Is the interactive whiteboard now old school?

I came across some articles this week about interactive whiteboards while looking through #edchat on Twitter.  I am always drawn towards talks about inefficiencies in education because I feel like it is one profession that is so good at staying inefficient.  I have been an Activeboard user for the past 4 years, and I remember when it first came out, I was a little blown away.  I never imagined my laptop could be turned into such a powerful device for displaying information.  Then I was able to use the voter eggs for the board and thought my teaching practice had changed forever.  I appreciated these articles because they forced me to sit back and think about my use of the interactive whiteboard and reveal to me what it really is in my classroom.  


Since being introduced at my school and adopted by a few "savvy" teachers, the interactive whiteboard has been installed in every classroom to the disproval of some teachers. Ferriter writes "hanging them on walls and showing them off like proud hens that just laid the golden instructional egg."(2010) Parents are indeed amazed when they see what an interactive whiteboard can do, and the students love to use the pens to draw pictures, but up to this point, I would agree in some ways with Ferriter's views that the interactive whiteboard is really just an expensive tool that allows the teacher to spend more time standing in one place. “I’m willing to argue that even with time and training, interactive whiteboards are an under-informed and irresponsible purchase. They do little more than reinforce a teacher-centric model of learning…make presentations, give notes, deliver lectures…I ask you: Do we really want to spend thousands of dollars on a tool that makes stand-and-deliver instruction easier?” (Ferriter, 2010)

Heather Wolpert-Gawron writes on her Tweenteacher blog "while these boards were initially meant to help less-tech savvy teachers to embrace technology use, their hefty training time and prep time serves as its own gatekeeper for more than just tech tentative teachers."  (2011)  I found that using an interactive whiteboard was incredibly intuitive, and I enjoyed finding new resources to use in my beginning days.  Lately, I stick with what I am familiar with to support my lessons.  Technology has always been intuitive for me though, and I am constantly amazed at the time dedicated in my school to using the activeboards.  I wonder if Wolpert-Gawron is on to something when she talks about using all that money and time in other places to improve other parts of their teaching.  Is technology something we need to force onto teachers to use if they survived a long time teaching without it?  


I started using the interactive whiteboard a few years before the iPod touch and the smartphone and ipad, and I definitely got caught in the naive scenario of thinking the interactive whiteboard would be the game changer.  As with all technology in the classroom, the game changer is the teacher and these days schools do not have the funds to support new technologies as easily.  I know how much of a game changer the smartphone was to my personal life, and I am so impressed with the apps and technologies being developed to use these tools in the classroom.  I dream of a day when each of my students has an iPad on their desk.

"As for the future of educational technology, we must guide our purchases to reflect the world around us. We must support the learner on the go. We must support individual use, not teacher-only use. We must support inexpensive options that give us access to the most information, easily accessed and easily presented. Smartphones, (and, I believe, eventually iPads or other tablet options) permit us to assume more and more that learners have access to the same information and opportunities."  (Wolper-Gawron, 2011)

I have the fear that I am taking for the granted the so called efficiency that the interactive whiteboard brings to my classroom.  I feel like after 4 years of use, it is time for me to evaluate the worth of this device and whether it is helping to improve the learning which occurs in my classroom.

Wolpert-Gawron, H. (2011, October 3).  How the interactive whiteboard is really ed tech's laserdisk. Tweenteacher.  Retrieved October 26, 2011, from  http://tweenteacher.com/2011/10/23/how-the-interactive-whiteboard-is-really-ed-techs-laserdisk/

Ferriter, B. (2010, January 27).  Why I hate interactive whiteboards.  Education Week.  Retrieved October 26, 2011, from http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2010/01/27/tln_ferriter_whiteboards.html?tkn=Q%5BRFGmQux6XnMebDMl4nddRDutTae13KtmNE