e-teaching The Elusive Promise Peter Kent Richardson Primary School, Canberra, Australia.

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1 e-teaching The Elusive Promise Peter Kent Richardson Primary School, Canberra, Australia. This paper was presented as part of the 15 th International Conference of the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education (SITE 2004) Atlanta, USA, March Abstract: The introduction of interactive whiteboard technology in schools produces the greatest results when it is accompanied with changed pedagogy. This paper examines the changes to pedagogy that took place at Richardson Primary School (ACT, Australia). It will be argued that this new pedagogy, e-teaching is manifestly different to the traditional pedagogies that involve information and communication technologies, in that major enhancements are made to the teaching component of the teaching and learning process. It is suggested that schools and teachers that are developing new teaching strategies with the introduction of interactive whiteboards plan and reflect in the contextual framework of e-teaching. Introduction Wilson (2003) describes learning and teaching as being married, we never hear of one without the other, like fish and chips or Brad and Jen. He points out however; teaching and learning are different things. In the context of their relationship, while not divorcing, he encourages teaching and learning to spend some time apart, develop separate interests so to speak. It is recommended that we train ourselves to talk about teaching as a discipline in itself, with its own qualities, skills and criteria for success Wilson (2003). However in the field of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in education, it seems that teaching and learning are not married. In this field one could be mistaken for thinking that teaching does not exist at all. e-learning is a well established as a concept, but why is it we never hear about e-teaching, especially in a classroom environment?. For at least the last 10 years (Gellerman 1994) interactive whiteboards have been incorporated into education institutions across the world. Briefly an interactive whiteboard set up involves the image generated by a computer being projected onto a touch sensitive screen the size of a conventional whiteboard, where a touch is the equivalent to a mouse click. It is simply a touch screen computer with a very large screen, but as described in (Glover & Miller 2002) the interactive whiteboard is more than a computer, a projector or a screen its sum is greater than its parts. (Lee & Boyle 2003) state, After noting how the technology is now being employed at Richardson, the generic term interactive whiteboard fails to communicate the immense education capacity of the tool. In reality Richardson is using the technology as a large-scale, digital convergence tool. Unlike other ICT initiatives, interactive whiteboards have been able to generate unprecedented enthusiasm from all quarters of school communities, teachers, parents and students (Lee & Boyle 2003, Glover & Miller 2001). Where the introduction of this technology has been accompanied by pedagogical change there has been reported a wide range of benefits for the education process (Lee & Boyle 2003, Glover & Miller 2001, Smith 2003, Greiffenhagen, in Glover and Miller 2000). What has generated this enthusiasm? What is this pedagogical change that is taking place through the use of this technology? (Glover & Miller 2001) describe pedagogical change that is moving from the didactic to the interactive. (Lee & Boyle 2003) in their review of the interactive whiteboard strategy of Richardson Primary School describe digital convergence within the classroom. The process of seamlessly combining a wide array ICT resources into the teaching and learning process, managed in real time by the teacher. They report on pedagogical change that is driven by both the interactivity and the digital convergence provided by interactive whiteboards. At Richardson Primary School, this changed pedagogy is seen as something manifestly new, key elements of which are distinctly different from traditional methods of teaching using ICTs. At Richardson this pedagogy is being referred to as e-teaching. Succinctly e-teaching can be thought of as using ICTs to enhance the teaching component of the teaching and learning process, using technology to amplify professional classroom skills. Using ICTs to enhance the teaching process has up until now been the elusive promise that technology has had for education since the introduction of computers into school.

