ActivBoarding

PBwiki Bonus

2007-04-29T13:54:00.000+09:30

I've been playing with wikis for a while and think they are a fantastic tool for creating websites without having to know HTML. Add in their collaborative properties and you have a tool that is fantastic for knowledge sharing and peer produced content, all of which were topics covered at the recent Jimmy Wales seminar here in Adelaide. They can be usefully used on an IWB, and I've been using one for my class planning during this year in preference to embedding everything on a flipchart. I've been using PBwiki which I chose as they had recently changed their interface to a friendlier user interface, getting rid of the need to know wiki markup language. It has been very useful as I embed all of the URL's for online resources in one spot and it's easy to track everything down. I can share the content with anyone and I can see this growing as an organic digital record of 2007.
PBwiki are also offering a bonus for anyone blogging about their product so my post can be construed to be somewhat self motivated, but seriously, their wiki is attractive, easy to use and is ad-free for educators. What more could you want?

Dave Miller - IWB For Classroom Teachers

2007-03-22T21:10:00.001+10:30

Pressed against tight time constraints I managed to get myself to Flinders University on time to hear Dave Miller, UK interactive whiteboard expert from the UK, and then to present a workshop to interested teachers using the ACTIVboard. It happened to be the board he was using in the Sturt Theatre and he started with a "wow factor" show of Google maps overlaid on each other, and he then used the erase tool to reveal the satellite image under the map version.

He first started working with IWBs since 2000. These are my notes from his presentation with my observations in italics.

Use time wisely when designing resources - not uncommon for teachers to spend a lot of time (excessively) designing tools that are low level. He showed a rabbit and a dove coming out of a hat and highlighted the time and effort used to create a one or two answer flipchart.

He talked about the use of colour to draw attention and how placement of stuff on the board can impact on the viewer.

He showed some popular sites for resources - Woodlands Junior School, BBC - and he incidentally kept showing some of the tools like the camera as he worked through some other resources. Interestingly, he kept using the acronym IAW, as opposed to the common Aussie acronym IWB. Wes Fryer tends to use EWB as his preferred acronym and it's important to be aware of all of them especially when tracking resources.

Talked about three stages - supported didactic, then interactive, then enhanced interactive. Involves a change of thinking. That compares in a similar way to the Marc Prensky model that I have utilised with our staff.

Says in his teaching he uses the board for everything - bit doesn't ignore the hands on, group work aspect of the classroom. Suggest that resource links are embedded in the flipcharts - teacher guides to interactive teaching in the UK. Demonstrated the use of other Software programs (ie. Word) as well as part of the board use.

Demonstrated the use of varied objects for sorting and classifying - objects are hidden or revealed according to their properties or whether they will or won't go into a box. Sound files can be used to construct learning - three phrases and optional conjunctions to join them together.

Maybe this is what the audience wanted but a lot of time was spent on "the board can do this " which can be frustrating for someone already familar with the IWB interface - but as Paul Luke from Craigburn pointed out to me after my workshop, you can always pick up some new ideas for use in your own classroom and it's important to know where the majority of teachers are with this stuff. The UK is a logical place to look as their interactive whiteboard usage predates Australia where general use of this technology is still fairly recent.

Promethean Tips and Strategies

2006-12-07T22:35:00.000+10:30

Via Ollie Bray, this fantastic blog Promethean in 30 seconds that shows all those little how-to aspects of the ACTIVstudio software. Good work!

Flipchart Assessment Day.

2006-12-04T21:27:00.000+10:30

"I'm so over flipcharts!" was the comment made to me the other day in the staffroom. One of our IWB teachers was expressing her frustration (maybe exasperation is a better word) at working towards addressing the criteria for flipchart assessment, as part of our beginning steps of the accreditation process towards the status of being a Promethean Centre of Excellence.

The assessment process took place today with our Melbourne-based trainer, Kate. We had eight practitioners taking place - most of our original "pioneer" group and a couple of our new board users looking to see how their skills were coming along. I have to admit that I was feeling a bit under pressure - the so-called technology savvy coordinator might be the only one whose flipchart skills weren't up to scratch!

Now the way I see it, the first comment might have something in it because when you look at what is required to reach certain levels in the Centre For Excellence criteria, it is mainly about using the ACTIVstudio tools and demonstrating a certain level of expertise. It certainly doesn't measure the pedagogical changes in a teacher - it reminds me a little bit of the debate between high stakes testing advocates and educators who are interested in the more holistic view of education. In the Centre For Excellence criteria, it is all definitely measureable - six flipcharts, using page notes somewhere, show a snap to grid, layered object examples and so on. But demonstrating how that flipchart has improved your students' learning outcomes - well, that's a different kettle of fish.

Do You Think This Is Fair?

2006-11-30T17:03:00.000+10:30

Criteria for staff using IWB's at our school.

In moving forward, we need IWB users who are committed to the following:
• Attending all training opportunities offered by Commander and regular attendance at sessions offered by the Coordinator
• Be committed to moving their practice towards a learner centred approach that embeds the use of the IWB into students' learning. This includes building in opportunities for the students to regularly use the IWB for a wide range of purposes.
• Move their expertise and methodologies through Prensky's four stages of Technology Implementation, striving for "New Things In New Ways"
• Match the use of the IWB to other ICT implementation so that is used as a tool for explicit instruction (this is how, step by step) then as a tool to design, then as one of several tools to create and learn, then finally as a tool for presentation
• Use the IWB for "just-in-time" learning including the use of the internet to answer questions, model information literacy, and as fuel for discussion.
• Take part in professional sharing opportunities to showcase resources and good practices.

Does that sound fair enough?

Copyright, Fair Use And Flipcharts

2006-11-28T21:30:00.000+10:30

Attribution:Image: 'Copyright-Free Finger'www.flickr.com/photos/45936582@N00/8903078

A few of our teachers have been going back through their accumulated flipcharts and tidying them in preparation for our Promethean Centre of Excellence assessment. Now one of the goals of this assessment is to contribute to a repository of resources for other ACTIVboard users either by uploading their flipcharts to the Resource Section of the Promethean Planet website or providing links from our our School website. So, as I perused what is going up for assessment and discussed the finer details of the technical requirements (just what is snap-to-grid and why is it useful?), I wondered about the legal standing of images and other secondary content embedded into these files. Honestly, I actually think that most teachers don't even worry about copyright and intellectual property issues when they grab an useful pic, diagram or scan in a page from a much used textbook. And if they try to do the right thing, is their bibliographic style citations going to cut it?
Most of the time, what teachers and students do in terms of re-using other people's intellectual property is covered by the somewhat hard-to-pin-down concept of "fair use". That's fine within the four walls of the classroom - every time a child cuts out a celebrity pic for an art lesson, every time a newspaper article is cut to support a current events report, when a healthy food diagram is created using images printed from the web - "fair use" is presumed to be in play. This use of other people's photos, diagrams, logos, sounds, music and ideas in the pursuit of constructing learning within the school environment is fine because it doesn't get released out to the wider world.
But, as Will Richardson once said, "The web changes everything." As soon as schools access the world wide audience available via the internet, then the "fair use" idea is out the window. So, if we are going to contribute to potentially useful resources that are available to anyone who wishes to download them - then we'd better make sure that our use of other people's material is ethical. Treating the internet as a free digital material shopping mall is ignoring the rules that govern, (and while we might not agree with all of their intent) is a poor example for our students. We also know that ignorance is no defence for breaching other people's rights.
Two really good starting points for teachers to get a really good grasp are these articles by Sydney lawyer, Gibson Owen dealing with the issues of intellectual property,as well as copyright and fair use . These were first published in The Education Technology Guide, and I've posted reviews reflecting on their main points here and here. So, basically, if an image or resource doesn't specify its licensing conditions then copyright must be assumed. That means asking for permission from the copyright owner. How often do teachers even really do that? Often, permission might only be an e-mail away and an excellent practice for kids to get involved in.
So, unless you get permission then it might be wise to look for alternatives to content that is copyrighted. In my understanding, unless someone specifies otherwise, all material has to be assumed to be under copyright. What else can someone license their creations under?
The two options are Creative Commons and Public Domain. There are plenty of experts with more knowledge than me but in general, Public Domain means open slather - grab it, use it, no attribution, no permission needed, hack it up, distort it, combine it, mash it up - no strings attached. Great to use bu can be hard to find because understandably, when someone creates something ( a photo, music, diagram etc) they at least want recognition of ownership even if they don't want to be dishing out permission all the time or charging people for its use. So that's where Creative Commons can fill the gap. This is where a creator can choose a CC license that relaxes some of the copyright restrictions that require explicit permission. You can find plenty high quality CC material all over the web but there are variations between CC licenses that the owners can invoke and expect you, the user, to honour. One of the biggest repositories of CC photographs for instance can be found on Flickr, the popular photo sharing website. The problem being of course, that in our South Australian schools, Flickr is blocked by our filters. But for teachers planning and creating flipcharts at home, this is a great place to source material that quite often only requires a citation. Some CC licenses willingly let you re-use material and edit it for your own purposes.
So, when scouring the web looking for material to put on your flipcharts, remember "fair use". But if you intend to publish or upload your flipcharts to those web based arenas, read the fine print and look for the licenses before copy and pasting.

