Boards Get Brains, Chalk Vanishes

David Cohn  06.09.05

NEW YORK -- Third graders at Columbia University's elementary school may never know the painful sound of fingernails scratching on a chalkboard. That's because the dust-covered board that normally would be the focus of their classroom has been replaced by a giant, touch-sensitive computer screen.

All across the country, chalkboards are being ditched in favor of interactive, computer-driven whiteboards that allow students and teachers to share assignments, surf the web and edit video using their fingers as pens.

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"It is a must-have technology," said Shawn Mishler, director of communications technology at Columbia's privately run elementary school. "My dream school would have 7-foot-diagonal, in-wall units in every classroom. That, however, requires a lot of in-wall space, which is not practical in Manhattan."

During a recent visit to the school, students in a third-grade class used the board to demonstrate solutions to math problems. The children drew on the board with their fingertips and explained to the class how they came up with their answers.

As each child sketched their answers, the solutions were saved as separate files on the teacher's computer. The 8-year-old students were eager to use the board and show the class what they had learned.

"It really helps with motivation," said Eliza Bang, the class teacher. "As a platform for encouraging group work, it's amazing."

Bang uses the board to display a wide range of learning materials on her computer, from web pages to video clips. It is also used as a lunch-time reward for students: The children watched Black Beauty on the same screen that was used earlier for geography.

"It helps kids build the big picture and learn the meaning of almost anything," Bang said. "If a kid wants to research boats they can do a PowerPoint presentation, a Word document or they can do a movie or slide show to show to the whole class."

Interactive whiteboards can be found in more than 150,000 U.S. classrooms, adopted by schools in New York, San Diego, Miami-Dade County and the rest of the nation's 25 largest school districts. The technology is also growing internationally, with a presence in 75 countries.

Interactive whiteboards are made by about a dozen manufacturers, including Numonics, PolyVisionand Promethean.

"My speculation is over the next three to five years you'll see an interactive whiteboard in every single classroom," said Nancy Knowlton, president of Smart Technologies, maker of the popular Smart Board interactive whiteboard, which claims a 60-percent market share.

"Kids have Game Boys, Xboxes and all these fun interactive things outside of the classroom," said Knowlton. "(The Smart Board) matches the experience that the kids are having out of the classroom."

Blackboards date back to the 1800s, but interactive whiteboards let teachers work through computer-savvy lessons impossible to do with chalk. Instead of chalk, students and teachers use their fingers or inkless pens to write and draw onscreen, or as a substitute mouse cursor to control a connected computer.

"A student asked if a worm had a brain. So I was able to do a quick Google search that had a diagram of an earthworm," said Bang, who often uses the internet to teach her students.

But she said the real virtue of the interactive whiteboard is in showing students how to use the computer.

"Instead of handing a kid a laptop and saying 'good luck,' it's nice to be able to model something for them," Bang said.

And because the system works like a computer, most teachers have little problem picking it up right away and using it to teach their students.

"That is part of what is ingenious about Smart Technologies' board -- it is immediately familiar," said Columbia elementary school's Mishle