The Great White Hope
Posted by Lauren O Grady on August 17, 2008
Another week and another few conferences, this weeks reflection links to the IWB conference that was held in Melbourne. The conference itself was well organised and I believe gave a good reflection of where we are at with IWB’s in Australia currently.
It was where we were as a country that disturbed me.
The conference consisted of presentation after presentation about how these IWB tools can change the way you teach and change you as a teacher. There was session after session on IWB files and the use of these tools for teacher improvement.
The worst part about all of this was that presenters main selling point on these digital worksheets was that you can use them over and over again. I heard “there is no need reinvent the wheel”
Of course we need to reinvent the wheel ! We have been needing to reinvent the wheel for the last 50 years and here we are after many years with IWBs in our country saying it is not necessary.
I thought at first maybe I am being cynical so I asked a presenter about how these digital worksheets are used in the classroom and the answer I got was “I am not sure, I am just showing IWB files” What is the point of that?
You need content and context regardless of any presentation, it is that context that allows teachers to gain a window into the planning and implementation.
Now is it just me ? Or is there something wrong with this? Again nobody is talking about students, the very real reason we are in schools each day. I did not hear anyone talk about how these tools improve students learning or how students felt about these as a tool. I did see many a teacher showing us how they used the technology but was so sad to see that as a country we are still not seeing student generated content beginning to expand our horizons.
To me whenever we are looking at planning or any type of futuring we need to think about:
• What do our students need?
• What can we learn from students ?
• What do students have to offer?
• What do teachers have to offer?
• Why are we doing this?
• What is the right environment to do this in?
• What tools do we have at our disposal ?
This conference reminded me again that for the majority of schools out there technology is still a “pull down experience” Students and teachers pull down information, IWB Files and resources. We need to work with our students and our schools so that technology and education is a “push up experience” I ask people to challenge this notion after checking the differences between upload and download limits in their schools and see if we really do value content generation as much as the pulling down of information.
People need to look outside of the IWB tool for educational possibilities. My goal in education is that kids learn to understand and defend themselves, work towards achieving what they believe in and being able to contribute to the wider knowledge bank. I would love to hear others educational goals !
Interactive Whiteboards had/have the potential to put students at the front of the classroom for the first time possibly ever. Yet we are stuffing it up ! I cannot believe we are still promoting IWB’s as the answer to your teaching issues instead of promoting IWB’s as a tool for students to have control in the classroom.
So where to from here? I cannot whinge forever about this. We must make a change in this, otherwise we will end up with the status quo as the status quo forever.
We do need to reinvent the wheel and the wheel begins turning with students giving feedback and ideas to their learning. As teachers we get so annoyed when leadership initiate change without telling us, yet some of us do this to students each day. I would like people to reflect on this:
• Do your students know the focus of your session before they walk in?
• Have you asked students where they see the opportunities for technology in their learning is?
• What content have your student created in the last two weeks?
• Have you asked your students who their learning audience is?
I would love the answers to these as I think that to move forward we need to keep these things in mind. IWB’s are a great tool which can empower and engage students like never before but I believe we are at risk of losing all these benefits because teachers, leaders, systems cannot let go and allow students to control the tool and make it work in their learning contexts. Moving forward I would love the next conference I attend to have students presenting to teachers and talking about their needs so we can begin to match the keys to the locks.
IF there was such a conference where students ran sessions and teachers learnt would you attend????
August 17th, 2008 at 4:49 am
Totally agree. While there is some mileage in the fact that you can store and share lesson resources, there’s a lot more you can do with an IWB.
A lot of the focus is on the word “whiteboard” rather than the “interactive” with teachers still reluctant to give students more involvement. It’s more than just a big screen to show powerpoints on (or smart/promethean files that are little more than powerpoints)
August 17th, 2008 at 4:55 am
So, what you’re trying to say is that we need IWBs to be ‘Wonderbras’ of Education. Funnies aside – this analogy is not so silly – once teachers realise that tech is just like underwear, not the main clobber we ‘wear’, maybe they won;t e afraid. Sure, some like to free-ball it but maybe that’s a once in a while incident and not the norm,
This idea of focusing on students is soooooo radical – honestly, in the debate n National Curriculum, for exaple, where is there a focus on students? All the talk i see focuses around teachers’ workloads and squabbling about facets of Federalism.
Thanks for a thoughtful post.
