Is an interactiv whiteboard purchase a good investment for a school?

February 10, 2011 4:35 PM

My school is contemplating an interactive whiteboard purchase. I think this is a bad idea. Convince me that I am right (or wrong) please!

The funds for our bi-annual fundraiser have been ear-marked for technology as this is a big wish of the parents. An interactive whiteboard was mentioned as a possible big-ticket item; this primarily seems to be driven by a feeling that parents go to other schools for yours and they see these, so if we don't have one, we will be at a disadvantage. However---

1) We had a presentation from a rep from one of these companies come give a seminar. She did not do anything during this presentation that could not be accomplished by a laptop hooked up to an overhead projector.

2) I have had some experience with these boards and I know there is potential for interesting uses. But none of my other co-workers are very techie and I don't see any of them putting in the time to really learn these other ways.

3) My experience with these boards has been that they are still a first-gen sort of technology. They can be glitchy and temperamental. There is a far, which I think is legitimate, that such a purchase might eat up our tech support budget really quickly.

4) Since the students at our school are mostly K-3, they would not be able to easily reach the whiteboard. Several of us (myself included) think we might be better off buying a bunch of iPads and mounting them to tables for the kids to use.

I myself use the iPad very often when I teach, and would be comfortable training other staff in its use. But I think the boss is still stuck on this idea of 'other schools have it and it's something big and shiny for parents on a tour to immediately see.' Whether that's worth $5000 or not is her call, of course, but my feeling is that we could spend the money better on other things.

Does anyone with more experience in this sort of thing have any advice in this situation? Is it really just a fancy way to replace an overhead projector, or is there some jaw-droppingly useful application for it that I am missing?

posted by JoannaC to Technology (26 answers total)

I don't know much about them, but isn't the "killer app" for them more in the area of distance learning? It wouldn't seem, as you say, that they do much you couldn't do with PowerPoint if all the students are in one classroom and no collaboration with off-site persons takes place.
posted by randomkeystrike at 4:39 PM on February 10, 2011

But none of my other co-workers are very techie and I don't see any of them putting in the time to really learn these other ways.

I work at a vocational school that got a bunch of these a few years ago. They are next door to the town high school that also has some. My feelings are a lot like yours.

1. I see the technology as pretty alpha, the SmartBoard software loads a lot of crap on whatever computer is running it which makes the computer feel boggy.
2. the white boards are not real white boards to you wind up losing a white board [teh tech lady hollered at us to not write on it with whiteboard markers, even though technically you could]
3. other than the sales rep, there hasn't been a lot of training and our non-tech savvy teachers are not using these smart boards pretty much at all. They have laptops and projectors and these get some use but most of the classrooms can't even get very dark and so there's limited utility for these things without some other infrastructure investment
4. training time gets spent having people show up and tell people how to use these Smart Boards. It's lackluster in and of itself and I think now there's pressure to get some use out of the stupid things even though no one finds them particularly useful.
5. They're wicked expensive for what they are. You'd really be better off getting a bunch of netbooks, ipads or even gaming consoles which would be more fun, arguably as useful for teaching and wouldn't take up space that a functional pievce of equipment could otherwise be in.
posted by jessamyn at 4:41 PM on February 10, 2011 [2 favorites]

No, they're bullshit.

How about something much neater:

Get a projector, laptop, and wireless tablet for each classroom. The teachers can then hand students the tablet and stylus at their desks so that they can solve problems for the whole class without actually standing up in front of everybody.

This was literally the best use of technology I ever experienced in my schooling.
posted by Netzapper at 4:44 PM on February 10, 2011 [11 favorites]

useful:
-they allow you to write many pages of notes without constantly erasing.

-you can save these notes so that kids do not need to copy stuff down. this doesn't really matter for k-3 though.