Keeping Things Moving

2006-11-27T22:24:00.000+10:30

Attribution:Image:'IMG_1270.JPG'www.flickr.com/photos/64244704@N00/189930576

As a favour to our ACTIVboard suppliers, I recently presented to a school that was sinking a very sizeable slab of money into an IWB rollout. They were using federal grant money which required such a bulk purchase but I thought to myself at the time that I would not like to be the person in charge of that programs' success. Without identifying the school at all, they wanted their choice of Interactive Whiteboard into every classroom in their school (around 20) ready for the start of the 2007 school year. My job on that occasion was to tell them about why my school had chosen the Promethean product and walk them through the various software features so that they could make an informed opinion. But whether they followed our lead, or plumped for SmartBoards or even chose the third option, TeamBoard, the big issue for any IWB investing school is how do you keep all of your teachers moving forward and continually improving their practice?

Our school's process was to break the implementation into several stages over an attended period of time. We started with our first group of teachers, hand picked for their enthusiasm and ICT confidence who were referred to as our "pioneers". As I was one of that group and no more expert than anyone else, it was important that these teachers have some trouble shooting ability. If they couldn't solve a problem, they had enough nous to identify what was going on and ask for technical help. They've all been steadily working through Marc Prensky's four stages of technology implementation and trying to ensure that their pedagogy doesn't get mired in "old things in old ways". And they've known that when the next wave came on board they would have a role as mentors and buddies.

How do you manage that when you have 20 or so teachers all at the same starting point, all demanding that they need help troubleshooting or working out how to get a certain tool to function in the way they want? It would be very difficult and invariably someone will get left behind or maybe just not bother changing their practice at all. How do you keep the front runners satisfied and challenged and receiving recognition for pushing the limits of their pedagogy?

Only one part of having an Interactive Whiteboard in your classroom is technical expertise. That's important but after a certain period of time, that learning curve starts to flatten out and the use of the tools can become second nature. However, I'm always finding out new capabilities (quite often, pointed out to me by my students) but the major part of IWB technology is how it affects your practice without giving into the temptation to become an "instructivist" teacher. I've explored this idea before on Teaching Generation Z, but what I really want to focus on here is the idea of continually moving forward and if used with this idea of never standing still in mind, then we can utilise this quite expensive technology well. Training needs to come just in time and the teacher has to be continually looking for ways to improve their classroom practice. Which should be happening with or without an IWB anyway, right?
I'm totally convinced that rolling out our ACTIVboards in phases has been the right approach to ensuring they don't become an expensive sideline tool in the classroom. Providing the teacher with a laptop is another thing our school has got right. You can't expect a teacher to become proficient in a tool by only providing occasional access and expecting them to bring their IWB resources back and forth between home and school on a USB thumbdrive. I'm not saying that all of our users are where they should be yet but in the incremental approach, there is better chance of helping them along than if the whole school started at once.

Staff Training @ TSOF

2006-11-05T21:13:00.000+10:30

Our staff were treated to quick tour of current classroom software technologies by Jim Edson, consultant from TSOF (Technology School of the Future). He walked us through the TSOF website, highlighting the newly organised IWB page which is of particular interest to our school.
After a quick tour of some other links of interest, Jim took us onto the Audacity sound editing software program and shared some of the links and workshops available. With this free piece of software, a $12 microphone, Jim quickly demonstrated how to create a multi track recording utilising a desktop drum beat, some shaker accompaniment and the audience's second and fourth beat claps. I particularly loved Jim's term that summarises the impact that relatively low cost of digital tools. He called it the democratisation of creativity.
Jim also took us through the uses of Audacity for literacy development. One really unique application of this no-cost software was used as a way of preserving native language of the Arabana people, of north western South Australia.
We also got a good look at Claymation, where webcams, Audacity and Windows Movie Maker all combine with the use of play dough based characters. Jim said that his current Claymation sessions were one of his most popular courses. Now, I've been a bit sceptical about Claymation in the past but we were shown many curriculum purposes and opportunities. Claymation stories could be used in English, to demonstrate a Health issue or to reinforce concepts learnt as part of the National Drug Strategy. As Jim pointed out, these easy to use digital tools enable students to build their own knowledge. To further cement home this point, Jim ended the session with a quick tour of PhotoStory, which has been used a fair bit at our school this year. He also previewed another simple more junior primary based program called 2create a Story (unfortunately not freeware or Open Source). The session seemed to be quite popular with the staff - a mixture of new (for them) and familiar - and hopefully a few will sign up for Jim's Audacity or Claymation sessions.

StartPage Potential

2006-09-23T21:03:00.000+09:30

Recently I had the privilege of presenting at an an event titled the "Web 2.0 Showcase - All You Wanted To Know But Were Too Afraid To Ask" and one of my 15 minute slots were dedicated to the emerging tool of the StartPage. So, what is a StartPage? A StartPage is a self constructed webpage that uses small boxes or modules that can house weblinks, photo feeds, breaking news, search engines and bookmarking links and you, the user, decide what goes where using drag'n'drop customisation. You can set up a series of pages on the one site, using tabs to navigate. It can become the one stop shop that many teachers want to help manage their use of the internet especially as they explore more and more of the really useful Web 2.0 tools that continue to pop up like mushrooms.

So why am I blogging about StartPages here? Because, in my opinion, this is a great tool for use on an Interactive Whiteboard as it presents a great way of collecting web resources in one spot and harnessing the power of RSS bringing information to one central spot. There are a number of these services available at no cost, many only requiring a valid email address to activate an account and for logging in. I've previewed some of these services over at my own blog - PageFlakes, WebWag, NetVibes and Protopage - but there are probably a lot more. My only advice would be to have a play with the different StartPages looking for features that could be useful and that has the possibility of future improvements. You can usually play around with the sample page when you first go to the site before committing yet another password into the depths of the web. Like a lot of newly developed web applications, long term viability and improvement could depend on one of the major web players buying up the service (Yahoo or Google, although Google already have their own version).

A class could use a StartPage as their default home page on their class IWB whenever they accessed the web. Regularly used sites can be bookmarked as a Shortcuts Module, and it could link to RSS feeds from all over the web. Got your class blogging? Add feed boxes from their blogs and everyone can see on the IWB who has recently updated their blog. Doing a class project on a particular topic? Say, for example, THE OCEAN. Use a photo feed from Flickr to show recent photos tagged with relevant words (i.e. reef) for discussion and use. [However, in South Australia, a PageFlakes Flickr feed will display just fine but click on the thumbnail to go to the full size image and access is blocked by our filter system.] Use a del.icio.us tag word search to have the latest resources delivered to your StartPage. Subscribe to a news feed searching for identified key words in articles from the major news services on oceans and related issues. Check out my sample page to get a good idea of the potential. Used skillfully, a StartPage could certainly deliver the digital convergence that has been touted as possible using Interactive Whiteboards.