2 This paper will describe the concepts of e-teaching and digital convergence as has been developed at Richardson Primary School. The paper will suggest that key elements of the pedagogy associated with e-teaching differ significantly from existing teaching methodologies associated with the use of ICTs in the teaching / learning process, and as such the concept of e-teaching provides a valuable framework within which teachers can develop a changed pedagogy to use in association with interactive whiteboards. This paper will give some brief examples of eteaching and include the impact that a whole school adoption of e-teaching has had on the wider school community, including student learning outcomes, as described by a recent review into the interactive whiteboard strategy of Richardson Primary School. The professional support structures, leadership and change management strategies in place to support the transition to teaching with interactive whiteboards, while significant issues, will not considered in this paper. These issues warrant papers in their own right. Richardson Primary School Context Richardson Primary School is a government primary school located on the southern fringe of Canberra within the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). It has 220 students, with eleven classes two are learning support classes - and a teaching staff of 14.6 (Full Time Equivalent). Richardson Primary School is one of the few schools in the ACT to receive special funding to redress disadvantage. It has an active Parents and Citizens Association but does not have access to the kind of fund raising potential of most other Canberra communities. Traditionally Richardson is not viewed as one of the sought after teaching appointments, and has a history of significant annual turnover of staff. Richardson Primary School acquired its first interactive whiteboard suite at the beginning of the 2002 school year. By the end of the 2003 school year Richardson Primary School had acquired an interactive whiteboard for every classroom, the library and computer laboratory. It is believed that Richardson Primary School is the first government school in Australia to equip each class with an interactive whiteboard. At Richardson Primary School the interactive whiteboards are known by their brand name, SMART Boards. Each SMART Board is networked together allowing files to be shared between classes. Each SMART Board has access to the Internet, although the connection into the school is slow, via a 128K ISDN line. Each class is also equipped with a scanner, 2 digital still cameras are shared across the school. The school is also equipped with a multimedia lab of 15 PCs. What is E-Teaching? (Glover & Miller 2002, Greiffenhagen, in Glover and Miller 2000) both describe the necessity of pedagogic change for the effective use of interactive whiteboards in schools. What is this pedagogical change that these authors are referring to? At Richardson the new pedagogy that has accompanied the introduction of interactive whiteboards is in many regards significantly different from past teaching methods involving ICTs. (Lee & Boyle 2003) state that the teaching at Richardson represents a near revolution in the use of ICT in schools. At Richardson Primary the majority of the gains made when teaching with interactive whiteboards occurred once it was explicitly acknowledged by the teaching staff that what was happening in the classes was significantly different from the traditional teaching methods that involved ICTs. The concept of e-teaching was developed which gave teachers a framework in which they could reflect upon and develop this new pedagogy. e-teaching is a new and evolving concept. It is not possible to give it a strict definition. e-teaching involves the use of ICTs to enhance the art of teaching. Harnessing the potential of digital technology in presenting a concept, exploring implications, placing the concept in various contexts, creating links with existing knowledge, and leading discussions that probe student understanding and allow students to take their learning in personally relevant directions. Teachers at Richardson Primary are using interactive whiteboards, and e-teaching, in all aspects of the curriculum. Like traditional teaching, e-teaching is essentially a group activity, where the group is the size of a normal class. In this way e-teaching differs from the conventional approach of incorporating ICTs into teaching programs, where normally the activities are aimed at the individual or small group (Lee & Boyle 2003, Carmona 1996). "Presentation devices are key to extending the reach of information from individuals to entire groups, large or small" (Carmona 1996) and the interactive whiteboard is an effective medium for the teacher presenting to the whole

3 class (Smith 2003) reinforce this point. In this regard interactive whiteboards are an essential teaching tool in the transition to e-teaching e-teaching is a move along the spectrum from a didactical pedagogy to a more interactive one. This is consistent with how (McCormick & Scrimshaw 2001, Glover & Miller 2002) describe the pedagogical changes that should occur with the introduction of interactive whiteboards. Students can not only interact with SMART Boards in ways that are simply not possible with a standard whiteboard, they can also interact with the content and context of the lessons by digitally capturing and manipulating their work and local environment, incorporating it within the lesson and sharing it with the group. e-teaching in the Richardson context involves teachers managing this convergence of digital information from a wide range of sources and devices when presenting, discussing and reflecting upon a concept with a class group. (Lee & Boyle 2003) state that An important feature of the teaching style that is evolving at Richardson is its similarity to the multi-media, multi-sensory, multi-faceted style the children experience with their computer games and TV. In