Authentic Doing in Education

I wrote this back in 2006 – just put a tweak or two on here — but others may be interested. As a full 1:1 laptop school for nearly 8 years now, the current transformation is now our use of interactive whiteboards. Armed with ubiquitous access via laptops, students are now accessing nearly every visual board lesson as the archiving of SmartBoard lessons has rapidly become a norm.

From 2006…..

Just a quick clarification for those of you exploring interactive white boards – there are at least two very different technologies to consider.

Analog-Resistive boards (such as SmartBoards) do not require any special pen therefore you can control with your finger. Slight pressure compresses the 2 layers creating contact point – and thus pixels are drawn. Pen color is activated when the pen is lifted from the tray – but the pens themselves are just dummy devices. The user can choose to write with the various color pens, or use one pen and switch colors from the floating menu, or use their finger and choose color using the menus.

Electromagnetic boards (such as the ACTIVEboard) require special “pens” and therefore are not human-touch sensitive. In some cases the pens are unique to specific colors and in others the user uses ONE pen and chooses color from the menus.

In watching teachers here using resistive boards – we use SmartBoards exclusively – they naturally use their finger for controls, movement, menu selection, etc, everything you would normally use a mouse for. They generally pick up a pen for most drawing. I like what I see because the use is “natural” – it’s hard to describe the impact of “finger touch” on learning, but there is a strong visual connection when manipulating images and general use of mouse commands. There is a bit of a delay, but this becomes almost imperceptible with practice.

Electromagnetic boards are considered much more durable since the solid surfaces contain an embedded electronic wire mesh. The board has no movement. They are also considered to have faster response times.

Hope this helps a tad bit.

BTW – I was extremely sceptical of interactive white boards having seen them demo’s at tech conferences for over 12 years. Our language teachers asked for them back in 2006 and I reluctantly installed a couple. Was I wrong! The teachers love them and in many ways they transformed practices in our language department within weeks – making instruction much more interactive – both visually and auditorially – entire board work is routinely posted for student use after class, teachers are able to instantly bring up yesterday’s, last week’s, or last month’s lesson for review, and much of their board preparation work now happens at home. We now have SmartBoards in nearly every classroom as use has spread to every department.

Yes, I should write more on this because our teacher’s practices are phenomenal. Someday!