Parent Information Night - Interactive Whiteboards

2006-08-31T10:15:00.000+09:30

Last night, the school held a Parent Information Night on Interactive Whiteboards so that they could see first hand what we are implementing here with our IWB program. I started the evening off with a modified version of Karl Fisch's "Did You Know?" slideshow to give the gathered parents a global picture about information and how technology is aiding its exponential growth. A really powerful presentation - it is amazing how it just stands alone without any intervention or explanation and had all people in the room shaking their heads in wonderment, awe or amazement. This gave me the context for my "big picture" lead in which was based on part of the presentation to the Middle Schooling Conference. I covered the concepts of digital natives and digital immigrants, how technology tied in with our school's vision, moving onto what an IWB was and all the components that made it work.I talked about costs (always of interest to the parent community) and talked about the steps involved in IWB implementation into the classrooms. I had three volunteer teachers who were ready to share their use of IWB in their classrooms and so I handed over to them for a closer nuts'n'bolts look.
Our first presenter was Suzanne, a Reception teacher who deals with five and six year olds on a daily basis. The first flipchart she showed was on the deconstructing of a sentence. By writing words that could be recomposed into a sentence, she worked with her class to cover many aspects of writing key to young students - by being able to move the words around they covered concepts like finger spaces, full stops and capital letters. She also involved her students in the constructing of alphabet charts - she used images from the library matched to sounds to make it fun. One sound if the student pressed the wrong image and applause if they pressed the correct one. She used patterning with student names with different colours for different letters as both an art lesson and a literacy exercise. Suzanne also talked about the usefulness of being able to connect a Kidspiration diagram constructed in the resource centre to the classroom and continue the learning from one location to the next. To finish off her section, she showed how a simple flipchart made up of numbers, their word versions and images to match was a really great way to teach the concept of numbers and how to associate the different forms. Oh yes, she also talked about the use of a CD-ROM game, Franklin The Turtle where all the different parts that the students knew were used to create a shared understanding of the game with all of its activities. This was also a great way to enhance social skills as students negotiated and informed each other about the various activities.
Our next presenter was Maria - from the Middle Primary section of the school and a relatively new user of the ACTIVboard. She started with an English example which was using Connective words. It was really easy to generate an activity that demonstrated the concept and gave the students a hands on opportunity to manipulate the right words into position - but the important part was the discussion that it generated. Her turning point came one day in the classroom when working on a Water Conservation activity connected to her class's Problem Based Learning unit. She started in a traditional way with a poem on the water cycle, then moved onto an interactive website - connecting the concepts quickly and in a way that made meaning. Maria also used resources and diagrams that a student had found on the web (a great boost for his self esteem) - comparing the two to show the class that there are many ways to represent the same concept. She used the IWB as an opportunity to pull many pieces of learning together - "just in time" learning that would have been difficult to do without the board. Maria then finished off by showing some of the great online resources available for teachers to use within their classroom, a simile website with different activities.
At this stage, we had a great parent question to challenge us - Are classes without an IWB being disadvantaged in their learning? That's definitely a hard question to answer effectively because the technology is only effective in the hands of an excellent teacher. Simply plunking an IWB in the classroom is no guarantee to improved learning opportunities - but what we are seeing that quality teachers love this tool because they can run with it and connect up the different concepts more efficiently and in a way that is meaningful to the students. I also hypothesized that IWB's are a great intermediary between the teaching and learning of concrete and abstract concepts.
Finally, we had Marg who talked about the IWB impact on her class of middle school students. Demonstrating her mastery of many of the multimedia tools embedded in the ACTIVstudio software, she showcased her students' thoughts on having an IWB by using sound files of students speaking about their IWB experiences embedded in photos. Marg described how her students use the resources in the library and from the internet to create presentations for a current events program. She emphasized the engagement factor, pointing out that one child spent many hours on their presentation. Marg also demonstrated how she uses the IWB to build a positive classroom atmosphere and boost self esteem - highlighting students' birthdays, sporting results, showing class activities instantly in photo form (dance sport, excursions, casual days), critiquing other's work and so on. One example she showed was a brainstorm annotated over an image from Beach day highlighting key words and ideas from the day. Marg also showed many other examples of how she covered the curriculum using the ACTIVboard as the platform for setting up tasks, explicit teaching of concepts, constructing learning and presenting student work.
Overall, it was a great presentation and the parents expressed their appreciation in getting a first hand look at this new technology and hearing from the teachers so that they get a bigger, deeper picture beyond the "wow, isn't this amazing" factor. Thanks to Suzanne, Maria and Marg for their professional input.

Quote Of The Day

2006-08-30T14:46:00.000+09:30

Followed this link from my TechLEARNING News email subscription about the inroads Interactive Whiteboards are making into US classrooms.

Still, some educators contend there's more to teaching than technology.

It's all just chalk dust and mirrors, says Alan Frager, a Miami University education professor. If a teacher writes too much on a board - be it black, white, or "smart" - students won't learn how to properly take notes.

"You can look in any education methods textbook . . . and you wouldn't find anything on chalkboards or white boards because it's not an important factor in teaching," he said.

"The people who should be writing are the students, not the teachers, because you learn much more when you take the ideas and put them into your own words."

I'd like a bit more context to the quote but I'd still be a bit worried that a teacher spouting forth their wisdom is the scenario here while the students feverishly write notes. I don't think that is preferable to the problems outlined by the professor in the article. Worth a bit of thought however - how do Interactive Whiteboards change things for the better? For the teachers AND the students.

EChO Conference Reflections

2006-08-26T22:19:00.000+09:30

This morning I had the great pleasure of co-presenting "Interactive Whiteboards @ Lockleys North" with one of our school's innovative IWB junior primary users, Suzanne Dunn, at the Term Three EChO conference. The half-day conference's theme was on Science and Technology and so when Suzanne approached me about participating and spreading the word about options beyond SmartBoards, I agreed. However, I suggested that it needed to be a joint presentation to give it Junior Primary credibility. I'm totally sure that because of its early childhood focus, most of our attendees were looking forward to hearing from her classroom perspective in preference to the computer nerd guy.
Having to switch my mind set from the middle school teachers who were the focus of my last presentation to the demographic of JP and preschool educators wasn't too bad. I've been working with the 3 Reception classes this term in the computing room and they are the first batch to be all born in this century - the true Millennials or Generation Z. For example, in one of these classes, every student has a computer at home that is solely for the children of that household. Quite often, it's because Mum or Dad have upgraded to laptops or a newer PC and kept the old one for the kids (even it is still technology that is superior to what they access at school). Most have broadband even though most of our kids are not from affluent backgrounds. This new batch of kids have started school with a skill set and a familiarity with technology that hasn't been seen before, even if you classify most students in the primary school setting in the category of "digital natives". So Karl Fisch's latest gift to the online education community - a simple powerpoint with a powerful message, titled "Did You Know?" - was the perfect choice to set the scene and give our presentation the global "big picture".
The more I observe and listen to educators like Suzanne, the more I am convinced that the IWB is an amazing tool in servicing the needs of the younger student. It bridges the gap between concrete and abstract, it encourages collaboration and conversation and it can help establish formative skills. Now those are important things in any classroom but I can see them coming through very strongly in our junior primary classrooms. Suzanne showed the group excellent examples from her own classroom - how to use the ticker tape tool as part of visual literacy, how the use of CD-ROM educational games promoted discussion and teamwork and exploring a book like the Gruffalo could promote imagination and a shared understanding of a text.
There was a lot of nods and probing questions from the gathered educators, some getting their first look at an Interactive Whiteboard, others just interested to see what the fuss is about and I hope that our 60 minute sessions helped inform them not just about IWB's but about the need to get to grips with our exponential world and make the Shift Happen in our education system.

Watch Out For Promethean Planet!

2006-08-15T22:06:00.000+09:30

From the latest version of eSchool News, came the announcement from the makers of ACTIVboard.

Atlanta, GA--July 5--Promethean, a global leader in interactive learning technology, has launched Promethean Planet, the first free collaborative Web portal designed specifically to help K-12 educators, administrators and parents maximize the use of interactive learning technologies. The site can be found at www.prometheanplanet.com.

Read the full article here.
It's only open to the US at present but hopes to be fully online for the rest of the world by the end of September. Should be good and help with the time issue I talked about on my own blog.

Well Done, Team!

2006-08-08T21:17:00.000+09:30

On Monday, the MYLU (Middle Years Learning Unit)team from our school presented at the International Middle Schooling Conference being held here in Adelaide. Our presentation focussed on the use of Interactive Whiteboards in the Middle School Classroom and was titled "Engaging The Digital Native – Use Of New Technologies In The Middle School Classroom." We presented to a full room of around 100 keen educators from a wide variety of school settings. We worked out that there must have been around that number because we were expecting 87 delegates and provided 100 bookmarks designed for the occasion in place of photocopied handouts. Our thought process there was to showcase some emerging technology use of our own by putting all of our resources on a wiki for the event - then give out bookmarks with the wiki address and our contact details to encourage traffic to it. So if you want to get a virtual replay of our presentation, go to the wiki and check out our notes, and in time the slides (or flipchart, if you have an ACTIVboard yourself!) and hopefully, the audio when I edit it back to a manageable file size.
The team was fantastic and I felt like all of the hard work in planning and preparation came off. Hopefully, I wasn't too much of a dictator and stage managed the whole thing coherently. We got pretty good feedback from our audience and via other grapevines later on, so that was great. Our boss even said someone had said the phrase, "international standard presentation..." in their assessment of the event. So, we had the use of an ACTIVboard as well to give the whole thing credibility - thanks to Amy and Commander for making that happen. As I said in my e-mail out to the MYLU teachers last night:

Thank you all very much for your efforts in our presentation today. It was my privilege to be part of such a professional and cohesive production - thank you all for your part, it was a true team effort and we should all be very proud. Just remember when the requests to see IWB's in action come flooding in, I'll need you to be ready to show off your expertise!