an e-teaching context, a multi-literacy teaching and learning environment is standard. Why is E-Teaching new and significant? In answering the rhetorical question why do we talk of e-learning and not e-teaching? it could be put that teaching with a computer is an extraordinarily difficult task for a variety of reasons. Trying to teach a class a new concept using computers when there are only a small number of computers within the classroom is practically impossible. For starters you cannot present a concept effectively when all the class cannot see the computer screen. Computer labs are the other main way schools set up ICT resources, yet teachers with experience teaching in a computer lab will know just how difficult it is to teach in these settings. Gaining and maintaining student attention is a tricky task when students are sitting in front of a computer. The scope of a teacher or student to take an investigation into a particular concept in an unexpected direction is limited by the flexibility of the particular software being used. If it is possible to adapt the software, or perhaps open another program, the process of gaining the class attention, directing the class in a particular direction, seeking their opinions on the implications of this direction and making this new piece of information fit in with their existing knowledge is again practically impossible. This is why terms like self directing and self administering are often associated with good educational software. The point of this paper is not to diminish the value of computer labs and computers in the classroom, rather to point out that these resources are aimed at facilitating e-learning. The ability to use computer facilitates in spontaneous or unplanned ways, perhaps responding to an idea or suggestion from the class, is also normally limited by logistics of computer lab bookings or the drama of having to move the class. Using technology to amplify our professional classroom skills, using ICTs to enhance the teaching process is still for the majority of us a dream. (Lee & Boyle 2003) point out The individual approach encouraged by the nature of the PC does not sit readily with most teachers, as the essential nature of teaching is group based. In retrospect it should come as no surprise that after twenty years it is still very difficult to find significant ICT and education programs where ICT is integrated across most key learning areas Digital Convergence Examples of e-teaching What follows are three brief examples of e-teaching practices. These lessons represent just a taste of the concept of e-teaching. Examples involving video, animations, interactive software or the convergence of more than 2 devices have not been included due to the space that would be required to fully describe these lessons in text. Proof Read / Checking for Errors all years and ages Teaching students to effectively check their work for errors is normally a difficult skill to teach. In my experience only a minority of students look past the grade to internalise the comments or corrections on a piece of returned work. At Richardson Primary teachers scan and display on the SMART Board pieces of students work. The class, as a group, then undertakes an editing process on the work. Annotations made on the board and saved as part of this process. Through this process teachers comment that the quality of work has improved dramatically. All students want their work scanned and take pride in producing work in which other student can find the fewest errors, or no errors at all. Students who have not had their work scanned systematically proof read and check the displayed

4 work. All want to be the one to find a mistake. What was a difficult skill to teach is now a dynamic and effective class activity. Interpreting Weather Maps Year 5/ 6 Class (ages 10 12) During a lesson on interpreting weather maps the teacher simultaneously access a number of real time satellite and radar images from the Australian Bureau of meteorology web site ( Using the interactive whiteboard they could discuss and annotate the images (Fig 1). Based on their learning of weather formations the class would make predictions as to the current weather conditions at various major cities around Australia. The class then checked their prediction by accessing real-time images from those cities via web cams from each city. Figure 1:Color enhanced infrared satellite image (with map overlay). Obtained from This was one of the images used and annotated during the lesson Interpreting Weather Maps Feelings are OK Kindergarten (ages 5 6) This lesson involved discussing with the Kindergarten students the concept of feelings and teaching them ways to respond appropriately to however they were feeling at any given time. The class brainstormed on the interactive whiteboard different feelings that they might have at school. Each student was asked to act out one type of feeling. A digital camera was used to capture an image of each child while acting a feeling. These were then pasted onto a feelings page on the SMART Board, which was saved and retrieved when the need arose (Fig 2). Figure 2: Copy of the Feelings Page that was created as a result of the Feelings are OK lesson Impact of e-teaching at Richardson Primary School e-teaching at Richardson Primary, as a pedagogical approach, is the end result of what is refer to as the Richardson Strategy (Lee & Boyle 2003) for the implementation of interactive whiteboards into the educational program. This paper has intentionally focused on the new pedagogy at Richardson, e-teaching, as its development is the ongoing goal of the Richardson Strategy. However e-teaching would not be as successful without the other key pillars of the Richardson Strategy, those being the professional support structures and school leadership. These key issues have not been covered in this paper. The reader is asked to remember this when reflecting on the effects that e-teaching has had on Richardson Primary School.

