The experience of a group of path-finding schools across the world points to them successfully building on their whole of school take up of interactive whiteboards (IWBs) and moving through a series of common phases on their way to reaping the immense potential of digitally based schooling.

From an historical point of view it would appear a group of schools have achieved ‘digital take off’; have left behind the predominantly paper-based mode that has characterized teaching thus far and are rapidly moving up through a series of ever richer phases as they begin to tap the virtually unbounded opportunities of a predominantly digitally-based mode of teaching and learning.

While the potential of the paper-based approach to schooling has long been exhausted that of the digital mode remains barely touched.

Overnight these schools have left behind the way of the old, have succeeded in harnessing the undoubted power of ICT and are moving quickly to take advantage of a new and unchartered teaching environment.

A detailed research and analysis will need to be undertaken to substantiate this hypothesis, but already one can identify from the initial experience of a cross section of schools in the UK, the US and Australia a set of common indicators of the variables to address to achieve ‘digital take off’.

In December 2003 Dr Maureen Boyle and Mal Lee wrote about the ‘Richardson Revolution’, not then appreciating that what was happening was symptomatic of a far more significant development in the history of schooling.

Digital Take Off

Over the past forty or more years, schooling world wide has seen a gradual shift along a continuum from a strongly paper based approach to teaching to one that has gradually made increased use of initially analogue ICT and more recently digital ICT.

In the last decade many schools and systems have made a vast investment in time and money in the quest to better harness the undoubted educative facility of ICT. Those schools and systems choose to build their strategy upon the use of personal computers. The vast majority were unable to use that technology to significantly enhance teaching or improve student attainment. They were unable to get all their teachers using ICT as a normal part of everyday teaching. The use of ICT remained as it had for the last forty years, a peripheral teaching tool.

The mere existence of large amounts of ICT counts for little educationally and most assuredly does not necessarily achieve digital take off.

In the last few years an as yet small group of schools around the world which have based their ICT and education strategy on IWBs have succeeded in getting all their teachers to use the digital technology as an integral part of everyday class operations.

The same schools have moved through the initial take up and ‘wow’ and are moving up through a series of phases, where the teachers are constantly lifting their expectations and the richness of their teaching.
Overnight these schools find themselves teaching in a quite different way from others, constantly questioning the best way forward and openly embracing the opportunities opening before them. The teachers can no longer contemplate teaching without their digital tools.

Interestingly the ‘Luddites’ of the earlier generation of schools soon disappear and become instead highly enthusiastic advocates of the new approach.

The schools would appear to have achieved an IWB, an ICT and in turn a far more significant ‘digital take off’.
The key performance indicator becomes the percentage of teachers within the school using their IWBs integrally in their everyday teaching, not the number of PCs per student. The focus should be on the teaching not the amount of technology.

The Key to Take Off

Central to the successful take off is the ‘whole of staff’ embracing digital technology in their everyday teaching.

The aim is to make the use of the boards and related digital technology as normal and central to the teaching and learning process in every teaching situation, as has been the blackboard or the pen.

As indicated elsewhere on this IWBNet site and more recently in the School Leaders IWB Guide there is a set of key variables to be addressed, if successful take up is to be achieved.

Leadership, critical mass, proficiency, normalization and maybe the use of a board-based technology would appear to be crucial.

The school leadership needs to lead the way in designing, financing and implementing a strategy appropriate to the school’s situation.

One needs a critical mass of the technology and the teachers engaged. Once the use of the technology is the norm the teachers seek as one to better use the new teaching tools. This is a very different situation to a group of early adopters trying to leverage a large group of doubting teachers. Whether one requires all the teachers or a critical mass is a moot point. This is being addressed in the research IWBNet is undertaking.

The teachers need to feel proficient and confident in the use of the new technology. Interestingly many don’t appear to want to be expert in all facets of the board’s operating software, but rather are content to adopt a phased uptake, particularly if they can readily take advantage of their existing, ‘mainstream’ software.

There is now ample evidence to attest that an IWB based ICT and education strategy can facilitate take off. In theory other whole of school ICT deployments that allow whole class teaching and the normalization of the ICT into the everyday teaching could also work, but there is scant public evidence of it happening.

Probably the most telling performance indicator of success is when the boards – and the related digital technology – are being used as an integral, normal part of everyday teaching across the school.