Centres Of Excellence

2006-07-27T20:38:00.000+09:30

We now have the next seven ACTIVboards up and running in the school, bringing our total to 13. The new boards have mainly gone into the Middle Primary section of the school, although the upper primary, junior primary and Resource Centre have scored one each as well, providing a wide spread across the school. We are certainly a school now with a major IWB focus and to that end, we had a meeting to discuss an offer of becoming a Promethean Centre of Excellence. There is an official place bearing that title, but the concept hails from the UK as a Promethean initiative to recognise high competency and leadership in the area of IWB implementation. The official website lists the following information re: the role of Centres Of Excellence.

Promethean Centres of Excellence promote and support the dissemination of skills in effective use of the Promethean collaborative classroom.

Centre of Excellence Services:

* Can train, tutor and assess new users
* Provide a focus for the development of good practice in the use of Promethean solutions to support teaching and learning
* Support schools, colleges and other users in the local area who are working towards Promethean Accredited status

So, our school has been given this opportunity to participate especially as Promethean are keen to expand this concept in Australian schools. The big benefits are that it gives us guidelines for improvement, a measure of progression in our skills and the opportunities provided to our students. There is a big emphasis on the sharing of resources both locally and at the global level which is an important step many teachers still have to make. In these times of connectedness, sharing of ideas, practices and resources becomes a really important way of managing time and workloads. The proposal sheet lists the following information:

How do we become a Centre of Excellence?

Demonstrate excellence in the use of ACTIVboards
For an institution to be accredited as a Centre of Excellence it has to show excellence not only in the way the teachers use the Interactive Whiteboards, but also in how they plan and share resources to show a ‘whole school approach’ to the implementation of whiteboard technology.

Demonstrate passing on of knowledge and training of others
The institution also needs to show it has shared experiences and expertise with others via training on the ACTIVboards and software or presentations and workshops that have been run.

We discussed all of these options with the assembled group tonight and there was unanimous support for the proposal. We need six teachers to achieve the standard of Curriculum Developer which requires the production of flipchart resources assessed by the National trainer - it will be a challenge but a goal worth striving for and helps clarify the way forward for our newest ACTIVboard users. This is definitely a way for our teachers to ensure that their technical and resource development skills keep up - our work with Flinders Uni will provide the challenge to keep working on the transformative teaching and learning that must accompany this investment.

More Board Real Estate On Its Way

2006-07-08T21:36:00.000+09:30

We have started the installation process for the second wave of ACTIVboards here at my school. This time, we've also had two of the larger model boards installed, the 78" version while the rest of the school is sporting the 60" model. The first one of these went into one of our MYLU classrooms and the extra size is immediately evident to an experienced user like myself. I used one of these last year at the EChO conference and loved the extra "real estate". With the older kids, it means they will view the board's display a lot better without leaving their seats and they are tall enough for the whole IWB surface to be in play. A larger one has also been installed in the Resource Centre and could be a great focal point for whole staff training.

However, when playing with a new blog search tool tonight, I found that our big boards are being upstaged by Promethean's newest addition to its range, a 95" monster. And kids will get help to make use of the large size of this supersized IWB.

The Activboard can also be used with Promethean's new 21-inch
Activwand, which permits early learners and special needs students to more
easily select and interact with objects on the board that may have been out
of reach before.

Wow!

The World Of Interactive Whiteboards

2006-06-24T22:34:00.000+09:30

Earlier this month I contributed a section of a course titled the E-Learning Sampler as part of E-Learning Week here in South Australia. The course was only meant to run for a week but the time was extended. There was limited traffic through and that seems to dying off so I thought I'd rescue the section I contributed on Interactive Whiteboards before the Moodle site is shut down and make it available to a global audience. There isn't a lot here that breaks new ground but it is a nice starting point for schools or teachers wanting to have a one stop starting point to gain some insight. It was titled: The World Of Interactive Whiteboards.

Many schools are investigating or considering the introduction of Interactive Whiteboards into their school. However, there are a lot of questions about what they are, what they can do and what the benefits for learning are. Here are a collection of web based starting points that will help educators to become better informed when heading down the IWB trail.
Two major brands, Promethean, the maker of the ACTIVboard and Smart Technologies, the maker of the SmartBoard dominate the world IWB market in a similar manner that PC and Macs compete as the major computing platforms. Both companies have a strong educational focus and have their hardcore supporters of each respective hardware and software package. To provide a balanced picture here, links that highlight the use of both formats will be provide here.
Lockleys North Primary School are using ACTIVboards in their IWB program. Read about their journey, explore useful resources and insightful reflections in their blog, Activboarding.
John Pearce is a Victorian teacher who maintains a number of educational websites. He is also a high level Smartboard user and maintains a blog, Mr.P's SMARTboard about his IWB prowess.
SEGATech is a blog run by a group of district technology teachers in Georgia, USA. There are numerous posts on interactive whiteboards detailing programs with schools, cool tools to use and useful resources.
There are many useful links to be found in del.icio.us, the social bookmarking service on IWB research, resources and reflections.
del.icio.us links - iwb
del.icio.us links - interactive_whiteboards
del.icio.us links - activboards
del.icio.us links - smartboards

I also set up a couple of forum discussion starters that had a few responses. I can't publish them here without permission but my questions were:
1.Do Interactive Whiteboards Reinforce An Outdated Form Of Teaching?
by Graham Wegner - Monday, 5 June 2006, 03:57 PM
Marc Prensky's article "Adopt and Adapt" sets out a four step process for the successful integration of technology into classrooms today. The steps 1. Dabbling, 2. Old Things In Old Ways, 3. Old Things In New Ways and 4. New Things In New Ways are a great metaphor for the use of Interactive Whiteboards in schools today. I would suggest that IWB's could be misused to reinforce "traditional" expert at the front of the room teaching instead of evolving into something more collaborative and learner centred. What needs to be done to prevent this from happening so that an IWB doesn't just become an expensive fancy presentation tool to churn out teacher produced content?
2.
IWB vs. Data Projectors Only
by Graham Wegner - Monday, 5 June 2006, 03:50 PM
What are the advantages of having an Interactive Whiteboard over just having a data projector hooked up to a computer in the classroom? This seems to be one of the first questions raised by yet-to-be-convinced critics of IWB's. I can think of several but I'll only weigh into this discussion if no-one else wants to raise them. One point first - how many classrooms do you see (TSOF not included) where a datashow is part of the set up anyway?
Does anyone want to respond via comments to either of these starters here?

Dry Run Middle Schooling Presentation

2006-06-21T22:00:00.000+09:30

Tonight, we had a runthrough with our staff of our planned presentation for the Third International Middle Years of Schooling Conference which highlights the use of IWB's with our Middle Years Learning Unit (common acronym = MYLU) at our school. Being really busy with reports meant that we weren't really ready for the full deal so we tentatively called it a dry run and walked the staff through our plans. I had pulled together the majority of our presentation into a flipchart and we showed it off on the ACTIVboard in the Science Room. We went through our planned sequence as outlined on our presentation wiki. The use of a wiki has been a great way to showcase everything that we've used along the way - profiles of the teachers, what was covered during the presentation and links to all of the research and resources used. I know the MYLU teachers have been getting up close and personal with wikis throughout this term so it was good to fill our other staff members in on what a wiki is and how it can be used. We ran through a history of how the MYLU came to be.

We ran through the theory behind our move to an IWB program - explaining the now familiar "digital native" and "digital immigrant" metaphor that has been so useful in explaining the differences in how today's students engage and learn. We explained Marc Prensky's four stages of Technology Implementation and showed some examples of these stages in action. The presentation prompted lots of discussion about how teachers were starting to effectively use the IWB as a tool and I think it opened the eyes of the teachers about to get their new boards next term and hopefully get them looking beyond just how to operate the technology. And we have some valuable feedback about how the whole presentation hangs together and how some areas could be tightened up. All bodes well for the real thing in August at the Adelaide Convention Centre.

Technorati Roundup

2006-06-01T22:42:00.000+09:30

A few links of interest during my infrequent check of Technorati using the key words "interactive whiteboard."
Rowan classrooms go high-tech A newspaper article about Promethean donating ACTIVboard systems to a school rebuilding after Hurrican Katrina.
the teacher, the task and the talk = interactivity - an interesting quote querying the use of the interactive in IWB.
Ma, mama, we’ve all got IWBs now - post looking at the state of play in the UK IWB scene.
Finally, Interactive boards spur students' studies - the headline says it all.

More Great Tools With IWB Potential

2006-05-13T21:51:00.000+09:30

Via Derek Wenmouth, this interesting new search tool called Quintura which harnesses the power of your preferred search engine (Google, Yahoo etc.)but displays your results in a key word cloud with fewer sites listed on the right. I think this could be a great tool in the primary school classroom where the graphic nature of the way the results are displayed really demonstrate the power of key words in locating relevant information on the World Wide Web.
The second find comes via the TALO Google Group where James Neill has pointed this great blog, The Generator Blog with heaps of interesting tools to generate your own choice of text in different formats - clapperboards, road construction signs or cartoons. For teachers with IWB's looking for new engaging ways to present titles, key concepts or any other pieces of text in their flipcharts, there are many options here - all in the one location. A few examples below.

