[Advisory] IWBs - An Australian perspective

[Martin Owen]

I am finding this debate interesting but perhaps a little sad. All the advantages ascribed to the IWB seem to be the product of good teaching that could reasonably be achieved without the technology and in some cases (eg Emma’s fine motor control) might be achieved in much better ways (DEVTRAY apart - but some of us used Bob Moy’s version with old ILEA TV monitors).

My favourite IWB app comes from Cambridge-Hitachi and was inspired by Anita Straker - someone who I have a great respect for. It is a suite of tools that emulates the contents of an excellent maths apparatus cupboard - a veritable virtual Phillips and Teacy Catalogue. Some of you may remember mathematics - it was the good stuff we did before that hideous neologism “numeracy” was coined. It was the stuff that recognised that quantity, proportionality, ordinality and cardinality were founded in embodied experiences of space and time. 

As it happens a well equipped maths apparatus cupboard costs a good deal less than an IWB, and you could probably get  a lot for less than the cost of its software emulation.(sigh)

For sure there is a lot of good teaching with IWBs - there was a lot of good teaching with blackboards. What other professionals seem to have been able to do - which the teaching profession (and record company executives) seems to have failed to do- is to undertake business process re-engineering. Others have sought to rethink what it means to be a “science laboratory” or a “hospital” or .......... and  deliver in better ways  fundamental activities like advancing scientific knowledge or curing disease or .........

IWBs and VLEs are not necessary steps on re-engineering learning spaces. IWBs are ok display tools - but that’s it. The RoI on body/brain scanners or the mobile phone is clear. Ultimately they have revolutionised, improved and altered forever medical diagnosis and personal communication (not to mention banking in Africa). In comparison IWBs and VLE’s are like the Magic Turk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk)

If the role of teaching is to support young people’s journey of coming to know,  we would do well to learn from other enterprises that have undergone technologically supported transformation. It is not a matter of automating or incrementally improving old practice. We need to ask what are better ways of coming to know and what are the new destinations of the journey.

Of course, as a developer of digital learning devices, I would say that. I still think Logo is a good idea.

Martin

http://www.smaltitech.com/

 BTW - this list would be massively improved when we can move to Google Wave - I have deleted the stuff you have all read.