In the near future you will as a school leader, need to make a fundamental education decision about how to best harness the undoubted power of ICT to enhance the overall education of your school.

You can continue using ICT as you are doing now or shift to an approach that implemented wisely can get every teacher finally harnessing the undoubted power of ICT. This will markedly enhance teaching, improve student learning and dramatically lift the total school community.

You can continue working around ‘hand me down’ office technology or move to a strategy based on purpose built educational technology that has been shown to work in schools, small and large, around the world.

Do you continue with a strategy based on personal computers, with its manifest limitations, or shift to one built around interactive whiteboards (IWBs) that can change schools seemingly overnight?

The Watershed

Schooling worldwide is confronting the issue. In such diverse situations as the UK, Mexico, Hong Kong, China, the US and Australia the systems have recognised the shortcomings of the past and are now moving to a significant use of IWBs.

For the past twenty plus years schools across the globe have invested a vast amount of effort, money and expertise in seeking to use ICT to enhance education.

The effort has been based around the use of personal computers.

The global research and undoubtedly your personal experience, would show that that strategy has had minimal impact on the nature of pedagogy and little or no impact on improving student outcomes.

How many schools do you know where the total school community, all the teachers, students and parents, have embraced the use of ICT?

What tangible evidence have you that the immense and seemingly growing investment in ICT has improved the core business of your school – the student outcomes?

The vast majority of teachers worldwide still do not use ICT in their everyday teaching. While the percentage of those who do is open to debate, a figure like 30 percent is probably too high. In South Australia in October 2003, the survey conducted within the state’s government schools revealed 26 percent who said they used ICT regularly in their teaching.

After twenty plus years the vast majority of teachers – well qualified, professionals - are still not prepared to use ICT in their teaching.

Rather than labelling those professionals ‘Luddites’ might they be saying something very important and highlighting a major structural concern?

Might we have done those teachers a disservice?

In marked contrast those schools that have built their ICT and education strategy upon the use of IWBs have seemingly overnight not only succeeded in getting 100 percent of the teachers to use the ICT as an integral part of their everyday teaching, but have also been able to get them to consistently strive to lift their ICT prowess and in turn enhance their pedagogy.

Moreover they have been able to achieve this within a year.

In ‘The Teachers Tell Their Story’ (2004), the research undertaken by Beth Lee and Maureen Boyle on the experiences of the teachers of Richardson Primary School in Australia with IWBs (Richardson Primary Research), one sees not only the swift take up of the boards by all of the teachers, but also their willingness to use them, and the related technology, any part of the teaching day.

The boards virtually serve as Trojan horses, opening the way to the use of other digital resources.

At Ingle Farm Primary School, in the northern suburbs of Adelaide, Australia, the same phenomenon is evident, except in this instance the teacher take up is not only faster, but there is also an appreciable improvement in the teachers’ ICT competencies. (Measday 2004)

There are now Richardsons and Ingle Farms across the world.

As you appreciate and the research reinforces, IWBs significantly improve the quality of the teaching and the improved student learning flows.

At Richardson Primary there is now, not surprisingly, extensive hard and anecdotal evidence of the contribution of the IWBs to improved student outcomes. (Case Studies – Richardson Primary - Outcomes and Analysis). The ACT uses the PIPS test of literacy and numeracy in Year 1. Richardson, as a socio-economically disadvantaged school, lifted its PIPS literacy scores above the ACT mean for the first time ever in 2003, the year it introduced the IWBs across the school.

The average student absentee rate in 2002 at Richardson was 15 days. In 2003 the figure dropped to an average of three days.

While it is appreciated the school did many things right to achieve these results, the key new variable in 2003 was the whole of school take up of IWBs.

The reality is that in 2003 the teachers at Richardson were just developing their IWB competency and had simply begun to harness the immense power of the ICT. Richardson, as is evidenced in the Lee and Boyle study of the school (2003) (Richardson Primary Research), began its use of IWBs from a very low base, both in terms of the teachers’ expertise and the ICT available.

Schools with a far stronger ICT base should be able to harness the power of the IWBs faster and possibly even more effectively.

The key is to appreciate that schools are at a watershed. Do they continue doing more of the same or they can adopt a formula which if implemented wisely can make a dramatic improvement?

Reasons

It is appreciated many teachers, and indeed parents, who have only known the PC based approach will question the need to shift.

