While I was at one of my interviews last week, I was supposed to "chat" with the superintendent for 15 minutes. One of the topics we discussed was his frustration with buying new technology and having the teachers use it like old technology. His example was SMARTboards being used as overheads. How do you get others to use all of the functions of the new technology? Perhaps their boards were so new that the teachers were not very comfortable using them, so they used only the features they were comfortable with? Maybe they were still learning to use them? Since I don't have all that much experience with interactive whiteboards myself, I couldn't comment on the learning curve for them.
By the way, I guess that I did ok with the superintendent because our 15 minute chat turned out to be 45 minutes long. The interview team finished speaking with the next candidate before the superintendent was done speaking with me.
I share his frustration and I've talked to some principals who do as well. TIME seems to be part of the problem -- time to experiment, time to develop curriculum, time to visit other teachers' classrooms and see what they do.
ReplyDeleteIn our district, everyone is supposed to post their lesson plans for the SMART or Interwrite boards on the intranet, so people can share, which is a step in the right direction.
I think we can help teachers find resources -- some of which are right under our noses. TumbleBooks have interactive games with some of their titles which can be played on the interactive white board -- which is still a level down from disecting a virtual frog, but it is a beginning.
My strategy for this was to plan a lesson collaboratively with the teacher and go into the room and do the smartboard portion. Often they became more intrigued when they saw how much the kids enjoyed it. I then started them on baby steps to encourage more use!
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