Educating the Dragon

To begin a little background: About 14 months ago my principal asked me if I would be interested in an Interactive whiteboard and become the school representative on the Sitech Champion Schools programme. I readily agreed and was delivered a projector, Interwrite board and school pad.

As I became familiar with the system I quickly picked up how useful the school pad is for the classroom teacher. As my class were 7 year olds the board had to be mounted quite low and the projector angled steeply for my children to take full advantage of the Interwrite board. As a consequence I produced a rather large shadow over the board whenever I stood and interacted with it, therefore I sat back, to the side of the board with my school pad in hand and allowed the children to fully interact with the board, safe in the knowledge that I held the pad and could effortlessly correct mistakes and errors.

This system worked well as both I and my class became familiar with the software and developing tools that were provided by the Interwrite board. However, as class discussions developed, talking partners and group working and responding via the board there came a time when I felt I had to let the pad go. Into the pupils hands. That safety net for the both my class and myself was gone. They had to fix the mistakes themselves. More power to them, as it turned out. I thought that multiple pads within the classroom were a must, but how many?  Garry, via Jenny, kindly allowed me to hold onto a few extra ones, 5 to be exact, a total then of 6 in my class.

Here are a few anecdotal notes concerning the multiple pads issue. Remember I can only speak for my experience within a junior classroom however I am convinced what I am about to share holds true for the majority of the primary age phase:

It is good for the teacher to be away from the board, no giant shadow and no towering over the pupils as they sit on the mat. Therefore the teacher, with school pad in hand has the ability to take control of the computer without returning constantly to the Laptop or desktop.

For the class to engage fully with what is happening on screen, particularly during discussion time or group work an additional pad is very useful, which can be passed from student to student as the discussion flows and they are able to add their own ideas without moving from there place.

What I have found with only using 2 pads (the 1^st being monopolised by the classroom teacher) is that there can often be a lag time between a student speaking and sharing their initial ideas and being passed the pad to contribute ‘on screen’. That is when I introduced further pads.

I will now assume that the classroom teacher holds a pad, as I did for the remainder of the experiment. 

With 5 pads in the students hands for discussion time was quite problematic in that control of the cursor flittered between users as multiple individuals sort to include their own ideas simultaneously, as you know the cursor is only controlled by the fastest ‘on the draw’. Where that number of pads came into its own was when group work divided the class into areas around the room and those groups were then asked to feedback onto the board in a plenary session.

I experimented with 5,4,3,2,1 pad during the ensuing months and terms. Four and even three pads caused the pace of lesson to slow and the focus of the lesson to move away from the Learning Intension and onto an issue about someone not taking their turn properly with the pad, or some such.

The optimum number of pads, I found was three:

·         It enabled the teacher to hold onto one and have 2 others in the hands of students.

·         2 pads for students enabled one to be passed to the next user while the first was in use.

·         3 pads during plenary group work were sufficient to be passed amongst the groups with minimal disruption and delay caused to the flow of the class as a whole.”