Implementing the Interactive Whiteboard: A First Step

I must admit, things started out less-than-stellar. When you’re working with technology, it’s bound to happen. Two teachers spent the first ten minutes of class overcoming technological difficulties. Throughout this time, the children led each other in songs, and later one of the teachers read a poem:

If the fish is a baby, the ocean is its mother.

If the athlete is a baby, the stadium is its mother.

If the student is a baby, the school is its mother.

The simple repetition of the lines, again and again, brought the students’ attention back to the classroom. How wonderful! Of course, M. Ndour, the leader of this, our first interactive whiteboard lesson in Senegal, is not new to education. He has been a “chalk-in-hand” teacher (as they say here) for the past 35 years. And now, in his 36^th year, he is setting down the chalk for a moment to pick up an infrarouge pen.

The lesson gets started with very little difficulty now, and the first activity in this reading lesson is to read the projected text, silently. Students’ unconscious mumbling fades off as they stare at the screen and its bright colors and clear words. A minute later, they are called back to attention by Mr. Ndour.

“What do you see here?” he asks the children. “What words are describing this pretty little room?”

Hands go up, one by one, and each student ventures an answer – “pretty!”, “little!,” “group?,” small!”

“Now,” Ndour instructed, “work in your groups to write down words that you don’t know. First work independently, and then talk with your group members to help define words that one of you may already know. Lions group, you’re together! And elephants, together! And antelope, together. And so on.”

Faithfully, the students turned downward toward their slates and began grinding their chalk away on a few new words from the text. As they finished, they looked up one by one at their group members, confused about this next step. Group work in third grade is a new concept for them. Should we talk aloud? they seemed to be saying to each other. We usually get in trouble for that, don't we?

And thus the work turned toward the front, as Ndour prepared to start calling on students. As soon as he held out the infrared pen, hands shot up into the air so fast that feet quickly left the ground for sheer inertia! “Monsieur, monsieur!” they started crying out, before Ndour could even ask a question.

“Now, listen and sit,” he reminded them patiently, “or you will not be able to use the new board.”

And so they sat, wiggling impatiently, and were called on individually to identify a word or circle a different part of the text they had just read. The class ended in yet another song, students’ voices echoing off the tin roof in anticipation of what was next.

This is the start of a developing pedagogy. The language is changing; there are group names now where there was nothing a week ago. New tools are being used and their significance understood; the infrared pen is recognized and its functions are already second-nature to the students. There are different and more developed pedagogical supports; the book page that they didn’t have a week ago is now there for all the class to see. It is not perfect, it’s not the summit, it’s not revolutionary material ready for the Apple convention – but it’s a first step, and a fantastic one at that.