The important thing is to use technology that encourages all the teachers to use it rather than focusing on ‘you beaut’ technology only a few will use.

The Phases

The early indications are that the pattern of technological use identified by Naisbitt in Megatrends (1984), which sees the technology in Stage 1 being used to replicate the existing ways and gradually varying over time to a situation in Stage 3 where it is being used in new and previously unimagined ways, is already in evidence.

Even at this stage of the digital take off one can identify the features of what appear to be common early phases and can suggest the likely form of the next few phases, but beyond that one would simply be guessing. All of the stages will be transitory, fuelled by the ever-rising expectations and competencies of the teachers and school leaders, and the seemingly daily technological advances, constantly moving along the path identified by Naisbitt.

Introductory

This is the beginning, when the IWBs are introduced to the school, in reasonable numbers. Thus far most schools appear to move into this stage with moderate expectations of what can achieved by the technology. As mentioned in earlier writings this is invariably a period of great excitement, where the WOW and the potential of the technology sweeps the teachers and indeed the total school community along. This is when the lift begins, but unless capitalized upon by a wise leadership this can also be a passing phase.

Whole School Proficiency

In this phase the bulk of the teachers have use of a board and a suite of support technology and believe they are proficient in the use of the technology.

Most schools, even when starting from a very low base of teacher ICT expertise, will reach this level of proficiency within a year or less.

With the confidence that comes with proficiency the teachers recognize the importance of providing the students the opportunity to use the digital technology to create their own material and thus to adopt a more facilitating teaching role.

Digital Teaching Hubs

With proficiency and the critical mass of the technology the schools move to create digital teaching hubs where the IWBs are coupled with a range of other digital technologies, in and outside the classroom, to create ever richer teaching opportunities. As the teachers begin to use the opportunities new openings emerge. The ‘Google Earth’ type of developments takes place, ‘just in time’ teaching becomes a reality and the expectations continue to rise.

While the initial focus might be the individual classroom, teachers soon appreciate the value of working collaboratively with others in developing digital teaching resources, storing those collaborations and having the facility to readily retrieve that material.

That in turn gets the school to think about sharing resources with other schools and taking advantage of the developments elsewhere in the network. And so the spiral continues upward.

The Next Phases

What form these phases might take, is too early to say. Suffice it to say they are likely to bring, to name but a few:

• Considerably more teacher collaboration and joint development and sharing and storage of digital resources
• Greater human and technical networking – at the school, district and national level
• The emergence globally of ‘commercial’ and government sponsored digital, interactive teaching materials designed specifically for IWBs
• The integration of teaching, student assessment and student administration systems
• Virtual learning environments of various types
• The emergence of new uses of the technology
• The incorporation of highly sophisticated, personalized, learning management systems that complement the IWB technology.

The reality is that most of the above are beginning to occur in some form and will probably be taken advantage of by the path-finders in the next few years.

Many of the concepts are not new. The shift to a predominantly digital teaching mode by the whole staff suddenly makes them attainable.

The Unknown

When one looks back on the past forty years, or even the past decade, and the pace of digital developments, and then looks forward to the next decade it is easy to understand that at the end of 2005 even the path - finders are only beginning to realize the potential of the digital mode of teaching.

Conclusion

A significant enhancement in schooling is most likely to occur when all the teachers in a school make wise, everyday use of a powerful suite of educational tools.

As the school effectiveness literature amply attests, enhance the quality and richness of teaching and an improvement in student attainment will follow.

That is what we suspect is happening in those schools that achieve ‘digital take off’ and move into a predominantly digital mode of teaching and learning.

While the substantiating homework has still to be finalised, there is much to be gained by visiting successful whole school IWB deployments and experiencing first hand the fundamental shift in the nature of teaching occurring.

The implications of the ‘digital take off’ for teachers, ICT support staff, school leaders, educational administrators, teacher educators and indeed government planners are potentially immense.

Bibliography

Lee, M and Boyle, M (2003) ‘The Richardson Revolution’ ACEA Hot Topics Melbourne

Lee, M (2004) ‘The Vision of the Digital Hub’ Practising Administrator 2004

Lee, M and Macaulay, V (2005) School Leaders IWB Guide, Canberra IWBNet

Naisbitt, J (1984) Megatrends London Futura