Episode 19: Interactive Whiteboard - Good or bad?

Andy Psarianos

Hi, I'm Andy Psarianos.

Emily Guille-Marrett

Hello, I'm Emily Guille-Marret.

Adam Gifford

Hi, I'm Adam Gifford.

Introduction

This is The School of School podcast. Welcome to The School of School podcast.

Adam Gifford

Welcome back to The School of School podcast. Today's podcast is looking at something I remember the day that it came in and it was all very exciting. And the classroom, it was announced that you were getting an interactive whiteboard. So, to those who don't know what that is, it's a whiteboard in front of your classroom you could project onto it. I know things have changed bit, but the original ones you could project onto it, and when you wrote magically, the pen would go across the projection and you could do all sorts of things with it. And I remember it being a massive step from when I first started teaching, where I had a rolling blackboard, right? So this was cutting edge, but it changed way people taught. So the topic today is, was it good? Was it bad? What do we feel about technology like that in our classrooms? Do we want it to stay? That's the big question.

Emily Guille-Marrett

So, there's a whole journey for me with interactive whiteboards. It's like a blast from the past because when I first started out in creating content for schools, a lot of the stuff I was starting to investigate was content for the interactive whiteboard. And I don't know how many people will remember this, because a lot of younger teachers, younger NQTs, won't even know what I'm talking about, but there were these things that were called e-learning. It was e-credits or e-learning credits. It was ring-fenced funding that had to be spent. It was compulsory, in fact, that it was spent on interactive whiteboard content, because this was seen as an essential part of digital education. Everybody got on the band back. And predominantly it was content that was created on CD that you put in the CD-rom and it would go. And don't laugh, I'm just telling you. I'm not 150. I'm just telling you what I used to do and-

Andy Psarianos

I was just wondering how many teachers won't even know what a CD is, but anyways.

Emily Guille-Marrett

So we had all these... I know, nobody does this anymore, but we did. It was... Literally. And often it would be you purchased them and they'd be inside a book because that was our way in because people were comfortable with the book, so you kind of have this little wallet and then you'd put it in. And then you could... I remember working with so many edtech partners, it was great fun. And it was all exciting as someone who was really interested in education, and working with researchers, and finding out what was happening. And then we'd go into the schools and the schools had to purchase compulsory. They had to spend this money. Well, I mean, if they didn't, they'd just lost it, but nobody's going to do that. And of course everyone was doing it, but nobody had actually really... There were some real tech experts.

So let me just be clear. There were some teachers who were blowing my mind. And the way that they were using it, and they were engaging in it, and what they were doing was just amazing. But there was a huge tranche of people who did not have the training number one on how to use the interactive whiteboard. So actually, joking aside Adam, it was being used like the blackboards that you're talking about because everybody could get the pen. And so actually it wasn't doing anything necessarily any different to a good quality teacher sort of standing and writing.

But the other thing that was really sad was, these CDs were being stacked in cupboards, never to see the light of day, but people were purchasing in these quantities. And the other thing, which is classic, and this happens on with all content is, sometimes people not having the knowledge or understanding the underpinning about what is a quality piece of interactive whiteboard content, like A, how to use the interactive whiteboard confidently and B, how do you decide whether?... I actually feel that there were some examples of people just frankly selling stuff that wasn't great, but because they just knew, it was like, they-

Andy Psarianos

It was a big money grabber.

Emily Guille-Marrett

It was a big money grab. It was epic. It was like... Government had an initiative. They were like, "Britain's going to be ed tech crazy." I was all excited because I was like, "Ed tech's amazing." We were all just having a great time. But actually, for some schools, there was a genuine revolution going on. It was really exciting and there was some amazing stuff happening. And then, in other places, it was kind of not happening at all. Is that classic thing about how all this technology was whizzy, but what was the purpose potentially behind it?

