I did a recent Webcast on it, and even folks who use the boards and LOVE them understand that they are ONLY a tool. I’m much more worried about those who are not tech savvy who see these things, and thing by their very nature, they will change things, whereas some of the big IWB users would like to see teaching transform, not just how it’s presented.

The Prezi stuff is mostly on twitter so not easy to suss out. I saw a couple pro-Prezi comments, but I have seen others snark on it besides myself, and you.

There was a thread about IWBs at CR 2.0 about how “transformative” IWBs were. Lots of folks arguing against them, OR talking about what really mattered. My take-away from that discussion was, you have to have the kids use the darn thing, NOT just the teacher. The more the kids are touching it/the controls, the more “interactive” and transformative it is.

Frankly, I don’t think the companies sell IWBs well. I think they may be selling it to the same teachers who think WordArt, slide transitions, and animations make their PowerPoint “better”. I had a preso at my school, and told the staff I was definitely “neutral” on it. They saw the possibilities (and it was some of our better teachers), but I don’t think the examples they used showed how powerful it could be.

Strangely, I don’t see the edublogosphere of one mind on IWBs. I think they are MUCH sexier to non-techies because they are so “accessible”. I hear more about IWBs with glowing eyes from admins in my district, etc. than from blog posts. If folks are looking at IWBs I’d strongly recommend looking at Marzano’s presentation at CUE, but listen to all the caveats, and think about what they mean. I pointed some of them out here. There are plenty of folks constructively pointing out the pitfalls of IWBs out there, you just have to read ’em.

Administrators, and others need to understand if teachers are crappy, this won’t make them good. If they have horrid visual skills, this will just make their lessons blingy and awful, and if they are using it just for direct instruction it’ll backfire at that eventually. I don’t think you, I or, others are saying IWBs are without redeeming value, but rather, they may not be ready to use as a universal teaching tool for all educators.

If you use powerpoint, haven’t you wished you could write on the screen? Correct an error, add another example, show that you subtracted 3 from both sides of the equation for the student who still hasn’t picked up on that.

Yes, often. I’m glad I can do all that without incurring the cost of a SMART board.

(I should mention again that heckling the SMART board crowd wasn’t on my top ten list of priorities for this post.)

(2) How is a smartboard a web app?

I don’t think anyone would say honestly they “make good presentations so easy”. (‘Life is pain, highness, anyone who says differently is selling something.’) They’re just a tool; they can’t teach for you. The making the good presentation is the hard part, but not where the energy is focused. I think that was the point of this post.

It’s the teacher that matters. As usual.