Schola Europaea European School Brussels II

40
PANORAMA
INTRODUCTION
January is traditionally a time when the
European schools begin to consider
purchasing ICT equipment. It is a time for
visiting the BETT show in London and a time
for retailers in the field to make impressive
‘pedagogic’ claims about the latest, ‘must
have’ piece of hardware or software that all
effective 21st Century teachers should have
(Buckingham,2007, Chap 1). The Interactive
Whiteboard (IWB) appeared on the
educational hardware horizon in the UK and
in Europe in the mid 1990s. The ‘wow’ factor
of this new technology was impressive
(Beauchamp and Parkinson, 2005) – as was
the price of the IWB itself, the data projector
and computer – and it soon became ‘the’
presentation technology which every school
wanted in order to replace the overhead
projector and VCR/TV units of the 1980s and
mid 1990s. BESA, the British Educational
Suppliers Association, estimated that
there were 282,000 IWBs in UK schools in
2009. These figures are impressive when
compared with an estimated 27,000 IWBs in
2002 and 57,000 IWBs in 2004 (Beauchamp
and Parkinson, 2005). It is clear that the
market demand for IWBs (and consequently
the demand for data projectors and
computers) is very high. As Kennewell and
Higgins (2007) note:
“… But the IWB seems to have
a pedagogical and cultural status-
in the UK at least- which makes it
different from other pieces of new ICT
equipment. In particular, it has been
enthusiastically adopted by almost
all teachers who have one installed in
their classrooms, and is sought after by
many of the teachers who currently do
not have one. The rate at which these
still expensive items have permeated
UK schools is phenomenal”
Many other educational systems around
the world report similar growth rates for
IWBs with Governments taking the policy
lead in many cases (UK, 2004; Mexico,
2006). There are approximately 450 IWB'S
in the 14 European schools (February 2010).
In this essay I will investigate two important
questions related to the rapidly increasing
use of IWBs in classrooms around the
world:
1) What does the research literature say
about the current thinking with respect
to the impact of IWBs on Teaching and
on Learning/Attainment ?
2) Are there any major differences in
how IWBs are used in Primary school
classrooms as opposed to Secondary
school settings ?
Before treating these questions, I will trace
the recent usage of IWBs within the context
of the development of teaching, learning
and Information and Communication
technologies (ICTs) in schools over the past
three decades.