-you can prepare boards of diagrams or lessons so that instead of re-drawing everything for each class you can draw everything ahead of time.

not useful:
-k-3 students will probably be too distracted by how cool the thing is (this also applies to ipads)
-it can become a crutch
-if the kids aren't taking notes then they tend to tune out (unless you make the lesson interesting enough–which would probably not even require a whiteboard)

the others not being good with technology should not be an issue, since once the thing is plugged in and the program is open, it works like a regular white-board.
posted by ooklala at 4:52 PM on February 10, 2011

Everyone I know who has gotten them has been disappointed.
posted by The Whelk at 4:54 PM on February 10, 2011

We have one for students to use in the college library where I work, it never gets used at all, total waste of money and space.
posted by mareli at 5:14 PM on February 10, 2011

No. Had them at college and hated them. Have them at work and don't use them. And this is coming from a guy who LOVES using a white board to design and explain.

Spend the money on other things .

I was thinking "no" until I saw K-3 and then I thought "hell no". Anything any teacher will put on a board would be easily preconceived. That is my opinion from a non-Ed profession, so actual teachers of that age group may disagree
posted by zombieApoc at 5:15 PM on February 10, 2011

We had them in our study rooms in 2003-2004 when I went to college. I really liked them for group study/homework sessions and studying for exams. But we were in college, and I'm sure the experience would be much different for a kindergardener.

I don't remember them being buggy or disappointing.
posted by hootenatty at 5:15 PM on February 10, 2011

I used to draw on them in the CS labs and when I'd look at the screen it *might* have 1/2 of what I drew
posted by zombieApoc at 5:23 PM on February 10, 2011

[warning: long. Stuff like this is my job]

1) Then frankly, your presenter was shit. We have three teachers who use them. 2 of them have had them for years and they couldn't teach without them. The key is integrating the use of smartboards into the curriculum. One of those teachers got them because they wrote up an entire year's curriculum as to how they'd use the smartboard. That is selling its use in the classroom!!! Smartboards can do significantly more than a simple laptop and projector can, but you need a teacher who knows what they're doing to show you first-hand.

2) This is very important, really. We have a 1:1 laptop program and it's a constant effort of pushing teachers to get on board and to integrate. It's not that they're not willing, but rather that it is indeed a waste of money if the technology won't be used- hence the need to continue adapting and pushing. And you are right about the training. If teachers aren't willing to put the training and time (properly using a smartboard does take time to learn!), then it is a waste of time.
Speaking of training, we hired a technology integrationest a while back. This has made a world of difference, seriously. While I'm personally good with technology, I've never been a teacher, so working with teachers on applying it to their curriculum isn't one of my strong suits. We have teachers who are good with technology, but they don't have enough hours in the day to do both jobs. Thus the middle ground- somebody good with technology and teaching who can teach teachers. The thing is, this has tremendously helped teachers who were afraid of technology actually check their e-mail. And write e-mails. And enjoy it. That may not sound like much, but it's all about training training training to make teachers now afraid of whatever technology ya'll get.

No matter what you propose, just make sure it includes training!

3) Just how much experience do you have with them? All technology can be temperamental. We've had pretty good luck with ours working. The biggest issue is embedding Flash on the macs, but hey, it's flash on macbooks. Overall, I'd say the technology is as strong as the computer the notebook software is installed on.

that such a purchase might eat up our tech support budget really quickly.

DING FRICKIN' DING. Seriously. First off, part of the answer depends on what ya'll already have? Years ago, when I first started as a technology director, I was all about the smart boards, due in large part because of the reason parents thought it'd be good and it looked flashy!! However, after looking at the fact that a) we didn't have projectors in all our classrooms and b) we have outdated technology in other areas and c) talking it over with other level-headed, forward thinking people, I came to the conclusion that my budget had better utility with spreading it out rather than spending it all on a smartboard. For 5 grand a piece, we're talking 10 projectors. Or 10 workable PCs/5 new Macs. Depending on what your school's technology infrastructure is, there may absolutely be a better place to spend.

However.