Part of the answer lies in the structural shortcomings of the current technology and the nature of the IWB technology.

In brief, the personal computer with its small screen and keyboard is designed for individual use. To be used successfully in a classroom, teachers have to fundamentally change their teaching approach from a class to individual focus overnight.

The personal computer is not particularly user friendly (Negroponte 1995) nor is it particularly reliable.

The interactive whiteboard is a board, the major tool of teachers for hundreds of years. It is very easy to use, highly reliable and most importantly allows all teachers, regardless of their ICT expertise, to begin using the technology virtually immediately.

The board technology enables teachers to employ a phased take up and to gradually enhance their pedagogy as they become more competent and confident in the use of the tool. Teachers can use an IWB as a whiteboard, an interactive whiteboard, a large screen digital convergence facility or as a digital hub. The differentiator is the skilful teacher.

Most importantly IWBs allow all teachers to move into the greater use of ICT from the platform they know and to continue with their whole of class approach. In time, and with confidence, the teachers can gradually opt to use different group configurations and delivery modes and take advantage of the interactive software.

Like all boards the IWB can be used in every subject, at every level, in every teaching area and within all organisational structures.

The interactive whiteboard is the teaching board of the C21, with the ready facility to interface with all other digital technology and to take advantage of the plethora of smart, multi-media educational software now available to assist teachers.

Benefits

In addition to enhancing both teaching and learning, IWBs implemented wisely, can generate immense joy and excitement in the school, with both the kids and the teachers. They can captivate all manner of students and create the kind of ‘buzz’ teachers relish.

Seemingly overnight the IWBs become a normal, integral part of class operations. The integration of ICT into education soon becomes a non-issue.

Very importantly this is a technology that helps both enhance the quality of teaching while at the same time reducing the teachers’ workload. The IWB software finally provides teachers labour saving digital teaching tools. Of note is that once convinced, teacher unions can be one of the greatest supporters behind the uptake of IWBs.

The very considerable educational benefits can moreover be obtained for less than you now spend on ICT. IWBs allow the school to move out of the ICT expenditure ‘rat race’.

IWBs last appreciably longer than personal computers and thus there are not the ‘usual’ constant upgrade costs.

With fewer units, schools do not need as extensive or as expensive network infrastructure, or as great a support and maintenance infrastructure.

The IWB applications software is free, as are the upgrades. Considerable savings can thus be made on both the number of software licences and the regular software upgrades.

Most importantly there is no need to outlay considerable funds on specialist buildings and rooms.

In assessing the benefits bear in mind that globally we are but at the dawn of the use of IWBs. Only when all the teachers are harnessing the IWBs and the complementing technology will we begin to appreciate all the benefits.

Role of Principal

It is important that the decision to change the ICT and education strategy of the school be made by its principal educator.

The prime purpose of all educational tools is to assist enhance student learning.

If some of those tools and possibly the personnel maintaining those tools, are not justifying their role and their expense, the principal educator needs to shift to a more effective solution.

Unfortunately for the last two decades most school leaders like leaders in industry, have left ICT decisions to the ‘ICT experts’. Broadbent and Kitzis in their The New CIO Leader (2004) refer to core business decisions being made by the ‘tech plumbers’.

Both IWBNet and the major IWB developers world wide find it very difficult to get school leaders to even address the role of ICT as an educational tool.

The decision to vary the ICT and education strategy and in turn to implement both the strategy and the associated plan integrally into all school operations is one for the principal.

Conclusion

At last the opportunity to harness the undoubted power of ICT can be realised, but it requires school leaders to make the decision to change and then to lead the wise adoption of the new approach.

It is appreciated many schools have made a huge investment in a particular form of ICT and that redirecting that juggernaut will be a challenge. It is not as if much of that investment will not be used.

But the decision has to be made.

Bibliography

Broadbent, M and Kitzis, E, (2004) The New CIO Leader. Harvard, Harvard Business School Press

Lee, E and Boyle, M (2004) The Teachers Tell Their Story, Canberra http://www.iwb.net.au

Lee, M and Boyle, M (2003) Canberra, http://www.iwb.net.au

Measday, B (2004) Canberra IWB News October http://www.iwb.net.au

Negroponte, N (1995) Being Digital NY Hodder and Stoughton