IWB Research Smorgasbord

2006-05-10T21:57:00.000+09:30

Via my EDNA rss feed, US National Clearing House for Educational Facilities has a Resource List on Interactive Whiteboards. A few familiar links for those of us tracking IWB implementation across the globe, but some new useful links.

Jeff Does It Again - Audacity Basics

2006-05-05T13:50:00.000+09:30

When the IWB Pioneers were being trained on Wednesday, some played with Audacity for the very first time. In the timeliness that only the edublogosphere can manage, Jeff Giddens from SEGATech has posted a great post, Sheer Audacity: Sound Ideas For Learning that is a great starters kit for the use of this great freeware tool.

IWB Interest From Across The Tasman

2006-05-03T22:17:00.000+09:30

Rachel at Bard Wired has posted today about IWB's and poses the question of their worth in the classroom.

They have been around for awhile - why have our cluster schools not picked up on these until now? Are they another fad or fashion? Like any learning resource, (according to my sis who has worked in UK schools where they are ubiquitous) they are only as effective as the teacher who is using them... So if u follow that line of thought a lot of our cluster teachers could do some wonderful things with this new tool :-) Not cheap @ $7000 + a dataprojector another $2K - how much of a bang for bucks in the difference to children's learning could we achieve? Lots of our schools are already using Data Projectors in classrooms - how does the interactiveness of the whiteboard improve on this? Couldn't this be achieved as simply and cheaply as students using a wireless mouse & keyboard to control what was happening on the big screen?

Rachel also sounded me out via e-mail for my opinion (for what it's worth) and I left a lengthy comment at her post.

Alright, Rachel, you have set a challenge here and I will try to give you an answer that makes sense to me - if not to you. Your post is timely as we had a training day for our ACTIVboard Pioneers with our trainer from Melbourne showing some more advanced techniques in using the software. My boss and I took the trainer off to check out Technology School Of the Future which is our major training facility here in South Australia for teachers. TSOF have not taken up interactive whiteboards in any way at all - possibly because like a lot of government funded places (making do with less) so they don't have anyone specialised to oversee any foray into this area of technology. It has been left up to schools to forge their own way and make their decisions (and mistakes) in this area. She was asked about why IWB's are an important technology and she was able to field that question with ease (I can't recall her exact words). She was able to justify why she believed the ACTIVboard to be the better IWB choice! It is a bit like comparing Macs to PC - it's a matter of preference. I think governments see the IWB as an expensive technology buy and aren't keen to boost school technology budgets. I agree with the statement that the IWB is only as good as the practitioner in front of it. I have seen really great things happen in the junior primary section of our school - I can't speak for Smartboards but the software bundled with ACTIVboards is extremely interactive and kids can drag and click on the big screen to solve problems, review ideas - I think you can only glimpse the potential when you see a really skilled practitioner using one. I have seen a group of kids playing an interactive game on the big screen, rolling the virtual dice, making choices collaboratively, discussing the best way to do things and the pay off has been much more efficient use of PC's in the computing room because they have all learnt from each other about better ways to complete the task. I did cover the IWB vs. the data projector only argument before and I do believe that the IWB does an excellent job at explicit teaching. However, at times, I sometimes have questions of its use translating into an effective learning tool, especially as more technology for learning becomes more portable and mobile thanks to wireless. It is about making sure the school's technology dollar represents good value for money. If you are really keen to read more try my Interactive Whiteboard category on my blog or our ACTIVboard Pioneers blog at Activboarding.

I hope that was informative for her and it is telling that my own grasp on how IWB's can be used in schools rolls off the keyboard pretty fluently. By the way, today's training day was great and all participants had to produce a lesson or resource in ACTIVstudio to show the rest of the staff at our meeting. Everyone produced some great stuff and my contribution was a simple use of the "create a magnifying glass" effect where I used the layering tool to overlay two images of a Google search so that the magnifying glass revealed annotations about various bits of the Google search page. See screen grab below.

First Steps and IWB Involvement

2006-05-02T22:24:00.000+09:30

Quite a few of our staff spent two of the recent holidays at First Steps For Writing training in a bid to standardise our school approach to English with the new Australian reporting guidelines in mind. It was a jam packed two days with what was normally an 18 hour course squeezed into 12. First Steps is a West Australian initiative and is very construtivist in nature but with clear mapping of skills and loads of excellent Teaching activities. With a full day of advanced IWB training coming up tomorrow, I kept thinking how different classroom scenarios could be enhanced with our ACTIVboards. The trainers talked a lot about investigation and modelling of writing formats - what better way to model writing process than on the big screen? So, this could be a good combination - First Steps methodology with ACTIVboard technology. I still wonder how to move the IWB beyond just being a teaching tool - perhaps as we all become more familiar with the First Steps program, more learning opportunities could unfold.

In The Interest Of Balance

2006-04-08T14:53:00.000+09:30

Just in case, anyone thinks that contributors to this blog are of the rose coloured glasses variety, here's a link to a British newspaper report questioning the value of IWB's in British schools. Link via Emma leaving a comment on Anne Davis' Edublog Insights.

Image source; Dee Johnson - Flickr Creative Commons Images.

Free Google Earth Online Course

2006-04-05T22:44:00.000+09:30

Via Teaching Hacks comes this offering of an online course to become proficient in the use of Google Earth. This application has great IWB potential so maybe myself and other interested colleagues could have a go on a Tuesday afternoon (T&D hours of course) and take advantage of Quentin's generousity. Maybe my new laptop (when it arrives) won't shut down suddenly whenever the cache overloads and it will run smooth as silk on the ActivBoard.

Whole School Change via IWB

2006-03-29T22:08:00.000+10:30

The ActivBoard Pioneers were lucky enough to get some more advanced training from Commander's new trainer based in Melbourne. She came out and gave pairs of teachers some new technical skills to improve their own repertoire - embedding video, layering etc. We also had our first initial touch base meeting with our Flinders University contact who will work with us in acion research to produce a case study of our IWB journey. The key to this research seems to be the question, "Can interactive whiteboards assist in whole school change for learners and pedagogy?" I may not have worded that correctly but the gist of it all is that there is quite a bit of evidence and research that showcases the improvement in individual teacher's skills and documentation on individual class achievement but the whole school improvement could be unchartered waters, particularly here in Australia. There is also the point of IWB's being promoted as a teaching tool by their vendors and some schools (which is certainly important) but is there potential for this technology to become a learning tool for students as well? I am really looking forward to this research study and accessing expertise that I certainly don't have and getting an outside perspective of what my school is trying to achieve and how we can measure that achievement. Exciting times ahead.

ActivBoarding's New Toy

2006-03-20T21:29:00.000+10:30

Added a visitor's map a little while back to see if anyone was still reading this blog, and the results are very encouraging! Visitors from Canada, Melbourne, Kentucky and London. So I'll keep plugging away - maybe this will inspire the other Contributors to maybe contribute!

