For instance, the Holy Trinity CE Primary School and St John’s CE Primary in the UK have successfully achieved whole school implementation of interactive whiteboards. The key driver behind the implementation was to develop ways of sharing information and knowledge both within and between schools to ensure continuing skills development. Regular and central use of interactive whiteboards was a central tenet of the implementation strategy.

PROMETHEAN’S SOLUTION

The schools chose Promethean’s Activboard because of the education-rich resources in its Activprimary software. As a direct supplier to schools, Promethean was able to deliver on-site training at each of the schools by its TLAs. They ensured that teachers had a good grounding in techniques they could immediately apply to classroom activities. These skills were then further disseminated to other teachers within the schools.

As both schools were using Promethean Activprimary software, this sharing of ideas and materials could be extended to inter-school exchange, with teachers in both schools regularly feeding through new materials to one another as each school developed its own bank of flipcharts. Most recently, teachers have collaborated to share expertise on developing multimedia resources, such as ‘talking class books’ created using the interactive software. A number of these whiteboard resources are available to other Walsall schools from the Walsall Education website and they are also loaded onto the online Promethean resource area.

ADVANTAGES NOTED BY TEACHERS INCLUDE:

• Ability to use powerful visuals to bring lesson material to life
• Increased attentiveness in class, particularly from previously restless children
• Excellent pupil response to the technology,with children enjoying the more active and dynamic nature of lessons
• The ability to move backwards and forwards between flipchart ‘pages’ means teachers can recap on stages of processes or calculations and are not limited by the space available on a traditional board, where once material is erased, it cannot be recalled
• Effective viewing solution for looking at websites or other software, avoiding crowding children round a small computer screen

Commenting on the transformation of lessons through use of the technology, Jill Haigh, a teacher at St John’s CE Primary says,“Interactive whiteboards really are being used all day in all subject areas. It’s an incredibly versatile resource and has transformed lesson delivery.”