August 17th, 2008 at 5:07 am
Do your students know the focus of your session before they walk in?
Absolutely – the entire 2 year course is mapped out and each week one student acts as the scribe to ensure we hit each target. Every lesson is also archived online – by the scribe. All questions/responses/issues are are raised in the learning community – online.
Have you asked students where they see the opportunities for technology in their learning is?
Yes, I have docent’s in all year groups, and a manager. These canvas opinion and devise the questions. I never buy/do anything new without testing it out, and asking for feedback. (I used to be in direct marketing) – test test and test again. Students cite issues as : can’t use their mobile phone, not allowed to bring laptop into some teacher’s classes, no MP3 player/recorders – staff have no clue about anything beyond Google/Office (unless they are PBL/ICT). Our core reflective practice (whole school outcome) makes kids identify these opportunites at least weekly.
What content have your student created in the last two weeks?
Links to all my LIVE work is on my blog deangroom.wordpress.com – last week some 220 students will have created and published online – text, images, video and audio, virtual worlds.
Have you asked your students who their learning audience is?
Yes, they know. We include people called ‘critical friends’ in all our projects – these are people external to their teachers. Teacher are also part of the learning communities, and also reflect on their learning this week. Students know that their audience is a reflection of themselves, their peers, parents, teachers and critical friends.
Its not about the tools. Its the learning. The tools create a lens in which teacher can see the learning, and worry less about the content. All of the questions I had from teachers last week, was about scaffolding and finding new ways to support learners. I don’t teach ‘tools’ to teachers ever. They all have a degree, electronic goods, a phone – it’s not hard. If you give them the option of ‘teaching them to use’ then they take it – as then they have someone to blame when they get bored of doing it.
But to do that, you have to develop everything for them. You have to teach all their classes, model the methods, teach them to un-learn what they think is good ICT. You also have to stop them racing ahead and getting lost, frustrated or out of their depth. This is all a total pain in the ass, but gets easier every day.
PD as teachers know it does not work. But our systems don’t support ‘EdTech. EdTech is Web2.0 knowhow driven by a PNL and with a technical background and funding to buy ‘kit’, and do whatever the hell works with your network infrastructure. And thats 2 jobs if not 3.
Just don’t expect to be popular with staff, which is okay – do like I did, build a gaming lounge and play WoW at lunchtime.
August 17th, 2008 at 7:52 am
Lauren, your views and statements are incredibly valid and true. The entire push for accessing Interactive Whiteboards is creating a field of so called ‘experts’ that have used the technology as a continuation of existing pedagogy. Lauren you are absolutely spot on when you say that we should reinvent – and what is it we need to reinvent? Pedagogical practice itself. Interactive Whiteboards are not effectively changing pedagogy. The missing ingredient is pedagogical planning for this change and access to successful models of outstanding practice to guide the change. Too often I have worked with educators that have accessed IWB’s to make this miraculous change in their classrooms focussing on location, accessibility, hardware and content. Where is the pedagogy? What should it look like, feel like, sound like? And yes, as you clearly point out Lauren – what about the students?
Unfortunately students’ amazing potential is not harnessed, thought about or talked about (unless of course the height of the boards is being discussed). I too would ask any educator that has access to an IWB – how are your students using it? Let’s go beyond the ‘Interactive Roll Call’ experience and move to the important three R’s – Rich, Real and Relevant. Content is not what it’s essentially about. Templates – yes can be useful for explicit teaching at times but not essential in engaging students to learn effectively through this technology. It is the ‘how’ we need to get right. This will then affect the ‘what’ (content).
The feedback I have received from the IWB conference was that it was interesting in seeing the wealth of resources available and that presenters focussed on the content. One other interesting piece of information worth exploring is that in the UK, they are moving away from using IWB’s. Teachers became frustrated at having to create content. I wonder why? Is this where we will head if we don’t become smarter at changing our pedagogy?
I find the question you ask about sessions and student knowledge interesting as well Lauren. If we really use the Inquiry model, then students would be the ones that guide the session, action research and learning environment. Imagine how the IWB could be used where students can organize their thinking, upload their ideas and research and make their own learning contribution to what you call the ‘push-up’ experience? Definitely this is where we need to be heading. Our educators need to move away from being teachers and instead looking at being facilitators to allow our students to really own their learning, use the IWB as an essential tool that unlocks huge windows of opportunity to create, innovate, collaborate and learn. We have the tools now let’s plan and use them for the 21st century in environments that are student centred and engaging.