IWB Pioneers Answer Back

2006-03-10T21:45:00.000+10:30

On Tuesday, our pioneer teachers met with leadership to assess where they were at with their progress in their use of our ActivBoards. I've already blogged my responses prior to the meeting and I was looking forward to hearing from the others. Unfortunately, Meredith, our Science teacher was ill so hopefully, maybe she can blog her responses on this blog. (Especially as she has been quoted as saying this site has potential!) So, in summary, here are my notes from that meeting. If anyone from that meeting feels that I've been inaccurate in my recollection, let me know via the comments. And we'd all be keen for any other IWB users world wide for their responses to our questions - an open invitation here or at Teaching Generation Z.
1. Why do you feel that IWB's are an important step towards our school's vision of "up-to-date-technology"?
The pioneers felt that the IWB enagages kids through the use of visuals. Using a diagram or a highlighter pen is much better than on a traditional whiteboard. Our junior primary teachers felt that the IWB takes advantage of the technology already in the school and then extending them further. They also used CD-ROM programs like Franklin Goes To School for group teaching and shared class expertise to improve their understanding and use of the program. This also led to improved use and access of these programs in the computer room, along with students working more collaboratively. Our Year 6/7 teachers felt that the student interaction with the boards could increase in comparison with the JP teachers, mainly due to a very busy program. A real benefit in an upper primary classroom was the interactive multimedia access - it was really easy to include snippets of video and DVD and here-and-now access for information access via the internet. There was comment passed that there was no fear factor for the students in using the IWB. Some kids had spent plenty of their own time preparing current events presentations on flipcharts. The other positive factor identified was the ability to save flipchart lessons for others to refer back to, be it for revision or students who were away. Another JP teacher talked also about the engagement and collaboration and how useful it was for smaller time slots of learning. She talked about a grouping exercise with her class where they dragged multiple images onto the screen and grouped them. Group discussion and social interaction were words mentioned a lot during this conversation - as well as "just-in-time"learning.
2. What's the best lesson or activity that you've managed using your IWB?
One upper primary teacher talked about the use of the IWB in small groups for a literacy/punctuation activity. Another teacher had focussed on a poetry unit including the showing of students' published work. One of the JP teachers had taken a photo of a child's work and they had critiqued together as a class group - this was more efficient than having kids queue up at the teacher's desk waiting for their writing to be checked. Our other JP pioneer talked about using the IWB in music - as a great way of writing up notes and the fact it could be saved for future use. To finish up, one other talked about a good lesson on time zones where the content was the same as in the past but the students enjoyed the visuals and multimedia used to enhance the IWB version of that lesson.
From here, we didn't really stick to the script in terms of doing the final three questions in sequence. Because I was part of the discussion, when I got wrapped up in the conversation, my note taking dropped off to a certain extent.
3. What have been the most significant hurdles towards getting the IWB integrated in your teaching & learning program?
Here there were a few legitimate gripes including - out of action laptops and a projector (still waiting to get them back), technical glitches, no real backup when things didn't work, a need for more tech support for troubleshooting issues and greater network priveleges for IWB teachers to install and uninstall programs and addons like widgets, Google Earth etc.
In the interest of accuracy, I think I get the participants to e-mail their responses to the final two questions as my notes dried up. (Or they can blog here direct - pleassssee!!!)
Next week, we have a visit from Trudy Sweeney, a lecturer at Flinders University who is going to work with us to document more accurately the impact this program has on student learning at our school. Her take on the whole thing will be very insightful.

Time For The Hard Questions

2006-03-02T21:16:00.000+10:30

As the school looks towards the next purchase and implemenation of our IWB program, I am gathering our pioneers together for a reflection session to gauge the progress made thus far. I've prepped them with a few inquiry style questions to make sure we don't just skim the surface and talk technical stuff for the hour. The quesions posed are as follows:
1. Why do you feel that IWB's are an important step towards our school's vision of "up-to-date-technology"?
2. What's the best lesson or activity that you've managed using your IWB?
3. What have been the most significant hurdles towards getting the IWB integrated in your teaching & learning program?
4. Where do you see the IWB making the most significant, transformative differences in your future practice?
5. How ready are you for a mentoring role with the next wave of IWB users?
And to be fair, I will be submitting myself to the same blowtorch and bringing my own reflections along. See my blog for my efforts.

Technorati IWB Links

2006-02-20T21:31:00.000+10:30

A quick glance at my Technorati watchlist turned up the following posts from bloggers on the yopic of Interactive Whiteboards. From Marlyn's Blog, a post about using an Activboard and the planning required. From I Love History, another post outlining the use of IWB's. From one of my favourite contibutors to SEGAtech, Jeff Giddens who implores teachers to use their technology to engage kids in their learning. Worth a read.

Science Grant ActivBoarding

2006-02-13T21:28:00.000+10:30

Meredith, our Science teacher here at school is far too modest to highlight her own work but I thought that seeing my own name was liberally sprinkled throughout this report, I'd provide a link to anyone interested in the school's Action Learning Project as part of the SCIMAS Grants from 2005. For the uninitiated, Meredith's grant proposal explored the possibilities and impact an interactive whiteboard could have on her non-contact R-7 Science program. I am sure that she didn't realise what a frustrating but steep learning curve she would go on. So what does she want an IWB to do?

The eventual aim of using the IWB is that it will deliver a visually enhanced explanation of a concept, with deeper understanding and in a shorter amount of time, so that they can apply the theory to the practical work.

Here's my favourite bit (shades of Prensky coming through):

More than ever, I am convinced that as educators our roles are more as a facilitator than fountain of knowledge. The computer and internet, with all of its potential good and negative aspects will I, believe, play a key role in students’ lives in the foreseeable future. Our job will be to assist them in finding out what they need to know and how to find it. Young students are more comfortable with technology. Older teachers are now being referred to as ‘digital immigrants’ whereas young students are referred to as ‘digital natives’. As teachers we need to keep up with technology and teach students how to respond/use it in a responsible and meaningful manner.

I definitely think that this work should be supported by another grant so that Meredith can use release time to really explore the potential and marry the right digital content to her curriculum and then I think we'll see high levels of engagement and relevancy for her students. Great work, Meredith!

del.icio.us Social Bookmarking Link

2006-01-31T16:04:00.000+10:30

Graham Stanley over at Blog-EFL has a great recent post on the advantages of the social bookmarking service del.icio.us, as this was recently on the radar at our school's IWB training day. Another great download is the booklet produced by David Muir which is as good as it gets as a user's manual.

I Spy On The Big Screen

2006-01-13T22:21:00.000+10:30

Over the holiday break, my eldest son has had a lot of fun using this I Spy CD-ROM game, based on the famous books. After seeing him search for objects and enjoying the poetry, I thought how great this program would be on an ActivBoard! The whole class could participate, poetry lessons, digital art using Photoshop Elements to create their own I Spy scenes. I think this would be great tied into English and Visual Arts.

Ingle Farm IWB Research & Implications For Our School In 2006

2006-01-12T22:03:00.000+10:30

Before Christmas, Ann, my new principal sent me a link to the PLICT Grant Research that had been conducted by Beth Measday at Ingle Farm Primary School here in Adelaide. Her research titled 'So you've got an Interactive whiteboard! Now what?' is posted on the TSOF website. Ann was particularly keen for me to peruse it and consider any implications for our school as we went further into our IWB program.
Last year in August our school purchased six IWB's (of the ActivBoard variety) placing them in three upper primary classrooms, a science room and two junior primary classrooms. The teachers were supported by an initial training session with Peter Kent from Commander, a school closure day spent exploring more of the IWB's capabilities and ongoing support from the coordinator (whose learning was only a few steps ahead of his colleagues). Our initial experiences have been well documented on this blog and at Teaching Generation Z.
This report starts in similar fashion, describing their journey and the challenges along the way.
We are probably at the equivalent of their second stage, the early adopters have had four or so months to get accustomed to the new technology and the next batch of six or seven IWB's arent too far away. Beth points out that the next group of teachers are going to need and expect more support as they start out.
The next important point the report made was the impact ICT had made on staff skills prior to the IWB's. She points out that their staff had exposure to all of the department's ICT initiatives geared towards improving teacher competency but the results weren't showing.

Ingle Farm Primary is a good example of a school where there had been an ICT Co-ordinator in place for some years to assist teachers in their ICT take up. The infrastructure was working well with a good network, good computers and a blossoming intranet. Given all of this, the results of the ICT Skills and attitudes survey taken by staff in 2003 were alarming. With all of the money spent and support given, staff were still not readily using ICTs in their work with students.

Now our results on this same survey were quite encouraging but a skills focus won't tell you how those skills translate into improved classroom practice. But our staff, in general, will have better than average teacher skills when starting out with a new IWB. Beth points out in her results section that improved staff ICT skills was visible to see.
There are a lot of staff testimonials in the report which is to be expected with reseach that is not data based. It does raise the point about staff reflection of their progress and I guess that's where this blog comes in. Late last year I was almost ready to pull the plug and transfer personally authored posts over to my own blog but Meredith, our Science teacher, expressed the view that it needed to be kept as an important component of our journey and that others would get on board and use it in 2006. Maybe it would be better if all IWB teachers had their own blog and all IWB posts were collected in the one site linked onto our own school website.
Training and development opportunities showed up as being key to the successful implementation of the IWB's. There was an identified need to provide different methods for staff to develop their skills - a one size fits all training method will not work well. That's a challenge for me as someone who learns by try it and see what happens when others will want step by step directions and others may need a more collaborative approach. Time to do this training is a big issue. All over the place, educators I read are saying that for technology to work, a substantial investment in training has to come with it or you are wasting the resources.
Ingle Farm talked about the use of USB thumbdrives for the transference of files between home and school - with our laptops for each board, we would have that aspect well covered. CEGSA research says that teachers' ICT skills improve when they use a laptop designated as their own. There are issues with tandem classes sharing a laptop as Nat and I found out last year but that can be sorted out.
Technical support was an interesting point as we only have two days of ICT SSO support allocated currently - with my time commitments with PBL, there could be times when technical support is needed (especially with so many new IWB users) and not available. That should be looked at carefully.
Another direct quote we need to keep in mind:

Having someone to lead the project and take responsibility for troubleshooting was given a high priority by the surveyed staff. Staff need to know that if they come across a problem, someone is committed to helping them work through it. The answer may be in the form of a simple instruction or “I’ll work it out and get back to you” or “I’ll email the company and ask them”. Whatever the problem, staff felt it was essential to have someone who would take responsibility finding a solution.