5 The move to an e-teaching approach at Richardson Primary has resulted in a number of positive effects. Richardson Primary has succeeded in getting its total community, its children, parents and staff, to embrace the use of ICT in education in a manner never done by any school in the ACT. We know of no other school in Australia that can make this claim ; Richardson is the first school in the ACT, and probably Australia, where the total school community, the students, staff and parents, has embraced a new approach to the use of ICT, which enhances the holistic education of the students. There has been a significant down turn in photocopying, a trend predicted in the mid eighties for schools that is not known to have been reproduced elsewhere (Lee & Boyle 2003). The level of student engagement in the education program at Richardson Primary has been enhanced by the use of interactive whiteboards. (Lee & Boyle 2003) found that In Richardson the student reactions to the new way of teaching and learning were dotted by terms like: it s cool ; it s engaging ; it s fab ; it s fun ; SMART work is easier ; we can go back and look at earlier work ; it s like having an up to date library in your room. The parent community have embraced with the enthusiasm e-teaching with interactive whiteboards, based on the positive effects they have observed in their student s learning. (Lee & Boyle 2003) describe comments from parents including: kinders are learning at a phenomenal rate ; kids help each other ; kids are able to see their peers in action ; importance of having the visual stimulus ; the bright kids are being pushed. Standardised testing results (ACT PIPS 2003) indicate that the rate of student learning in the area of literacy has been accelerated within Richardson Primary School s kindergarten cohort, when compared to Australian Capital Territory means. At the beginning of the kindergarten year the cohort of students had standardised reading scores on average 29% lower than the ACT mean. At the end of the kindergarten year standardised reading scores were on average 9% higher than the ACT mean. Amongst the staff (Lee & Boyle 2003) found that There is a universal pride among the staff regarding what they have achieved, both collectively and personally. They found that in the past two years the group of teachers have markedly enhanced their ICT skills now wants to acquire the higher order skills to progress the program even further. While some still express reservations about their ICT capability, the reality is that collectively the Richardson staff has developed an expertise in the educational use of the interactive whiteboard technology that is probably unparalleled in Australia (Lee & Boyle 2003). Interactive Whiteboards and e-teaching Worldwide. The process of introducing interactive whiteboards into schools worldwide has been ongoing for a number of years. Richardson Primary School was certainly not the first to adopt the technology and it is likely that there are other school achieving similar results and making similar changes to their pedagogy through the introduction of interactive whiteboards. Studies of the introduction of interactive whiteboards into a number of UK schools often mention that the greatest impact is made when there are distinct changes in the pedagogy of those teaching with the boards. Like at Richardson, (Smith 2003) reports that within a cohort of six primary schools in Kent (UK), interactive whiteboards may generally be used to support any lesson. (Glover & Miller 2001) concluded that pedagogic change is essential for the efficient and effective use of interactive whiteboards. Their evaluation of interactive whiteboard use in a UK secondary school includes a series of quotes from teachers and students that indicate a level and direction of pedagogical change similar to what the Richardson community refers to as eteaching. Teacher reactions from (Glover & Miller 2001) included: it adds a whole new dimension to the way in which we can do things and with Power Point as the driving programme we are sure that we offer the students a good standard of presentation of lessons (Head of faculty of mathematics) ; the instant access to material from a variety of sources and the possibility of using pre-prepared lessons that move without apparent effort from the visual to the verbal and back again. (Head of faculty of English); the use of demonstration programmes for the whole class without the usual hustle round a monitor. (Science Teacher); the use of an approach which is up to the level of expectation for a generation which is so immersed in media that anything we can do pales into insignificance. (Humanities teacher); Using students work as a stimulus to the lesson does a lot to keep them on task. (Humanities teacher); Students learn quicker because they are able to follow the argument being set out by the teacher who can then pick up and reinforce teaching and learning about difficult concepts (Head of faculty of mathematics). Student reaction from (Glover & Miller 2001) included: Lessons were usually much more easy to follow and the teacher could go back over things if you needed it ; Classes seemed to be more interesting ; It seems to me that we couldn t learn Maths half as well if we didn t have the computers and the screens because we use them as part of the way of learning.