August 17th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Mornin Lauren
Top stuff. I’m so glad I dont use a IWB, yet. I don’t rate ‘technology’ that highly, but love learning from and with my students. More than 20 years of letting them devise the inquiry questions for their project creations is working. They create the content with guidance, choose their audience to present to, record their learning via learning logs and reflect on and plan for the next level of inquiry.
A question years later is what did I learn at school? I learnt about learning from wise teachers who gave some autonomy and heaps of guidance, not cram cram cram, empty vessal style. The many stuff ups are great learning moments as long as the support is there. I learnt the teacher, not the subject.
Those who taught at me or within tightly constrained ’subjects’ of content destroyed my love of learning for that subject. That’s why I still hate maths with a passion some 30 years after leaving school. Relevant to today? You betcha, even more so.
Sure a ’syllabus’ is followed, but learners are in charge of their learning with the why questions asked regularly by me or their learning partners, I try not to teach ‘at’ them, (although year 8 period 5 Friday is still sometimes hard yakka)
Now I just want to make sure when we get the new tech tools, whatever they be, this type of inquiry based learning continues in a digital form. I want to let the learning become richer and let them still be in charge of their learning.
Most web2.0 techno stuff is not hard and some learners need to stop making excuses. I am not ICT trained or very savvy and as Dean says “racing ahead and getting frustrated” is an issue for me, but I also dont want to do a dodgy job when it does lob into my room sometime in the next 20 years.
I have only engaged recently in this DER as others have said this is where we are heading, but current implementation in our system is making it harder than it need be, so far.
Blinded by the ‘great technology panacea’ or the ‘technology will do the teaching’ seems to permeate some of the contemporary thinking. Maybe this change is just starting to lance the real boil, ie We need more professional reflection on what we do everyday.
Dean’s comments are going to be put on the re-read loop for sure. Heutagogy rather than pedagogy.
Remember the Vietnam Diggers today, Long Tan 18th August 1966
August 18th, 2008 at 5:23 am
Wow, IE on the mac eh? Been a long time since I’ve that
August 18th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Lauren, your post is pretty spot on for me and while I’m not too sure about the answers, I do agree with you that re-using digital flipcharts is not going to equip our students with the skills they need for the future. I am not sure that conferences are the place for people to glimpse that future either…
Your commenters already showcase true innovation and there isn’t much more I can add except my efforts in the classroom strive to continually improve opportunities for my students and put the digital tools into their hands. Taking four of my students to showcase their blogging and wiki work at the recent Middle Schooling conference here in the exhibition area shows that kids are perfectly capable of showing and explaining their work to adults, doing a better job than some university based professor explaining the ethnography of “kids today”.
I certainly think that what was missing from the sessions I saw was the concept of pedagogy – everyone still seemed to be hung up on the technical possibilities (and some of those weren’t that imporessive). Getting the IWB as a tool for students to use in their learning is no mean feat and something I still need to work on to a much greater degree. Getting involved with Jess’s Challenge is definitely going to be a step in the right direction – it’s time teachers become the self-directed learners that we believe our students need to become.
August 18th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Ah Lauren, you know how to keep a man up late at night reading posts like this
I join the chorus – give yourself a pat on the back.
Love the idea of students telling/teaching teachers. I have been actually working on it over the last couple of weeks. In WA, Year 10 & 11 kids have to do 20hrs of Community Service before they can graduate. That means anything volunteer-ish. Just last week, I ran the idea of students teaching teachers about technology, the way it is used by them (kids) and what sort of things they like in short sessions after school or some other short stints.
Reasons?
- to avoid “geez sir, you made a powerpoint hey..blast my socks off” -> ends up being sour for the bored kid and disappointed teacher who thought he is really ‘with it’ and tried his darndest to make up a ppt)
- levels the kids and teachers and builds great relationship through trust and power-reversal (relationship the KEY TO EDUCATION! sorry about yelling)
- saves me running around doing all the bloody work (even though I do love it…)
- makes use of ICT personal, meaningful, relevant and human rather than these systemic, top-down initiatives and ‘guru-speak’ of inevitability (”hey, you don’t have to spell it for me we ain’t going back to chalk mate”)
The kids are right up for it, a handful of teachers I ran the idea past were keen as too, now we just need to make it go I suppose (easier said than done, you know how it is). I’ll keep you posted if you like.
