Category: IWBs

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Get Inspired

The successor to Promethean’s ActivStudio 3 software is known as the ActivSoftware Inspire Edition… although hopefully it will just be called ActivInspire or something less wordy.  The first Beta release of Inspire is now available and Promethean is encouraging people to download, install and play with it, no doubt to try and identify as many bugs as possible before the production release, due in late March.

While I was writing the IWB book, I was fortunate to have been invited to a sneak peek at a very early Alpha build of this software, and it’s certainly come a long way since the buggy, crash-prone demo I saw a few months ago.  For a Beta, this is actually quite stable, although there are still some unusual behaviours and unexpected interface issues to iron out in the next two months.

To give you a bit of an insight into some of the most obvious new features, both good and not so good, I’ve recorded this screencast about the new Inspire edition.  It’s about 20 minutes long, but if you use Promethean software I hope you’ll find it useful in helping you get your head around the changes.  And there are some major changes too… the team behind Inspire were aware that ActivStudio had a number of legacy issues that needed to be addresses, so they decided to start with a clean slate and develop the new version from scratch.  This is not an update on ActivStudio, this is a whole new codebase and a complete rethink of how an IWB interface should work.  The interface is certainly cleaner, and there seems to be less clicking to get things done.  It’s still not perfect, especially in the area of video handling, but it does seem to be a step in the right direction.  It appears to borrow some interface ideas from other tools like PowerPoint and Smart Notebook, but reinterprets them.  My first impression is that, although it is certainly a big improvement on AS3, it still needs quite a bit of work before the final release.

You can get your own copy of the new beta from the Promethean Planet website.  You need to be a Planet member, but it’s free to join.

In a nutshell, some of the new features worthy of a mention are…

  • Profiles for task-centric tool palettes
  • Browser pane for easier access to common functions
  • Cleaner, more streamlined interface
  • Support for multitouch and dual pens
  • Elimination of the familiar edit panels that appear when you double click an object
  • Non-modal action pbjects
  • New connector tools
  • More familiar use of a standard menu bar at the top of the screen
  • Better drawing tools
  • ActivStudio and ActivPrimary both optionally available within the same application
  • Customisable tooltips on objects
  • Better 4:3 Flipchart support for widescreen computers
  • Much better implementation of templates

It’s not all rosy however… there are still some notable ommisions, such as the ommision of a tool for creating tables, something their competitor Smart Notebook 10 actually does very well.  Tables really need to be in here.

The other notable point is the lousy way it seems to handle video and media.  This has been my biggest complaint about ActivStudio 3, it just does a really crappy job of managing digital video.  It needs to be far less fussy about what media type you throw at it, it needs to render video really well, and it needs to allow the embedding of video into the page rather than just creating links to it to open in a new window.  Although Inspire has attempted to improve this aspect of the software, it still has an awfully long way to go in my opinion.

There is plenty to talk about in this Beta release, and I think I might make a couple of other video reviews in the next couple of weeks.  But take a look for yourself… in the interests of making sure the final release candidate is everything it should be, I’d encourage you to download it, cast a critical eye over it and tell Promethean what you think.

I’ve been pretty critical of ActivStudio 3 in the past, and have complained loudly about its woeful usability and lack of standardised interface design.  I have even been whinging directly to Promethean over the last six months or so, and I’m pleased to see that this new version seems to be the start of finally getting it right.

Not bad so far, but Just fix the damn video handling issues!

PS… I meant to mention these couple of extra things, but forgot…  so here is another screencast just to add the bits I missed.

A couple more things about Activ Inspire from Chris Betcher on Vimeo.

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Is Teaching a Dirty Word?

There is a cliche that ones hears a lot in education about the need for teachers to not be a “sage on the stage”, but rather a “guide on the side”.  The main idea behind these two cute terms is to denounce the role of a teacher as being a “sage”; the font of all knowledge in a classroom, someone who stands in front of the empty-headed students and tells them everything they need to know.  We decry this idea of a sage, and quite rightly too.  In a post-Google world, the notion that anybody – including a teacher – could still be the source of all information and wisdom is pretty ridiculous.