Andy Psarianos

So, if I was the government official that had decided that we needed to spend all this money on this technology, I would be embarrassed now, right? I would be thinking, "Oh, that was kind of silly, wasn't it?" But anyway... But the question is, did it improve education? Are teachers better teachers? Are students better equipped to deal with the world because of the tremendous amount of money that has been spent on interactive whiteboards? Look at it from my perspective. I crawl all through this government data, not all the time, I'm not that boring, but I do look at it. And I'm always kind of amazed at how much money gets spent in particular areas by schools.

It seems sort of insane to me that a school will worry about buying books, for example. Oh, books, so expensive, right? But at a drop of a hat, a school will drop a £100,000, $150,000. We need new interactive whiteboards. Just not even flinch. That's just... You can buy a lot of books for $150,000 or a £100,000. You can buy a lot of books. When it just clicked for me was, I went to a parent-teacher thing at the local school here in Vancouver where my daughter was, she was in Grade 3 at the time, the school committee raised a whole bunch of money and they were like, "Okay, what do we do with this money?" so they asked the school, "How can we help you?" , "What can we do with this money?"

And some of the things were being kicked around, was like, "Hey, we can put a slide in the playground or maybe we can do something for the school. What does the school want? What does the school need?" Schools came back and said, "We really, really need an interactive whiteboard in the music room." And all the parents kind of shrugged their shoulders and went, "Well. Okay. How much is it? What? That's pretty expensive. Why do you need that in the music room?"

Or they're like, "Every classroom has one, but the music room. And the music teacher needs one." and they're like... One of the parents said, "Well, why don't we just buy them some instruments instead?" And the school principal said, "No, we don't want musical instruments in the music room. We don't use musical instruments. We need an interactive whiteboard because the teacher doesn't have one." And all the parents were a bit kind of really puzzled by this conundrum, right? And this got me thinking and that's when I started investigating, how much money do schools spend on interactive whiteboards? And is that value for money? I don't know the answer to that, but I'm skeptical.

Adam Gifford

I'm going to jump in there because schools, we were a bit hamstrung because of the way the budgets were done. I won't get all geeky on it, but the IT money always went into capital and things and the capital budgets. So it went into the whiteboards and things were as part of your buildings and all this. So you were kind of tied to spending it there, which immediately made it more difficult, when that money came in, to shift it over. It's not so impossible, right? Of course everything's possible. But I think that's the problem is that it's either you get that money come in. When you say it, there won't be a single person listening to this who would go, "Yeah. Get the whiteboard over instruments. That's the way to teach music." I guarantee not a single person would say that because it's ridiculous.

It's a ridiculous premise to learn music without playing music. How on earth do you manage that? It would be remarkable. So I think there's that whole idea and notion around I'm told how to spend this. And I also think that there's a feeling that if I'm told to spend this massive amount of money, someone somewhere must have looked into how much good it's doing for the kids. Now, I can't say one way or the other as to whether or not that research was looked at before the allocation of funds were made, but I never saw it. It didn't come, when that money arrived in my budget at school, it didn't come with it. And here's the research to not only show you its effectiveness, but also to support you in its use. And why would you do that?

It's like buying someone like, "Oh, that's a new MRI machine, but that's ridiculous because the doctors know how to use it." Where you say, "Right, hospital, we've got the special allocation of money for this new thing. It's called BBR2. It's awesome."

"What does it do?" Well, of course you do, of course you do. And Andy, not only that I'm going to drop a big fat load of money in your bank account, which you can either fix the roof or buy a BBR2, okay?

And everyone's buying the BBR2, by the way. So you don't want to get left behind. Come on, use it, here it is, go. And you get it and you go, "I've turned it on. Honestly, how good are those BBR2s? What do they do?", "Not quite sure. Not quite sure, but it's good. I've got one and my mate next door wants one. He's desperate for a BB." And I think this is the problem. We get caught up in a little, but without actually going, "Show me how it works." or, "Show me the evidence that it does work." And I think that's prevalent.