Keep up that fire in your belly. I personally wish few things more than to white-ant this bloody awful industrial model of education we are stuck in (love the “pull down” vs “push up” line). If ICT is going to be the catalyst I am all for it.
Cheers from a fellow ICT Integrator (that’s a joke, right
, gotta love the titles because they sound so important & thanks for dropping by http://human.edublogs.org
Tomaz
August 20th, 2008 at 8:32 am
[...] like Lauren O’Grady, I felt a but underwhelmed at the sessions at the National IWB Conference, one leadership session [...]
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August 21st, 2008 at 7:50 am
Lauren,
thank you for this reflection on the IWB conference. I attended as well (2nd time actually – went to Castle Hill here in Sydney two years ago) and saw/heard some good stuff, but left feeling a little bit like the record was skipping and some things hadn’t really changed in that time.
Last time I made the good choice of attending a John Pearce workshop on blogs and wikis, which was my first entry into the world of Web 2.0. It’s led me to describing the IWB more as an “access point” than anything else (I’m looking for the best description, access point is the best I’ve come up with so far).
So I’m pleased that in my year of using an IWB, that I haven’t gone crazy on making the flipcharts! I think part of it has been me using the board in a “just in time” fashion, responding to the needs of student learning as they come up, and using the IWB as just one part of my classroom which included a range of other hardware, software and online tools that the students used.
I don’t think there’s a need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to basic flipcharts, but if we’re serious about good teaching and learning, then we need to push teachers beyond the flipchart (at least ones that they create), as well as beyond a workshops’ worth of websites that I could have just as easily self-explored through a delicious account (provided they have one, of course!)
September 19th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Hi Lauren,
At the risk of being labelled part of the problem, not part of the solution, I am going to have a bit of a go with what you are saying, because I think that you miss the point of the use and place of IWBs and technology in schools.
Firstly apologies for the late reply to this post, I only just stumbled upon it, you know how it is.
Also, I was in your vendor presentation at the Sydney Leading a Digital School conference a couple of weeks ago. So this reply is also flavoured from what I took away from that session.
Another thing that I just want to acknowledge up front is that I believe that there are more poor uses of technology (IWBs) in the classroom at the moment than there are good examples. Having acknowledged that point I will ignore most of the bad examples in the rest of this reply. When talking about pedagogy, focusing on poor practice has only limited value, it can lead you in the wrong direction. I would rather focus on good practice and see what I can learn from that.
It’s all about the students, at least it should be’
I get the impression that this is a central main theme in your post and presentation. How could anyone possibly argue with that? However I disagree, there is more to it than that, and taking this narrow approach to using technology, focusing on the students above all else does not improve student learning.
The research around the use of technology to improve student learning is really not very strong. As recently as 2007 BECTA in the Landscape Review called it “inconsistent” and “mixed at best” and this is after 25 – 30 years of effort and billions and billions of dollars of funding. This however was an improvement on BECTA’s 2000 report that found “no link” between the level of ICT resources and student outcomes in literacy and numeracy.
If we are going to work out how technology can be used to enhance student learning, we have to understand what is going wrong in these studies. To say that it is the teachers’ fault, that we need to focus more on the students is a simplistic analysis, and analysis that is at least 20 years old. It is also wrong. In 1986, Larry Cuban cited general teacher resistance and a failure to ‘let go’ as being a common response to the reality of technology in schools not living up to its hype.
While the research on ICT effectiveness is pretty pathetic, one thing that the educational research is clear on is that the most significant school based factor in determining the level of student learning, is the quality of the teaching that the students receive. This has been shown as conclusively as anything can be within the field of educational research.
Apple’s ‘Classrooms of Tomorrow’ program (1995 – 1998) where heaps of technology was given to schools to support ‘student learning’ resulted in no clear learning improvements. Jane David, a consultant Apple hired to study it the initiative, commented that within the schools that she examined student learning “had less to do with the computer and more to do with the teaching”.
It is the teaching that matters; it is the teaching that makes the difference. Good quality teaching will make a positive difference, while poor quality teaching will make a negative difference.
This is why I have a problem with the “it’s all about the students” approach. By default it says that teaching should not be the focus, when the research says the exact opposite. We cannot improve student learning unless we explicitly focus on the teaching.
