Interactive whiteboards (IWBs) are multi-functional, educational tools that have the power to fundamentally change and enhance the nature and quality of schooling. That power however can only be harnessed by skilled teachers. IWBs can be used as simple whiteboards, as interactive whiteboards, as large screen digital convergence facilities and when in the hands of an expert teacher, with an appreciation of the many roles the technology can perform, as a digital teaching and learning hub.

The path finding schools around the world have taken a humble piece of office equipment and transformed it into a large screen digital convergence facility.

Skilled teachers are already taking advantage of the facility with the IWBs to input and readily integrate stimulus material from all manner of local and networked digital sources to create highly engaging and productive teaching situations. They’re using the input from VCRs, the Internet, the Intranet, cable television, CD-ROMS, CD, DVDs, computer software, scanners, digital cameras, and even the cell phone. To those they add the material entered using the system’s own software that allows the students and the teachers to write directly on to the board, or to use the keyboard to enter material.

Those schools have also recognised there are qualities inherent in the IWBs that allow them to be readily used by all teachers and for those teachers to both gradually ramp up their use of the technology and adjust their pedagogy to make best use of the tool. In contrast to the personal computer with its focus on the individual, IWBs encourage a whole of class focus and a high level of interactivity with the students – while at the same time facilitating small group work when required.

However one senses those digital convergence situations – excellent as they are - are being driven by the technology and not a vision of the kind of situation where the IWB could provide an even richer education but also enable the teacher to work more efficiently and to better communicate with the stake-holders.

The term interactive whiteboard neither communicates the educational potential of the facility nor how it should best be used in education.

The challenge is to build on the work being done in using the IWBs as large screen, digital convergence facilities, to identify the nature of the richer and more comprehensive teaching and administration, to ascertain what needs to be done to move to that higher plane and to adopt an apt term that succinctly describes that situation.

For years schooling has made do with 'hand me down' technology that was primarily designed for the corporate world. Educators have had little influence on the core hardware provided to schools.

There is the very real opportunity for educators to work with the IWB technology providers to genuinely shape the desired educational agenda and to create a set of immensely powerful educational tools.

We believe the ideal teaching situation is a digital hub, through which much of the teaching and learning and the full range of digital technology can be orchestrated, but through which the teacher can also handle local and international communications, many facets of school administration and data organisation, storage and retrieval.

The hub as the name suggests would be the focal point for most class activity but it would also be the link, via the school network, to other hubs and services within the school, to the parents and in turn to the opportunities of the Internet. The hub would bring together the inputs from the linked PCs, peripherals, cameras and sound systems. The digital hub would provide the teacher instant and ready use of all nature of digital material and the opportunity to participate in wider collaborative teaching and learning. The hub would provide access to a brace of integrated, online administrative databases and the ready facility to use them to mange attendance, monitor and record student attainment and communicate with the home while automatically storing the digital teaching resources. Most importantly the hub allows the students to interact with the digital world and to naturally use the digital tools of the moment to operate within that world.

In 1987 Apple Computer created a vision for the future called The Knowledge Navigator (http://www.billzarchy.com/clips/clips_apple_nav.htm). The focus was the management of knowledge. It is appreciated that schooling entails far more than managing knowledge, but the video underlined the importance of the vision ultimately shaping the application of the technology. The path finding work on large screen digital convergence has opened our eyes to what is possible. The need now is to identify and clarify the vision.

In the Knowledge Navigator the central person was able with voice and touch to use the technology to make life richer and conduct his affairs more efficiently.

The IWBs permit that ready touch screen operation.

They don’t as yet accommodate voice – which is so central to teaching and learning – but with imagination, the wise use of the many digital technologies and time, skilful teachers can begin to realise the kind of vision encapsulated in The Knowledge Navigator.

What educators need to do now is to flesh out the vision for the digital hub and to use it to begin to address the human and technological variables that will enable schools to operate at the new plane to provide an education that will enhance the desired learning of all kids. What is the myriad of facilities that we want every teacher to have instant use of in their classrooms as they seek to educate their students for the twenty first century? What technological enhancements are required? What do we need to do to move teachers to the point where they are able to make wise use of those digital hubs? What does one say to educational architects as they design future schools?

The implications are immense.

The reality is that we are but at the dawn of the use of IWBs in schooling. In the next few years as the IWB and related digital technology develops at pace, the teachers’ mastery and expectations of the digital technology grows and the concept of the digital hub becomes clearer, so too will there be the opportunity to enhance the quality of teaching and the level and appropriateness of student learning.

The hope is that this website, IWBNet's consultancy and teacher training can assist in the development of these hubs across the world.