The Interactive Whiteboards, Pedagogy and Pupil Performance ...

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA, June 13, 2001 - Calling it the next great advance in
real-time interactive communications, PLUS® announces the immediate
availability of PoinTech, the world's first whiteboard that allows business
leaders, teachers, trainers, and communicators to combine spoken and
written presentations with PCs and the Internet in one seamless
communications tool...... Under development for the last two years, PoinTech
actually allows communicators to record and save, in one integrated file, their
every spoken and written presentation in sequence - presentations that can
be distributed on disk and played back later. What's more, information written
in freehand on the whiteboard's surface is automatically captured in a
compact data file on the connected PC, where it can be saved, printed, or
distributed over the Internet. Finally, PoinTech allows communicators to
project computer software applications onto its screen surface - and then
operate the software application by touching the screen with a special Stylus
Pen that is included with the system. (plus-america, 2001)
Adapting the technology for flexible use in this kind of social setting has meant
developing new and more dedicated software, which can store a range of texts and
allow users to easily move between them, as well as annotate them in real time. Any
new texts created during use can be saved on the computer.
As IWB producers target the school market more particularly, interest is turning to
the specific kind of content the technology carries. Some manufacturers have begun
to encourage practitioners to “publish” and share materials they have developed
using the technology with specific curricular goals in mind (Smart); whilst others are
beginning to venture into producing school-focused content for use with their own
platforms (Promethean). To-date this side of the business remains underdeveloped,
though in some respects it may prove crucial to getting fuller up-take.
As this brief review of the development of the technology makes clear, the
technology adapts to meet the needs of the contexts in which it becomes deployed.
The particular combination of touch sensitive technology and digital projection which
IWBs represent are finding their niche, not in the context of the lecture theatre -
where the size of the screen required for visibility would prohibit touch sensitive
control - but in the medium-sized space of the seminar room, the meeting room or
the classroom. Here they compete against older forms of technology - the
blackboard, whiteboard, flipchart or overhead projector - as well as newer forms of
technology such as networked PCs, laptops, or tablets combined with digital
projectors. As the precise niche they might best fill becomes more apparent, so the
technology can begin to adapt and respond to the requirements of that context.
The uptake of IWBs in UK schools: why the technology seems to fit here right now
Although the technology has certainly been promoted elsewhere, the UK has
become the first school-level market to substantially invest in the use of IWBs. The
reasons why this should be so can in part be linked to the stage now reached in the
life cycle of educational reform in the UK (Earl et al, 2003). For instance, ICT policy
has now reached a point when some of the drawbacks as well as the advantages of
the earlier phases of investment have begun to emerge. As an example, the
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