You need to present alternatives. I appreciate input from teachers & staff on technology, but general bitching only goes so far. The input that goes the farthest is that which provides practical alternatives. In this case, you need to provide an a/v alternative to really get people to listen. I suggest a) projectors in every classroom if you don't already have them and/or b) Document cameras. Last year, all of our elementary (K-3 here) teachers got them and at first I was skeptical wondering if they were the best use of money? But after a year, I have no doubt they were/are a very wise investment and are very practical for a wide assortment of use. They are a) dead easy for teachers to use. Like all schools, all of our teachers aren't technogeeks, but they all have no issues using docucams (eliminating a huge training issue with smart boards) and b) much cheaper. They can range from $50-$500 for school use and c) that have greatly enhanced a teacher's classroom management and education capabilities.

4) I'm skeptical in general of iPads in the classroom. They're meant for media consumption, whereas I tend to look at a student's schoolroom technology as a means to facilitate media creation to further their learning. Kind of like technology meant for entire classroom is consumption (projectors, docucams, smartboards), whereas pieces student access individually should facilitate creation. That's just me, and I wouldn't take much stock in this last opinion as I'll probably end up being sold on iPads next year anyways.

etc) If your school really does consider iPads, contact an Apple education rep ASAP. They should be able to demonstrate their utility and give you school school references to check out, allowing you to talk directly to educators rather than just a sales rep.

etc 2) I want to reiterate training. A large aspect of that is a teacher's willingness to care. All other things aside, smartboards rock in the correct hands, hands that care and want to use one. If a teacher doesn't care to use a smartboard, absolutely yes it's a $5000 waste. If you can't convince your school not to get one and decide not to try, perhaps meet them at middle ground to at least do the smart thing: Only get them for teacher(s) who will want to learn and use them. Require the teachers to write up a year's worth of curriculum to get one. That way they're already invested time and are showing that yes, they are willing to invest the time. Yes, that will take them time, but $5000 is almost not an insignificant line item in a tech budget, and thus some real show of desire is required.
posted by jmd82 at 5:31 PM on February 10, 2011 [5 favorites]

All this "new fangled" technology is not a substitute for good teaching. Class time is wasted when the technology doesn't work. A lot of times, installing a smartboard means losing a lot of (regular) board space. The smart board that I have used (a few years ago), only accepted one input (stylus) at a time. Said smart board also became "out of date" quickly. Also, will all of the students (especially the younger ones) know better not to write on the smart board with a dry erase marker?

Not that you asked, but I think 5k could be better spent on some really neat stuff for science lessons.
posted by oceano at 5:32 PM on February 10, 2011

I'm skeptical in general of iPads in the classroom. They're meant for media consumption, whereas I tend to look at a student's schoolroom technology as a means to facilitate media creation to further their learning.

This is a myth. iOS devices are great for media consumption AND creation. There are oodles of great writing, note taking, illustration, painting, charting, diagramming, task management, photo editing, presentation, and music creation apps for iOS.
posted by Scoo at 5:48 PM on February 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

We're looking at smartboards at work, and there's a HUGE difference between them. One brand we looked at was, like you said, first gen, glitchy and fairly useless. It needed to be calibrated constantly, and you couldn't really write with it, as your own body obscured the projection and the sensors. The other one we looked at was awesome, and kind of made our wall into a giant ipad...I had a ball playing with it, modifying PDFs, writing, drawing.... that one could be a great tool in the classroom.

I'll check the brand name when I go into work tomorrow.
posted by Caravantea at 6:03 PM on February 10, 2011

My friend is a high school teacher and utterly loves her smartboard. She uses it constantly and claims it is way less buggy and complicated than a laptop hookup. She is young but not too techie.

Again, high school teacher, caveat emptor for younger kids.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:07 PM on February 10, 2011

The thing I hate about stuff like this is it creates a level of dependence between your organization and a private company that requires the regular flow of funds in one direction. It becomes a perpetual budget item and if you stop paying, you have, so the saying goes, an extremely expensive paperweight. No technology is 100% reliable, especially when it's new and you'll be continually dependent on them to keep the damned thing running.

Unless of course you have an IT staff that can absorb the extra work.
posted by klanawa at 6:13 PM on February 10, 2011 [2 favorites]

I've seen some really great uses of interactive whiteboards (my direct experience is high school, but they were used in the school's lower grades, too.)