6 Conclusion The introduction of interactive whiteboards into schools as a teaching and learning tool requires a change in pedagogy so as to make effective use of the technology and enhance the teaching and learning process (Greiffenhagen in Glover & Miller 2001). The changes in pedagogy that have occurred at Richardson Primary School and other places have resulted in a pedagogy that is significantly different from traditional teaching methods used in conjunction with ICTs. The concept of e-teaching has been developed at Richardson Primary School to be used as a framework within which teachers can reflect upon and develop this new pedagogy, taking advantage of the potential of interactive whiteboards. This pedagogical shift characterised by e-teaching involves: The class being the focus of teaching activities involving ICTs instead of an individual or small group focus; A more interactive less didactic approach where the class can interact with the content and context of the lessons digitally through the ability to capture, combine and manipulate information from a variety of sources; The digital convergence of information from a variety of sources and devices, managed in real time by the teacher. At Richardson Primary School and other places, when the introduction of interactive whiteboards into the teaching program was accompanied by changes in the pedagogy that are generally consistent with the concept of eteaching, teachers, students and parents report enhancements in the overall teaching and learning process. The concept of e-teaching, and the pedagogical changes describes by this concept are important issues to consider during the process of incorporating interactive whiteboards into the teaching and learning process. References Carmona, J. (1996) Presentation Devices Extend Reach of Information to Entire Groups. T H E Journal (Technological Horizons In Education) 23 (6). Gellerman, E. (1994) Teleconferencing Systems Facilitate Collaboration and Distance Learning. T H E Journal (Technological Horizons In Education) 22 (3). Glover, D. & Miller, D. (2001) Running with Technology: the pedagogic impact of the large-scale introduction of interactive whiteboards in one secondary school, Journal of Information Technology for Teacher Education, 10 (3). Glover, D. & Miller, D. (2002) The Introduction of Interactive Whiteboards into Schools in the United Kingdom: Leaders, Led, and the Management of Pedagogic and Technological Change, International Electronic Journal For Leadership in Learning, 6 (24). Greiffenhagen, C. (2000) A Report into Whiteboard Technologies. Unpublished memorandum. Oxford: Computing Laboratory. Lee, M. & Boyle, M. (2003). The Educational Effects and Implications of the Interactive Whiteboard Strategy of Richardson Primary School A Brief Review, (Accessed 1 November 2003). McCormick, R. & Scrimshaw, P. (2001) Information and Communications Technology, Knowledge and Pedagogy, Education, Communication and Information, 1 (1). Smith, H. (2003): Interactive Whiteboard Evaluation, (Accessed 20 December 2003). Wilson, B. (2003) Pedagogy: What s Wrong, Paper presented at the Curriculum Corporation 10 th Annual Conference, Perth Australia, June Acknowledgements The Richardson Strategy and the development of e-teaching would not have been possible without the dedicated professionalism of the teaching staff at Richardson Primary. I both acknowledge and thank them for their efforts.