Likewise, the other half of this expression implies that the more proper role of a teacher is that of being a “guide” for students.  Someone who goes along on the journey with students as a partner in learning.  As my good friend Tony Butler would say, it’s about creating a “big brother, little brother” relationship with students rather than a “master/apprentice” approach.

In the old-style classrooms of the 19th and 20th century, the emphasis was often placed on the teacher moreson than the students. Most industrial model classrooms are founded on the idea that they have a “sage” at the front of the room dispensing scarce knowledge.  The emphasis in these classrooms was strongly on the teacher and the act of teaching. Learning was assumed to have taken place because the teacher had performed the act of teaching… If we teach them, then surely they must have been learning, right?  I remember hearing a teacher once say, after his students performed extremely poorly in an exam, “I taught them but they just didn’t learn!”

Our 21st century paradigm of education moves students back into their rightful place at the center of the learning process, and we now talk a lot more about the importance of learning over teaching.  We think more about how students learn, and even the educational language we use emphasises learning as being far more central these days.  And this is all good and absolutely on the right track…

While I totally get what these two expressions are trying to say, I’m a bit concerned that as we strive to elevate the importance of learning, learners and the learning process, that we don’t swing too far the other way and somehow make teaching a dirty word.  One of the things that struck me as I wrote the book was just how frequently my volunteer proofreaders would pull me up on my use of the word “teaching” and replace it with the word “learning”.  And while I did agree with them some of the time, there were a few cases where I thought it was almost coming across as a sort of political correctness, replacing “teaching” with “learning” at every opportunity as though there was some inherent fault with the idea of teaching.

And it made me wonder, have we swung the pendulum too much away from teaching and towards learning?  In our eagerness to ensure our classrooms are constructivist, student-centered places, are we in danger of devaluing the act of teaching?

In a lot of the research I read, the critical factor for success of learners was the quality of the teaching.  In fact, when all the various factors are taken into account – class sizes, funding, type of school, level of technology and so on – the one factor that makes the biggest difference by far is the quality of the teaching that takes place.  Good teaching inevitably leads to good learning, academic success and overall student satisfaction.  Report after report comes to the same conclusion, citing the quality of teaching that takes place in a classroom as the major factor.

Perhaps this bias was amplified because I was writing about interactive whiteboards, a technology that is often accused of heralding a return to the “sage on the stage” days, and therefore a return to a more didactic form of classroom operation.  Certainly, I understand why people would say this, since the very nature of IWBs suggest a classroom where the focus of learning is at the front of the room – a place usually inhabited by the teacher not the student.  In practise I found that good teachers use IWBs to be more inclusive of their students’ needs, more flexible in differentiating for different learning styles and more creative in how they design and pace lessons, but I can certainly see how they could be used poorly by less skilled teachers.

But all of this got me thinking about the value of teaching.  The value of explicit instruction.  The value of a wise teacher directing the flow of learning in their classroom.  I think it’s something we all understand is a foundation for effective learning, but I wanted to question it so that we don’t automatically abandon the value of teaching as though it was somehow “damaged goods”.  If teaching – and the quality of it – really is the big factor in creating successful learning, should we be more willing to occasionally play “sage”?  Rather that abdicate the act of teaching, have 21st century classrooms simply redefined our idea of what it means to teach, causing us to reinvent a different kind of “sageness”?

So, where is the balancing line?  In your classroom, how do you find the right balance between providing explicit teaching instruction versus making your classroom a completely learner-centric environment?  If you had to describe it a newly-graduated teacher, how would you explain the best way to find this balance?  What does it look like?  How can you tell when it tips too far one way or the other?