Beth was really positive in her summation of her staff's improved technology skills and the consequent flow-on to improved teaching and learning opportunities for their students. If we can achieve the same sort of results over the course of 2006 with our pioneers supporting those coming on board, then we will giving our students learning experiences in tune with their connected, interactive multimedia world.

Marc Prensky Coming To Adelaide

2006-01-11T22:17:00.000+10:30

Via a post on Bill Kerr's blog the man who coined the phrases "digital native" and "digital immmigrant" is coming to town. He has a big reputation as an A-list speaker (at A$220, so he should) and it would be interesting to get his take on whether Aussie kids are as tech-savvy as their North American counterparts. I personally say no - at the primary level, anyway. Be great if a few people could scrape the bucks to attend.

IWB Research Link - PLICT Grants

2005-12-13T21:09:00.000+10:30

I've been meaning to blog this link for a while since I read about it on the TSOF website. The first schools to have ActivBoards installed here in South Australia were up in the far north of the State at the Anangu school of Mimili. (For non-Aussie readers, Anangu is the traditional word for indigenous Aboriginal Australians). I was under the (hopeful) impression that our school might have been the first ActivBoard school but these guys predate us easily. It's a great case study and Brad Lewis from Commander who distribute the boards here in Australia told me how they flew Peter Kent to Alice Springs for their inservice training but someone from the schools had to drive up (a few hundred k's) to bring him in for their sessions. Anyway, well worth a read and well done to Kathy, Gail, Bianca and Kirstie. Don't miss the link to the fabulous digital story.Link here.

We're Being Noticed

2005-11-15T21:57:00.000+10:30

From a UK educator's blog, The Server Room, comes this recognition post.

On a related note, there’s a new Australian Blog about the use of IWB’s in education: ActivBoarding. They’re using six (I think?) Promethean ActivBoards with ActivStudio. It looks like a good place to watch for a fresh perspective (most of the stuff I’ve seen is very UK-oriented) and interesting resources. It’s a shame there’s not an open/common format between the whiteboard programs (particularly between Smart, ActivStudio1 and Activstudio2) as being able to share flipcharts etc seems to be one of the key benefits of the IWB experience. We’re firmly in the Promethean camp at school, so I’ll be passing these links on to those that can’t when I return to work on Monday.

See, blogs are great for tapping into other people's networks and being part of the conversation. Next week - Introduction To Blogging - Computing Room - be there if this captures your interest.

More ActivBoarders On Their Way

2005-11-15T21:32:00.000+10:30

Thanks to all attendees at this afternoon's Professional Development session on ActivBoards 2006. I counted 18 educators in the room at one stage in between losing our original brainstorm list somewhere between my original presentation flipchart and showing people how to insert images! As I pointed out, the seven of us who started with boards in August have barely had them for a term and we have only scratched the surface of the potential. So, I was really heartened by the keenness of our new potential ActivBoarders. The questions were great - I hope I got to the core of what you wanted to know. When the feedback comes back in, I will share it here so that you can see what fantastic plans people have for this teaching and learning tool. I forgot to share the final cartoon I had lined up that was a good way to finish. Check it here.
Thanks to Rachel at BardWired for that link.

Laptop Trouble

2005-11-08T15:20:00.000+10:30

ActivBoarders, if your laptop is giving you grief, then there are other uses for it. It can be used to assist the preparation of the evening meal. If you want to consider other uses other than crunching data or preparing flipcharts, more can be see at Wacky laptop tricks. My class loved the photo of the laptop as a replacment frisbee.

Build a fish

2005-11-04T16:13:00.000+10:30

THe site Graham highlighted in on Nov 1 - build a fish - was a great one for reinforcing work done on coral reefs.

Relevant Posts From My Blog

2005-11-03T08:33:00.000+10:30

I have a number of posts on my personal blog, Teaching Generation Z, that are on the topic of ActivBoards or IWB's in general that may be of interest to readers of this blog who don't read my blog (or are unaware of it!) So for IWB users and potential users here are links to a few relevant recent entries that relay experiences or thoughts on this topic: Disagreeing With A Legend, Why An Interactive Whiteboard?, Gathering Evidence, ActivBoard Lesson Screen Dump and The Missing Ingredient - Ownership. Love some feedback on some or all of them.

TechLearning Feeds Me Great IWB sites

2005-11-01T21:57:00.000+10:30

I have a feed in Bloglines from TechLearning that throws some interesting sites my way that would be great on the IWB's. This is great for Science (hint, hint, Meredith) or looking at ecosystems, evolution etc. It's called Build-a-Fish and it is a lot of fun to play around with - I can just see a group of kids in Learning Area 9, discussing the required features of a fish etc. Check it out....

Dr Karl on Air

2005-10-25T21:35:00.000+09:30

Podcasting is such a great option now because you can just download what you want and play it back to the class as a discussion starter or to get some answers to obscure topics. Case in point: Dr.Karl from Triple J radio.

Digital Immigrant's Guide To Bloglines

2005-10-19T15:15:00.000+09:30

After spending a small amount of time bringing our teacher-librarian up to speed with the state of play in blogging, rss and social bookmarking,(She said,"Leave me alone now. You've shown me more than enough for now.") I found this post that could be of interest to our team members in starting to access and read more relevant blogs. I mentioned Bloglines before and how it is a great way of tracking blogs without the hassle of checking in on them individually. This post details how to set up a Bloglines account in a lock step way - if I was a beginner, this would be really handy. If you want to see some of the blogs I access, here is the link to my Bloglines account. You might find something of interest. Other bloggers also publish their Bloglines account links for public perusal - it is a great way to find additional blogs of interest.

BLOG-EFL: IWB Activboarding

2005-10-17T11:02:00.000+09:30

Our humble team blog has been noticed by another interested party out there in the wider world. Graham (great name) has a blog dealing with the use of ActivBoards and has linked us a "place to watch". Blogging has this great connecting potential where we can learn so much from others and their experiences and insights. Thanks for the plug!BLOG-EFL: IWB Activboarding

IWB News

2005-10-09T13:49:00.000+09:30

Has anyone subscribed to IWB news? It is an e-mail newsletter (with links) that covers interactive whiteboard news from Australia as well as keeping a finger on the pulse of overseas events. Go here to subscribe.
An example of a useful link from the newsletter is National Whiteboard Network

