The first revolutionary teaching tool — the humble blackboard — found its way into classrooms back in 1801 and had a profound impact on the nature of teaching over the next 200 years. The blackboard became synonymous with the traditional classroom and, along with shiny red apples, is still seen as a stereotypical symbol of education. The interactive whiteboard — or IWB — has the potential to be the second revolutionary teaching tool. Just as the blackboard was seen as a key part of nineteenth- and twentiethcentury classrooms, the IWB has the capability to become synonymous with the new digital classrooms of the twenty-first century. Despite its relative newness, the IWB exhibits the same capacity to fundamentally change—and indeed revolutionise—the nature of teaching.
In the same way that the old-style blackboards were a technology that could be used in traditional schools every day by all teachers, interactive whiteboards are already displaying their facility to be used in this ‘every-day-by-every-teacher’ way in our emerging digital schools. Because of their capacity to become an embedded part of a modern classroom, the IWB may just serve to be the catalyst that finally moves schools away from the traditional paper-based model towards a more integrated digital mode of operation. The traditional paper-based school has existed in more or less the same form literally for centuries, but we are starting to see the beginnings of a shift as schools all over the world start to look for ways to maximise the potential of digital learning and take advantage of the evolving and exciting educational opportunities this digital world brings with it.
However, we need to remind ourselves that this is still just the start of the revolution. The real challenges for teachers at this point in the development of digital classrooms are to see the great potential that lies ahead, to master the tools and the mindset to begin claiming that potential, and to collaborate with their colleagues and students to effectively use these new tools for teaching in a digital world. The IWB has all the characteristics for being a potent tool in this educational shift.