CC Flickr Photo Credit: Teaching Math or Something
http://www.flickr.com/photos/foundphotoslj/466713478/

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Tossing the Chalk

Maurice Cummins, IWB GuruYou may have noticed that it’s been a bit quiet here on the blog lately.  I’ve not been writing here as much as usual and I’ve really missed it!

There have been a couple of reasons for this little sabbatical, but the most significant one was the book project I’ve been working on with Mal Lee.  For almost a year now (OMG, has it really been that long?!) Mal and I have been writing a book together about the use of interactive whiteboards for education.  It’s been a huge project, partly because it’s been a lot to write – nearly 60,000 words – but mostly because it’s been an absolute journey of learning for me as we’ve written it.  I’m pleased to say that the finished manuscript finally went to the publishers this week!

In case you’re interested, here’s a little bit of background into the book…

Mal Lee is an ex school principal and he provided a lot of the insights around the management, funding and leadership aspects of implementing IWBs effectively in schools.  He’s also been behind numerous IWB research projects into IWB implementations over the last few years and has brought many of those research findings to the project.  The book was originally Mal’s idea, he cut the deal with the publishers and he sketched out the original contents and plan for the book.

I, on the other hand, have done a lot of the actual writing work, reworking a lot of the original stuff that Mal wrote as well as contributing significant new chunks of it myself.  Most of my content was based on personal experience from three schools that went through IWB implementations, talking to lots of people who teach with IWBs regularly and also from generating quite a few conversations with my PLN.  I used Twitter, Skype and other online communities to gather opinions and ideas, as well as talking to some very leading teachers who work with IWBs.

The end result is something I’m actually pretty proud of.  It wasn’t always, and there were plenty of times over the past year when I’ve really questioned the whole book project; from whether IWBs really are worth all the hype about them, to whether we were actually saying anything worth reading about.  There were a couple of occasions when I rang Mal ready to quit the whole thing, not because the task of writing was too much, but because I felt like I was completely unqualified to say anything remotely intelligent about the topic.

It’s kind of weird that I should feel that way, because the school I taught at in Canada implemented SmartBoards while I was there and I got to learn from some of their best trainers who flew out from Calgary to train us.  I also did extensive IWB evaluations between different brands and types at another school I taught at, and my current school has about 60 ActivBoards throughout the school and part of my job is to teach teachers how to use them well.  I’ve presented lots of sessions at the last two Australian IWB conferences, as well as run workshops for schools about how to use them effectively.  And yet, when the time came to actually write stuff down that other people might actually take notice of, it really felt very daunting.

As I wrote each chapter, I posted many of them up on Google Docs and asked for feedback from selected people. Some of them really pushed my thinking about IWBs. It was good that people were willing to question some of what we were trying to say, and I think it really helped to give a much greater sense of reality to the whole thing. Writing an extended piece like a book really forces you to think about what you are trying to say, and I hope that we’ve been able to synthesise all the research, advice and practical experience about using IWBs and that the overall message comes through clearly.  The book went over deadline by about 8 months, but I think it would be fair to say that the book we could have written by meeting the deadline would have been very much less useful than what we ended up with by taking the time to bring such a divesity of opinions and ideas together.

As I look through the 56,284 words in the finished manuscript, I think we did a pretty good job of it.  I feel like it’s balanced and informative with some great information contained within it.  More importantly, I feel like I can confidently say that, yes, used properly, IWBs can be great classroom tools. I was such a skeptic when I first saw IWBs about 6 years ago.  I couldn’t see how they were adding anything to the teaching/learning process, at least anything that would justify the cost and complications of using them.  I can remember having arguments with people about them, saying they were a waste of time, and were taking us back to the idea of a teacher-centric classroom.

I was keen to name the book Toss the Chalk: A guide to teaching in an interactive classroom, but the publishers thought the word “toss” might offend any potential UK readers… apparently “toss” means something quite different in the UK!  It looks like it will be published under the somewhat boring (but I suppose relatively descriptive) title, Teaching with Interactive Whiteboards.  Ho hum.

