The Interactive Whiteboards, Pedagogy and Pupil Performance ...

facilities it was impossible to share and display data collected or created by students
by moving it from laptop to IWB. This diminished the opportunities for learning.
Illustrative Case Study Example: The use of Laptops in a Science Lesson
Laptops were used in a lesson about ‘Forces’. Students worked in pairs and
carried out an experiment to compare the speed at which a ‘truck’ travelled down
a ramp that was placed at different heights. The pupils used laptops to collate
their results on a pre-prepared chart. When the experiment was complete it was
not possible to display the different results from the groups onto the IWB because
the laptops were not networked. The use of the laptops did not substantially add
anything to the learning experience and the time taken transferring results into the
pupils’ books meant that at the end of the lesson there were no opportunities for
discussion or feedback on the class’s findings.
If laptops are all networked, the teacher could then bring up any students’ work on to
the IWB so that it could be shared with other pupils, different graphs and data
compared across pairs, and this information could be used to generate discussion.
This has advantages for student learning:
I don’t think they really believe what you are doing when you draw the graph
of their results. When you do it from Excel they know it is their result, they
know the computer programme is doing it, and they know it is a true
representation of their results that is going up on to the board.
To date comparatively little thought has been given to exploiting this potential either
by policy makers or schools. This means that access to networked laptops is
seldom seen as a priority for enhancing learning.
5.3.5 Scanner
Scanners “photocopy” a text into a digital image that can be viewed on a computer
screen or IWB. Scanners enhance the presentational and interactive potential of the
IWB as they can bring a text or artefact ‘to life’ in a lesson, making it easy to share
as a focus for whole class discussion, and available to manipulate and annotate in
new ways. The use of a scanner with an IWB facilitates:
• New ways of displaying students’ work immediately to the whole class;
• New ways of annotating students’ work in ‘real time’ thus enhancing whole
class discussion;
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