Apparently there is a new phenomenon sweeping our schools these days. Enter the 'Interactive Whiteboard'. This is the latest piece of wizardy designed to make learning in the classroom easier for today's up and coming Einsteins.
According to this article, they are not as popular and brilliant a conception that was first thought. Out of curiosity, I Googled 'Whiteboard' and discovered that they are not "cheap as chips". Far from it. They are bloody expensive.
What is wrong with the tried and tested blackboard and chalk? Call me an old fart if you like, but it presents the facts just like these new fangled whiteboards at a fraction of the cost. Does this mean that today's little angels can no longer expect a well aimed chalk smacking them between the eyes? No more blackboard rubber bouncing off their delicate craniums? Alas, I think the nanny police are at work once more.
When we have reached the age of kids sharing books, if indeed they have any at all, how can the expense of these state of the art gizmo's be justified?
Just another example of the world gone mad in the nanny state currently called England.
N.B. Are we allowed to call it a whiteboard, or indeed the old blackboard? Surely this implies racist tendencies?
6 comments:
Don't get me started, Krip! I have downloaded the software for Smartboards so that I could get to grips with whiteboard operation myself. As a supply teacher, I don't get in-service training. They can be very useful if used truly interactively, but as a replacement for a blackboard, then they certainly are an expensive toy. Your post inspire me to write one of my own re board dusters and chalk btw! I have linked it to yours.
the whiteboard [what i know was formerly spelled whyteboard] is a replacement for the good ol blackboard in schools here too. the reason? they didn't want em spoilt younglings to breathe in chalkdust if they did their rounds of blackboard dusting.
like as if they'd drop dead instantly. i miss the smell of freshly-opened box of chalks..
I am a secondary English teacher and I have an interactive whiteboard in my room. The gear cost just under £8000. Department annual capitation is £4000 for all the books, paper, pens, pencils, videotapes, photocopying that 870 children might need in a year. I had no choice. Technology is our God now - you can't dispute this God's power or you will be laughed at and treated like an intellectual leper.
That has always been the problem in education, YP. For as long as I can remember, the pressure has always been on teachers to conform to the latest 'in thing', which, more often than not, was something which had never been backed upi adequately by research anyway. If teachers didn't comply, they were often sidelined when it came to promotion.
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