Term 3 Overview

2005-10-06T22:05:00.000+09:30

Well, we started off the term with the promise of our interactive whiteboards and we've ended up with something with more potential and scope then we could have hoped for. We held a very successful Staff Development Day where the team members drove the day (see my post A Highly Productive Day) and we scratched the surface of the possibilities our boards could give us in the classroom. So this post is to touch on some of the milestones throughout this term and put my spin on them. Maybe team members might feel inspired to post a comment, put me straight on a few things or blog their version of events.
Actually getting the boards installed was a major undertaking. I had to liase with the ActivBoard suppliers at Commander, the installation company while considering the aesthetic and technical requirements to make the whole scenario work. Remember, no-one really knew what this would look like. When I described to Steve, our on call technician what I wanted as a working solution for the laptop set-up, he was also using intelligent guesswork as he hadn't seen a school with ActivBoards before and didn't know how the connections to our network should be made. The laptops also had their fun moments especially when I thought they were defective but I just hadn't stumbled onto the correct resolution for the data projectors. Note to any schools going down this path and you want to use notebook/laptops for your computer link to the ActivBoard, don't go for widescreen. Well, the first one was installed into Learning Area 21 and we had our training from Peter Kent and I know my head was buzzing from that session. I think the frustrating part was that most of you guys didn't have a board yet or the ActivStudio software to play around with. Then it turned out that the laptops needed insurance before they could leave the school grounds! Anyway, looking back at my digital notes from that day I recalled the following points:
- configure USB port (this process is actually on the CD-ROMs that came with the board)
- board calibration (once every two or three months)
- ActivStudio toolbar - TRAINING BOOKLET learn the software go through the tutorials to gain a specific level of competency
- stores a history of sequential flipcharts
- ideal viewing is Yellow font on blue background - minimum font size 24.
add ons for the AlB - microphones, multimedia speakers
The USB port isn't an issue that will bother most teachers unless they stick the USB link to the board in a new port. The board calibration is an important thing to remember as I've a couple of callouts where the flipchart window couldn't be closed but on close examination the cursor was about 2/3 cm away from the point of the pen. That's a calibration issue and you just re-calibrate using the appropriate tool from the palette. Now the availability of the tutorial booklets has been a sticking point - we only got two (or three?) and I've had plenty of requests for extra copies. I was assured that a pdf copy would be e-mailed to me last week from Commander so you could print or use it from the file. Personally, the lack of a tutorial/ training manual isn't an issue as I can learn a heap more from playing with the ActivBoard, but I realise not everyone prefers or learns that way. The preferred colour note is interesting because I trialled a few colour combinations with my Maths Group to see what they preferred. They ended up telling me that lime green font on a black background is superb to look at but it could be just that is a cool colour combination that doesn't measure up optically! Also, I bought a pair of multimedia speakers which have been trialled by a few teachers. Annabel was less than impressed when she viewed a German DVD with her class but a "digital native" informed me that the sound was down because the laptops sound settings were set too low. See. we're learning from them all the time.
Anyway by mid-term we had all boards installed and all but Meredith's in the Science Room up and running. Hers turned out to be a connector problem, sorted out eventually by the installers. This was frustrating for her as we were looking forward to our Staff Development Day, she was under pressure to report back to the powers that be on the progress on her Science Grant and she hadn't even conducted a working lesson involving the ActivBoard. Team members, don't forget to support her via her blog New Wave Science - post a comment, give her a link, offer to review some of her research.
One big issue I touched on the training day was the need for us to show the way for our fellow staff members. Some of them are still unaware of how the whole interactive whiteboard thing works (can I come and play with it sometime?), some want to be ready for the next rollout in 2006 and a bit of awareness raising on our part on how big and steep the learning curve won't go astray. They are watching us with interest and we have that responsibility to keep them up to date with realistic, not idealistic, information. We have to think of ways to give them hands on experiences which we, in a lot of ways, didn't get. We are the digital pioneers and I have seen a lot of really great stuff from all of you just in passing or in professional conversations around the school.
One last thing before I finally wind this post up. I think that being accountable and documenting our learning journey is really important as we go. Being time poor, I think this blog is the best way for all of us to have a conversation that is not dependent on all of us being in the same room at the same time. I am really thrilled to see that several of us have started their own blogs and can see value in this two way technology tool. Our colleagues can then read up on our findings, frustrations, check our resources and be part of documentation that is living. Please contribute any little bits you can to ActivBoarding and make it part of your week to either post, read or comment on this blog. My thoughts and ideas will get pretty boring after a while if others don't put in their point of view. As Marg has said in her blog digital immigrant - It certainly was food for thought pointing out that it wasn't much good if we used technology such as the active boards to produce vamped up versions of old curriculum.
Thanks, Marg - couldn't have put it better myself.

Blogging in the Media

2005-09-30T14:38:00.000+09:30

Here's a link to an ABC National radio talkshow I heard the other night covering blogs and blogging.
[blogs]

Blogging For Kids (And Us)

2005-09-30T13:25:00.000+09:30

Great link from Will Richardson's weblogg-ed site New Kids On The Blog. Worth a read to realise the potential of us blogging all of our learning with ActivBoards. I'm actually toying with the idea of setting up a classroom blog to run the day from with my class. Have to check with Nat first and it might be a casualty of our busy final term if not designed properly. Anyway, read, enjoy and respond with your thoughts. Have a great break!
[blogs]

Constructivism is Dead - Long Live Connectivism

2005-09-28T13:35:00.000+09:30

There is an interesting educator George Siemens who has been rethinking a learning theory that is more in line with the flow of information that will be potentially on tap via our Activboards. It is called connectivism and I think it has merit as a way of us firstly as educators keeping up with ways of doing things in the classroom and in particular, harnessing the power of the internet. I would really interested in what people think in terms of the way learning will change in our classrooms over the next few years (or not).
[internet] [future learning]

Meredith's Blog

2005-09-26T14:30:00.000+09:30

Hi, great to be with you all, at last! Check out my blog and feel free to add any interesting science websites and I'll do the same!
[blogs] [science]

Science Link - Solar System

2005-09-23T08:40:00.000+09:30

Another link via TechLearning.com - A Virtual Journey Through The Universe.
[science] [resources] [links]

Tangrams Website Link

2005-09-21T22:27:00.000+09:30

Picked up this link to an interactive Tangram website via my Bloglines feed from TechLearning.com. Could be a good intro to the concept - try it and see.
[links]

Digital Natives/Immigrants Links

2005-09-20T22:31:00.000+09:30

Team members who remember my reference to the metaphor of "digital natives" and "digital immigrants" might want to read up a little more on the idea. It helps us in making sure that the use of these interactive whiteboards isn't just s new way of delivering old curriculum but that we look to cater for the needs of our "digital natives."
Marc Prensky is the person who coined this educational methaphor. Click here to read the original "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants" and here for the companion article "Do They Really Think Differently?"
Also, Will Richardson from Weblogg-ed whose slideshow I quoted from has a post just the other day about a work colleague who had a piece published titled "Portrait of a Digital Native". I know the US perspective is always different to down under but it is worth a read. (Possibly our kids are more in tune with American education than us!)
Another post from The Bionic Teacher - A “Normal” Camera which might make a few of us cringe in recognition.
Another article that reflects on whether we need to change our methodologies "Do We Have to Talk the Talk?"
And to make sure I've included alternative perspectives, here's a post from the blog of proximal development titled "Digital Pioneers?" that challenges some of Marc Prensky's assertions.
Finally a couple of Interactive Whiteboard links for extra light reading. (Don't print them out if you don't want to labelled a digital immigrant!)
Interactive Whiteboards for Interactive Teaching and Learning
Interactive Teaching and Learning
[resources] [links]

Web Links No.2

2005-09-20T14:37:00.000+09:30

Thanks to Leanne who attended an Interactive Whiteboard workshop at Highgate PS. Here are the links she brought back from that day. Some of the links relate to SmartBoards but could be still accessible as resources for ActivBoards.
Julie Thompson K-3 Smartboard Resources
Interactive Websites
St.Francis of Assisi Primary School Interactive Whiteboard Resources
Skool Interactive Learning
NAACE ICT Primary School Activities
Read On - Online Stories
Story Place - Children's Online Digital Library
ABC - Count Us In
ABC Education Resources
ICT Games
BBC Schools
Fun Brain
Primary Games
Interactive Literacy Resources
Education Action Zone
Discovery School.com - Puzzlemaker
More to come on the professional reading side.
[resources] [links] [interactive whiteboards]

ActivBoard Weblinks No.1

2005-09-20T14:33:00.000+09:30

Just starting to migrate my posts from the now superseded wiki site to here.

Here are a list of links to help get us started looking for resources.
ACTIV board Resources (UK & NZ) - Official Site
ACTIV board Resources (USA) - Official Site
Virtual Manipulatives for Interactive Mathematics
Ideal Classrooms
MirandaNet - Promethean World
Visual Fractions
Mathematics Lessons That Are Fun, Fun, Fun!
The Learning Federation
Interactive Whiteboard Resources (UK)
Free Trial of Gizmos
Birmingham Grid for Learning - Whiteboard Resources

And here are sites that more about pedagogy and breaking news in the world of interactive whiteboards (not just Activ):
IWB Net (Australia)
Richardson Primary School (Where It All Began In Australia)

Please post to the blog if any of these are any good or alternately if they are of limited use.
[resources] [links] [interactive whiteboards]

Training Day Pics

2005-09-20T14:14:00.000+09:30

[interactive whiteboards]

Marg in business

2005-09-19T14:29:00.000+09:30

Having a great day. Very frustrating when my board won't (or is it ME?) do what I want it to.
[contributors]

We have lift off!

2005-09-19T14:27:00.000+09:30

Hello
Yes my username is quite strange too! I am looking forward to being able share ideas and problems with you all. I hope the results from today will filter through into our preparations and lessons.

Remember...take baby steps first. Try not to get caught up in all the amazing things Activeboards can do. Slow but steady wins the race!
[contributors]

Happy Blogging!

2005-09-19T14:04:00.000+09:30

My personal Blogging journey has began. I look forward to being able to share my learning with you all and also learning from you.

Check out my Blog http://bella-teach.blogspot.com/

Annabel :) :)
[contributors]

I'm here

2005-09-19T12:29:00.000+09:30

Suzanne and Susie must be such common user names. Finally found one to work. Looking forward to participating
[contributors]

Welcome to ActivBoarding

2005-09-19T12:20:00.000+09:30

Hi team members - here is our new blog for charting our progress in the use of our new ActivBoards. Hopefully this is user friendly and an improvement on my original effort. Feel free to post about your experiences, queries, problems, frustrations, links, resources as you go and this will become a living, learning community that we can all utilise as a resource. Looking forward to seeing the first posts up later today.
[contributors]