As an aside the “it’s all about the students” is not a theme that occurs in strongly in the educational literature apart from in the area of ICT education and extreme constructivism. You don’t see a marginalisation of the role of the teacher in Maths, Science or English educational journals. Multi-literacies, Learning by Design, Gardiner’s Multiply Intelligences and the like are all about informing teachers’ practice so as to best improve student learning.
The role of an IWB and PCs (this is a short extract from my book on this issue)
A major difference between teaching and learning is the context within which they occur. For the most part teachers teach within a group dynamic (i.e. a class of 25 – 35 students). Students often learn in an individual dynamic, while students often undertake group work, Vygotsky shows us that they have to make their own sense of the concepts taught and integrate it with their own existing knowledge.
Personal computers (PCs) as the name suggests are personal, they promote individual, one to one interactions. Because of this individual dynamic of PCs they are very good at working on the ‘learning’ side of the ‘teaching and learning’ process. However, this individual dynamic makes them very hard to teach with as it runs counter to the group dynamic associated with teaching. Over time we have understandably concentrated our efforts with PCs on uses that work and produce results. We have concentrated on ‘learning’ with PCs, teaching seemed to have quietly fallen off the agenda. The good-hearted Albany in Shakespeare’s King Lear probably sums it up best, “striving to better oft we mar what’s well”. In Education’s pursuit to take advantage of the enormous potential of computers we seemed to have lost sight of what fundamentally underpins successful schools, that is, quality teaching.
IWBs however are technology that is suited to the group dynamic; they are suited to promoting group interaction. After years in the wilderness, classroom teaching with technology was suddenly back on the agenda. Unfortunately we had spent so many years in an ‘e-learning’ mindset that we at first missed it.
Another difficulty of the general IWB debate is that given the predominate ‘e-learning’ mindset many people try and use a ‘e-learning’ approach to integrating and reflecting upon the use of IWBs. We have a large body of knowledge as to what good e-learning looks like, and teaching with an IWB often runs counter to and is even seen as a backwards step. When it comes to e-learning, an IWB is the proverbial square peg in a round hole. We need to look at IWBs from the point of view of what they can do to enhance teaching. That is in a group presenting a concept, exploring the implications, placing the concept in various contexts, creating links with existing knowledge, and leading discussions that probe student understanding and allow students to take their learning in personally relevant directions.
One of the realities of using IWBs to enhance teaching is that when you go to an IWB conference pretty much all you are going to see is application of IWB that support teaching.
What does good teaching look like?
There is no single way to teach. Following on from this it can be difficult to find a productive way to structure reflection on teaching, and so it is easy to ignore this issue all together.
Learning and Teaching are complex, multifaceted and highly interconnected activities. What is required is a scaffold or framework, based on current teaching and learning theory that can guide the integration of ICT into the curriculum. And perhaps more importantly provide an understanding of what this type of ICT integration is going to look like in the classroom.
The pedagogical model that I use to reflect upon teaching practice is the Quality Teaching Model, which is very similar to Victoria’s Principles of Learning and Teaching, Productive Pedagogies, and the general Authentic Pedagogies models of teaching. These models basically describe high quality teaching as teaching that includes a high level of intellectual quality, relevance, links teaching – learning – assessment together in a reflective manner, and teaching that occurs within a supportive classroom environment. While this is of course a gross simplification of theses models, I hope that you get the basic jist.
What this model can tell us however is that if an IWB (or any technology) is being used and it is not enhancing the level of intellectual quality, relevance to the students, or promoting a safe, welcoming and differentiated learning environment then the use is probably pointless. Again I will frankly admit that there are a lot of applications of an IWB that do none of these things; however that is no reason to give up on ‘teaching with IWBs’ all together.
One last thing – marking the roll on an IWB
In Sydney you seemed to be highly critical of the concept of an interactive roll on an IWB. Can I just say that I have found that this is probably one of the more effective use of an IWB. When a student does not feels welcome, and ‘part of the team’ in class they not able to learn, and they are more likely to be disruptive. This is a corner stone of restorative / relational behaviour management practices and also a major ‘need’ that Glasser outlines. Interactive roll marking is almost universally enjoyed by students (this is why it has spread more quickly than most other IWB activities in Australia). Students love it because it helps give them a tangible sense of belonging in the classroom. I may have misunderstood your comment in Sydney. I hope I did, because I left the session thinking that you against relational behaviour management as well as teaching.
OK, it is your tear me to shreds.
Cheers
Peter