Friday 14 May 2010

New book on interactive whiteboards: Thomas & Schmid

Thomas M. & Schmid E.C. (2010) (eds.) Interactive whiteboards for education: theory, research and practice, Hershey, PA (USA): IGI Global. ISBN: 978-1-61520-715-2.

Interactive whiteboards (IWBs) play an important role in language teaching, especially in the UK, where it is unusual to find a school that does not have at least one interactive whiteboard. Most schools now have several interactive whiteboards installed in their classrooms. See ICT4LT, Section 4, Module 1.4, where we take a look at the use of IWBs in whole-class teaching and where other publications on IWBs are cited.

This new publication by Thomas & Schmid (quoting the publicity) “emphasises the importance of professional development, credible educational research, and dialogue between teachers, administrators, policymakers and learners. This book intends to guide and inform the process of technology integration in education, introducing valuable case studies for educators interested in present and future IWB technology.”

On the whole IWBs have been embraced with enthusiasm by teachers of foreign languages in the UK, as shown in my small-scale investigation, How effective is the use ICT in language learning and teaching? which I conducted in the autumn of 2008.

But IWBs have not been without their critics, for example Scott Thornbury, whose provocative contribution to the IATEFL 2009 blog inspired this thread (May 2009) in the ICT4LT blog: “IWBs are useless. Discuss” (Quoting Scott Thornbury).

What do you think?

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