Andy Psarianos

So, as educators, what does your gut tell you? Does it work? Is it helpful?

Adam Gifford

I think it can have its moments, but the problem I've got, you raised books. The problem that I've got is that when you've got something that has the capacity to hold a bazillion slides, for example, right? And we've all been in places where it's death by PowerPoint or presentation and there's a million one things that can keep flashing across our faces, is that if you use that as a primary teaching tool, there's only one person that dictates the pace. There's only one person that dictates when we're ready to move on. That's the teacher.

So if you've got a book in front of you, you can turn the pages. You immediately take that away. If you teach from a whiteboard and you are using that for a lot of the content in your classroom, you have to decide, as a teacher, who gets to see the next slide, who's ready. And I'll make that decision, and whether the others are ready or not, I'm just going to have to make that decision because I've got no choice.

Andy Psarianos

It's really teacher-centric, right? The teacher is the controller of the learning experience, and they can make things appear and make things disappear at will, right? And I run into this with teachers sometimes, and I've actually had people say things to me like, "Oh yeah. But the kids are flipping the pages in the book and they're going ahead." And I'm like, "What's wrong with that? What's what's wrong with that? Why is that a problem?" Learning's pretty messy, right? You can flip back and flip forward. Don't you want them to be able to do that? Have some curiosity of like, "What are we doing tomorrow?", "I don't know what this means, but that might be pretty cool." That, to me, is kind of really interesting. And this idea that the teacher's job is to disseminate all this information in order, in a very didactic fashion, "I am in charge, I am the teacher, I am in control," seems completely bent to me.

Adam Gifford

Totally. And I think the one experiment, and I've done this before, quite a few times when people say, "Oh, it's a hassle getting the books out. Oh, it's hard for the children." All this sort of stuff. So say, "Okay, I'll tell you what. Your table just put all your handouts for today under your chairs, just do that." And I'm going to flick through some things. And the other table is going to be able to look at the handouts at will. Make the notes and do those sorts of things. Who do you want to be? It's without question. It's the people who have got that flexibility and freedom to look at the content in front of them and alongside that.

Emily Guille-Marrett

Isn't this about... It's a tool that has its place. With all good teaching, things I've seen the interactive whiteboards have done. There've been so many, but just some examples of things where I thought, "Gosh, that's just amazing." So Chesterton Primary School in London, I did a visit because I was looking at early years, I was really interested in the early years. And I'll never forget it. It was one of those moments. You just sometimes have these moments, don't you? where you just think, "That is just magical." And I love wandering through early years spaces because it can appear that there's chaos, but it's actually all just incredible what is happening if it's all planned and organized in the way that this was. And there was this amazing interactive whiteboard, the first thing that they did was they got the interactive whiteboard.

So it wasn't up high. It was right down low, because it was early years, so the kids could walk up, which was great for mark making on the boards. But what was amazing for this one was it was, they were looking at fireworks. Now some of these kids will never have seen proper firework displays, and children from... It was fascinating. And they had amazing fireworks exploding and they left all these ribbons around on the floor for the kids so that they could create the fireworks in front of these amazing firework displays. And it was a really good example for what the topics that they were doing in terms of the children and actually think about gross motor skills. They were engaging. They were actually looking at the colors. There was so much going on, and in one of the incidental elements that was being kind of very cleverly managed.

Adam Gifford

The last thing I'd say about this is that I think that now I think that at that point when interactive whiteboard, it was a massive technological leap. And I just think, I would like to think now there's a more healthy debate, particularly off now where we've been using sort of conferencing software a lot with children and education. We're coming back into classrooms and long may that last, and hopefully we don't have to rely on online platforms to learn. But I just think that I hope that there'll be a really healthy evaluation as to what part they play when you've got children in the classroom. And the absolute favorite thing, without question, I like doing in a school, beyond anything else, is reading a picture book to a group of kids. That to me is like a replaceable. Anyway, that's me.

Closing

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