However, *one* interactive whiteboard in a school is not perhaps the best use of your money (unless you treat it as a test case, with the planning/assumption that you'll get more down the road once people have a chance to explore it/see what can be done.)

The reason is that it takes teachers some time, practice, training, and revamping of what they're teaching to make effective use of them. If you put the board in one teacher's room, only that teacher and their students will have regular interaction with it. If you put it in a general access room (that can be reserved), teachers may not have time/access to prepare lessons that make good use of it. Both have some practical problems that really need to be addressed to make good use of the purchase.

(That said, if you have a library, or a tech lab space, or something else like that where kids are scheduled regularly, that can work if the person in charge of that space is really interested in using it. They can show of what can be done with it while teachers come with their classes, and teachers will - assuming there is neat stuff going on - eventually get interested in using it themselves.)

For bang for your money, plus ongoing usability for a much wider range of teachers, the projector + dedicated tablet idea is a really good one: much wider applicability and flexibility. Alternately, something like inexpensive video/still digital cameras with a classroom machine to work with files on might be very useful - teachers can take pictures of classroom work, do short videos to illustrate a point, etc.

In terms of height - there is some flexibility in terms of mounting height: the only trick is finding a height that works for the students *and* for the adult teacher. You've solved that for blackboards/regular whiteboards already.
posted by modernhypatia at 6:14 PM on February 10, 2011

I just left a company that was a dealer for the Panasonic line and we sold a lot of them to the local school district bundled with software designed for use in education (RM Easiteach, if you're interested).

All in all, I was impressed with the hardware and software. The teachers and kids that used them had very good things to say about the entire experience. We sold them on a mobile stand with a short-throw project attached to the stand. Calibration was rarely if ever an issue in that setup since the whole thing functioned as a single unit.

The big caveat that I would put out there is the age you're looking at. Kids in the K-3 range just aren't tall or coordinated enough to make good use of most of it. For that age group, a good laptop and projector and some quality curriculum would be much more effective, in my opinion.
posted by ElDiabloConQueso at 6:20 PM on February 10, 2011

My stock answer for technology is: if you have to ask, then you don't need it. It sounds like there is very little it does that other existing, cheaper tools already do. Adding equipment to a school (or any organization) is adding another thing for someone to configure, maintain, fix, explain, support, plug in, etc. I don't see how something like this will improve the QUALITY of instruction for the students.

On the other hand, if the fundraiser was specifically geared for bringing in technology, you will have pissed off donors if you don't buy the bells and whistle gadget.
posted by gjc at 6:50 PM on February 10, 2011

We have them at our university, but they turned up one day without any training, and without people even being told about them. No one knows how to use them, and even the technologically competent people are a bit scared of them. The teachers who are still scared of such technological marvels as laptops and wireless keyboards are not going to use them no matter how much training is on offer.

So I'm sure it is really essential to gauge the amount of interest and competence before spending that sort of money. And if possible, reserve some of the earmarked budget to pay someone to give a couple of training workshops.
posted by lollusc at 7:00 PM on February 10, 2011

Response by poster: Thanks for the answers, everyone. My past experience with them was as a computer teacher during a summer program, where it *was* a little helpful or demonstrating tasks to students. A computer with an overhead projector would have been just as helpful, though. I used the board because the room had it.

As far as what we have so far, we have one classroom set up as a 'lab' where other classes can book it when that class is away at a specialty. It has enough badly aging and barely working Dell PCs for half a class to use simultaneously. We also have six Macbooks which can be signed out as needed, and which do get used. And we have me, the lone teacher with any techie training, who is using her own personal equipment with the kids :) Fwiw the boss has already told me that they *will* be buying at least one iPad with the funds---one for me, so I don't have to use my own personal one. But my situation is a little different because I am a language teacher, so I am using it in ways that the classroom teachers might not be.