One of the highlights of the book, for me, was asking other teachers to contribute to it.  I put messages out on Twitter asking for thoughts and opinions to various questions I had, and some of the insights that came back were just brilliant.  It led to the inclusion of a whole chapter called Come Into My Classroom, where I asked eight different teachers to write me a snaphot of how they might use their IWB on a typical day.   It was insightful to hear the stories of how each teacher used the technology, in fact, as I wrote in the book…

In compiling these snapshots, a few things come through loud and clear…
There is no one “right” way to use IWB technology.  In these examples, the diversity of methods that each teacher uses to gets value out of their board stands out strongly.

Second, in all these examples it becomes quite obvious that the IWB is simply being used as an enabler for richer, deeper learning to take place.  It comes through very clearly that this is not about the technology per se, and that good teaching is always at the heart of what is taking place in these classrooms.  Student engagement, richness of understanding, creativity, teamwork and learning… these qualities are patently evident in these examples. In every case the IWB is acting simply as one of the enabling tools used to support the good teaching that takes place in the classroom.

My deepest thanks go out to the teachers who contributed to this section – Jess McCulloch, Lesleigh Altmann, Louise Goold, Tobias Cooper, Katie Morrow, Tom Barrett, Kyle Stevens and Paula White. Each of you added a unique and powerful perspective into the value of an IWB in your classrooms. Other briefer contributions were made in a different chapter by Simon Evans, Cathy Nelson, Amanda Signal and Brette Lockyer.

The other part of the book I was particularly pleased with was a section called Grassroots Professional Development which looked at how teachers are using the read/write web to create their own learning communities. Examples like Tom Barett’s 37 Interesting Ways To Use An Interactive Whiteboard, Jess McCulloch’s Interactive Whiteboard Challenge, Sue Tapp’s OZ/NZ Educators group, Ben Hazzard and Joan Badgers SmartBoard Lessons Podcast and of course, the amazing K12 Online Conference… these are some incredibly powerful examples of how ordinary teachers are redefining what it means to be a learner in the 21st century and how professional development has changed thanks to the networks of people we surround ourselves with.

Right now, the text is with the publisher and is about to go through the editing process.  I suppose I will have a bit of chasing around to do, getting clearances from the contributors, clearing copyright on images used, reading proofed chapters and so on, so it’s not over yet.  With a bit of luck, I’m hoping it will be be printed and available by next March… not quite the instant publishing I’m used to in the blogosphere!  However, for the most part it’s done and I hope to get back to my blog where I truly do enjoy writing just for the sake of writing.

To finish off, here is a short excerpt from the final chapter which I hope might give you a bit of a snapshot into the general message of the whole book…

The international research about IWBs consistently reiterates that the most important variable in improving student learning is the quality of the teaching that takes place within the school.  Although this book has tried to focus on some of the technical, pedagogical and logistical issues of implementing IWBs successfully, the point remains that none of this matters if it these are not being applied on top of quality teaching practice. It bears saying once more that an excellent teacher with limited resources will nearly always be able to provide a better learning experience than a lousy teacher who has all the latest technology.  Technology, in and of itself, is not the answer to more effective learning.  Good quality teaching by passionate, committed educators is the answer to more effective learning.  Always has been, always will be.

An IWB is nothing but a tool to assist great teachers do what they do best.  All the high praise or damning criticism you might hear about IWB technology is largely irrelevant without an insight into how a teacher is using it.  An IWB can be used as a regular dry-erase whiteboard, a basic electronic whiteboard or a dynamic digital convergence facility that sits at the centre of a media-rich digital teaching hub.  It is the teacher, not the technology, that decides how effectively an IWB will be used in their classroom.

Photo: Maurice Cummins, IWB Guru
http://flickr.com/photos/betchaboy/1435347533/