solution yet, but the video makes you think.

Why IWB

Posted on Apr 20, 2008 in Interactive Whiteboards | 3 comments

I stupidly got into an argument on the TES forum yesterday with two guys who are not in favour of IWB’s and have made their feelings clear on several threads. They wanted to be convinced as to what the IWB could offer over and above just presenting using a laptop and data projector.

I thought it might be useful to add my thoughts here as well.

Here is my response;

I have no doubt that you can do a lot with a PC and a data-projector – even more so if you couple that with a wireless mouse/keyboard and wireless slate which could be passed around the class.

And for showing video clips, powerpoint presentations etc, this is fine. If you want the students to sit and watch something.

The Review Project, when they looked into the use of IWBs said this

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Anecdotally, teachers who have taught firstly with a data projector and then with the addition of a whiteboard all say that they would feel very awkward having to return to their computer each time they want to do something on screen. One remarked that he didn’t feel part of the class when working on his computer. The students are looking at the screen while the teacher is talking somewhere else in the class. With a IWB the focal point is both the teacher and the screen.
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With just projector and laptop the lesson is disjointed. Kids are focussing on one area of the classroom while the teacher is in another. An IWB puts the teacher at the focal point alongside the materials

With a laptop and projector there is more chance of the teacher just “presenting” and pupils being spectators. The boards allow better interaction with the materials – annotating over the top.

Unfortunately, due to the lack of training, teachers still use the IWB to present and there is little interactivity.

Like I said, I agree there is other tech out there too – a tablet PC and projector could do a lot of what is done on an IWB in terms of annotation, interaction, but again you still have the disjointed classroom.

And I say again, It’s not about the clipart – you’re taking a point I made out of context. But for some teachers, having a ready made resource bank that they can quickly access really helps speed up the creation of lesson materials. The Smart Lesson Activity Toolkit with its interactive flash games, or some of the Promethean flash materials and see how they could be used for lesson starters and plenaries. Yes you can find these online if you know where to look, but many teachers don’t have the time to do this

A lot of boards are being used badly, by teachers who haven’t been trained on how to get the most out of them, or who just want to “present” to a class rather than interact with them. This needs to be addressed with CPD.

Take a look at the blogs that are appearing from young teachers who have embraced this tech and are doing some amazing things with it to enhance the teaching and learning of whatever subject they are delivering. All agree that there is something that the board adds that makes it more than just a projector

for example Joe Dale’s blog: http://snipurl.com/251qt

More research articles (for and against) can be found here;
http://www.schoolfacilities.net/rl/interactive_whiteboards.cfm

If anyone else can post “a defence of the IWB” then it may be worth adding to the thread.