Interactive Whiteboards in Maths

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This afternoon I made it to Ross High School to visit Tracey and the rest of the department. As ever, I was made to feel very welcome, and was again struck by the skill and professionalism of my maths colleagues.

I chatted to Tracey about the November 3rd meeting of maths teachers at Ross, which is going to be an opportunity to share our experiences using the board in groups. I suggested that groups should post summaries onto a wiki as they went along. So we went ahead and set one up, which you can see here.

Later I saw Tim Schmitz using Google Maps do introduce work on distances, and then at the end of his lesson playing Tetris (tm) on his board with the class (lots of hands on for the pupils) - inspiring stuff! I also popped in to see my old mate Alan Cox for a few minutes, before a brief appearance at the DM.

My brief session at SETT went quite well I think. I spoke about how I've been using the Activote pads for formative assessment in my classroom, and gave out the voting pads for the audience to play with. Nothing particularly new about this, but I did emphasise a few points that have helped me to be successful:

• Keep it short and sweet - don't put your pupils through a set of 20 votes in one go!
• Get their names in the system - pupils take the whole thing more seriously if they no that their votes are being recorded with their own names.
• Don't EVER show the results with names! The whole point of electronic voting systems is that they avoid exposing the failings of pupils to their classmates.
• Have fun! These things are great fun to use, so don't be too po-faced about it.

Before going to SETT I asked my S1 class what I should say about the boards and voting pads. They said:

• They make maths more fun, and you learn better when you are having fun
• Some people wouldn't want to come up and write on an old whiteboard but everyone wants to write on the new boards
• They are good because they let shy people answer questions without being embarassed
• Some people don't like to ask for help, but with the votes the teacher can find out who needs help

I was flabbergasted by these replies. Go S1!

Tomorrow I'll be heading off to SETT. I am doing a 30 minute slot in the Education Village Learning Zone B from 15:45, so please take a wander in my direction (if you haven't already disappeared to check into you hotel by then!). It's going to be a very "hands on" session, so come along if you fancy giving the whiteboard or the voting pads a shot without being hassled by an annoying salesman in a cheap suit.

As usual, I'll also be giving out free Open Source CDs. This year, I'll be giving out a "live CD" distribution of Edubuntu. You can put this into any Intel/AMD PC or laptop, boot up and get a glimpse of the delights of Linux, without having to mess with your operating system or hard drive at all.

This afternoon I met with Ewan McIntosh then Karen Robertson. I've written a bit about my fascinating meeting with Ewan here.

I chatted with Karen about what I'm going to be up to on Wednesdays this year. We checked up about the ActiVote installation issues that I've mentioned before - apparently most schools are still waiting to have the devices installed in all schools. Departments need to put in requests to the IT help desk to hurry this up!

I had the pleasure of visiting the Dunbar Grammar maths department this morning. I was made very welcome, and even given a doughnut!

The whole department had some non-contact time at the start of the day, so we spent my visit discussing the use of the boards, and sharing some tips and tricks. I was particularly keen to show the department how to use ActiVote, so we opened up the case and gave them a whirl. I hope that my demo has given them the confidence to go ahead and use them with classes - although they are apparently only set up for use in one room! Unbelievable!

Thanks to Alice (at least I think it was Alice !) for pointing out to me a better way to draw angles - I had been doing it with 2 lines, whereas Alice pointed out that I could draw it freehand then use the shape recognition tool to straighten it up - much nicer!

I also passed on a CD of Teachers' TV maths videos that Paul Goodall had kindly given to me when I was in PL last week.

This afternoon I'm off to Haddington to meet with Ewan McIntosh then Karen Robertson.

What a great day! On the first day of my one-day-per-week secondment to "support the use of interactive whiteboards in maths to improve learning and teaching" I visited Preston Lodge High School in the morning and Knox Academy in the afternoon.

Callum and Linda (the Principal Teachers) were both most welcoming, and I got a chance to help out in quite a few classes over the day. Thanks to both of you, and to all the other colleagues I met.

Today impressed upon me just how skilled and professional the maths teachers of East Lothian are. I was particularly impressed with the way that formative assessment techniques have become second nature for many teachers. It was a somewhat humbling experience. What do I have to offer these folk? By and large I spent the day gathering up ideas and encouraging folk to share the quality resources they had produced. I did though, manage to offer a few handy hints of my own, and also to pitch in and deal with some questions from pupils about pie charts!

Unfortunately, I only got to see the ActiVote pads being used once. This is partly because they have apparently still not been set up in all classrooms yet. If this is the case then it is a terrible waste. In the lesson that I did see, the teacher made excellent use of them at the start of the lesson to do some recap/starter votes on simplifying algebraic expressions. The multiple choice options had been carefully chosen to pick up some common errors. Once pupils had voted, their teacher asked them to volunteer explanations. Once the correct answer had been identified, she asked "could anyone explain where they think someone might have gone wrong to get one of the other answers?". I think that this opportunity for pupils to reflect upon where errors arise - without anyone having to admit to having made a mistake - is really powerful. This is, of course, down to the skill of the teacher rather than just the technology.

The first stage in the successful use of this technology is for us (staff and pupils) to become familiar with it. From what I saw today this is well under way. Sometimes we are doing this whilst working in new and different ways, sometimes whilst sticking to a more traditional style. These are both OK. As a speaker at SETT said several years ago, about the process of change brought on by the introduction of new technology, users often start by using the new technology to do things in the same way that they always used to. This is fine and normal. Then, as they become more confident, and provided they are given support and time, they begin to explore the news ways of doing things that the technology affords.

This is a model of change that resonates strongly with my experiences over the years. I therefore hope to be able both to help to develop confidence and to support the creative exploration of the potential of the boards. From what I've seen today, though, I don't think that my colleagues are going to need me to give them ideas - the flow of ideas seems to be mainly in the other direction!

My last post said that I was visiting Ross and PL tomorrow (Wednesday). This was wrong - it's actually PL (am) and Knox (pm). Ross will be seeing me next Wednesday, when I'll also be visiting Dunbar. I didn't get a chance to arrange a visit to Musselburgh with Fiona at the meeting last Friday, but hopefully I can see them the Wednesday after.

All the maths teachers in East Lothian got together on Friday to hear about E-Starters. I was really impressed. It's been on my computer since the beginning of term, but I hadn't really taken the time to explore what it could do.
I'm guessing that many maths teachers across East Lothian may be in a similar situation with their interactive whiteboards. Some colleagues said to me on Friday that they were using the whiteboards for particular activities, but not for their usual writing-on-the-board stuff. It is absolutely not my role to put pressure on staff to use their whiteboards if they don't feel it's appropriate, but I'm hoping that if I can do what Matt Dunbar did on Friday - show folks how they can get the most out of their boards - then using it all the time will be a no-brainer for them.
This Wednesday is my first day on the job. I'm going to visit Ross and Preston Lodge, to get a feel for how people are getting on. I'm really looking forward to these visits. I know a lot of the staff already, and it'll be a chance to catch up with good friends as well as to meet some new faces.

My esteemed colleague Mr Stebbing got the chance to use the Activote system with his class for the first time this afternoon.

It took him a bit of time to set things up correctly - mainly because the class lists I used to create the user database were out of date - but once he'd got this sorted it went very well.

Amongst other things, he asked the class whether or not they would object to his showing their names on the screen beside their answers. He had no intention of doing so, but was interested to see how they felt about it. Over 40% of the class said that they would not want their answers to be revealed. This was an S4 credit/general class.