Personally, my wish list would be to trash the next to useless Dells and get a bunch of netbooks. We'd be able to afford enough for a whole class set, they are small enough that we could fit this in the same space as the tower desktops which only serve half the kids, and it would not matter that they have tiny keyboards because the kids are little too :) Then with the rest of the money, I'd buy some iPads. But of course, this will not be my decision :) As the lone techie teacher though, my opinion will carry some weight so I appreciate the feedback.
posted by JoannaC at 7:11 PM on February 10, 2011

jessamyn writes "the white boards are not real white boards to you wind up losing a white board [teh tech lady hollered at us to not write on it with whiteboard markers, even though technically you could]"

A decent smart board shouldn't have this problem. Or at least the ones we purchased could be used as a regular whiteboard.

If you want something flashy that would actually be used an elmo and projector is awesome. All the utility of a overhead projector plus you can project objects and hardcopy like books. At the university I worked for they got way more use than smart boards (though those got some use too). One thing that can make a smart board more useful is making it portable by mounting it on a stand with casters.
posted by Mitheral at 7:37 PM on February 10, 2011

Since our classrooms are already equipped with document cameras and projectors, we purchased Mimiobars, which turn any real whiteboard into an interactive surface. They can be mounted with Velcro so that they can be moved from room to room as needed. You gain the functionality of the interactive whiteboard without losing your regular whiteboard. They are about half the price of a Smartboard or Promethian board. They also come with the option of purchasing the interactive clipboards. The teachers have liked them so far.
posted by tamitang at 9:06 PM on February 10, 2011

I sell Panasonic interactive whiteboards. They're great, in the proper setting. In a K-3 classroom? I'd try to talk you out of it, really.
posted by xedrik at 9:22 PM on February 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

I have one in my classroom. It works well, but what I do with it could be done with a regular projector as well. The best part about it for me is that it gets me in front of the class when demonstrating software as opposed to sitting back at my desk with a pc+projector setup.
posted by davey_darling at 9:34 PM on February 10, 2011

I used to think they were great.

The local college (where we had a service contract) installed these things. Every week we'd get a call because some kid had decided to swing from the overhead bracket, or draw on the screen in sharpie, or somehow break the hardware.

So... the college didn't like it for the same reasons we did.

The other problem they had (which may be irrelevant, depending on the tech) is that this one allowed you to draw on the whiteboard and have it tracked by the onscreen side. Except the (expensive) pens kept going out of sync and made a horrible buzzing noise that the kids could hear (or claimed to hear) but the teachers couldn't.
posted by sodium lights the horizon at 4:28 AM on February 11, 2011

I spent five years working in (language) schools equipped with IWBs. I taught adults and children using them and was also responsible for training and troubleshooting. jmd82's answer is excellent and shows real understanding of the technology, which I'm afraid some other comments don't.

As modernhypatia said, I'd suggest that you either equip all classrooms with them or forget it. (I suppose you could buy one on a trial basis, but only if you're seriously planning to buy the rest later.) They can really come into their own when teachers are able to share resources, which only works if everyone is using them. For evidence, note people above saying 'we have one of these and it never gets used.' (emphasis mine)

I understand that K-3 means ages 6-9. That's actually an age that really enjoys playing with many of the features of an IWB. You want to get one that's adjustable height, such as the ActivBoard +2, seen in action here. You can't really see from the picture, but it can be set up to go virtually to the ground for younger kids, higher for older ones or normal height for adult use.

If the rep you spoke to wasn't able to demonstrate compelling teaching activities, it suggests that they probably sell to the education market as a sideline and make most of their sales in the corporate sector. There is at least one IWB supplier (Promethean) who focuses primarily on education and you might find them worth speaking to.

I didn't find them at all temperamental, but perhaps that's the platform I was using. The main tech issues were with the projectors rather than the IWBs. The actual boards should last a decade or more without maintenance (ours did). There's not a lot of tech you can say that about.

Training is vital, although you can cover all the basics in an hour and a lot of the interesting stuff in half a day.

But should you get one? If you can afford to equip every classroom without cutting back in other areas, they're great. But from what I understand of your proposed use (in one room, for special occasions, instead of replacing outdated PCs, in a setting where computers have been allowed to go wrong and not be repaired), it sounds like it wouldn't be the wisest purchase.
posted by Busy Old Fool at 11:26 AM on February 11, 2011