Writing on the wall

I’m not sure how to categorise the SMART Board. Is it an ICT tool? Or a platform for tools? Or both?

I attended an introductory session on SBs today and thought I might offer a few first impressions couched in a broader consideration of what is effective learning.

It seems to me that the uses for the whiteboard are as broad as you want them to be. You can view and annotate ready-prepared documents, link to web pages or video files, write up points from class discussion and capture and save a screen shot.

I can see enormous potential for primary school students and younger secondary students. However…

There is a worrying potential to get caught up in the ‘fun features’, believing your class is happy simply because there is technology at play, and failing to realise that behind you sits a wall of bored students. I am talking here about the physical construction of the classroom.

 The old classroom of teacher-at-front and students-facing-teacher was effective for the didactic model of learning. The new classroom should instead scream collaboration as soon as students enter it. And no teacher should not be positioned in the one spot, front and centre, for a lesson.

The key seems to be to ensure all the students are highly competent in using the SMART Board and that they do use it every time it is turned on. They need to feel it is their space up the front too, rather than a privileged ‘teacher space’. For example:

Capturing class discussion

If students' discussion, and capturing it, is so important, then students have to be given the chance to get up close and hands on. Students should be able to get out of their chairs and gather in front of the board. As they discuss, they each have the chance to add conceptual words to the board. This way, discussion is a process of mutual construction.

This could be done as a whole class if they are mature, or in groups while the rest of the class is on a rotation of other activities. The SMART Board enables each group to save the screen shot of their discussion points for wider class reflection.

Student presentations

Another way to destabilise the physical hierarchy of the classroom is to hand over presentations on the SMART Board to students as often as possible. Giving students the opportunity to take on a teaching role is known to be one of the most powerful forms of learning for them. The SMART Board offers students some interactive and enjoyable ways of presenting. They have the scope to make it as simple or as whizz-bang as they like. That flexibility is very appealing.

At worst, the SMART Board can stop a lesson in its tracks, with a teacher fiddling away in isolation with different shades of highlights and technical issues. At best, it can create a similar scene to those well considered and executed community art projects, where everyone is centre stage, working and the end goal is tangible and shared.

Prezi fresh!

Two weeks ago I looked at the benefit of PowerPoint slides for the classroom: quick and easy to create. However, PowerPoint has obvious disadvantages, not the least being that the medium of PowerPoint is on such constant rotation, the message itself is tainted. 

I argue that this alone is reason to scout around for other tools.

A colleague recently introduced me to Prezi when we had to put together a presentation. She is a tech wiz and had no idea there were people like me who had never seen a Prezi before, so there was no prior demo. I was decidedly unconvinced as we laboured over the creation of our presentation. The editing process was fiddly and it made no sequential sense to me.

Then she hit play.

See, PowerPoint is like a book, each slide loaded with text that gives way to the next visually identical slide. The trajectory is linear. But thinking just isn’t like that. Thinking is circular, it moves in and out of ideas and back again, it moves between the specific detail and the general or conceptual. And this is what Prezi does. It makes connections; it constructs knowledge.

As a tool for communication, Prezi has great possibilities. It is dynamic, intuitive and visually logical. It uses trajectory as a means of emphasizing the message. However, Prezi offers additional learning benefits for students when creating their own media presentations.

Unlike in PowerPoint where you can rapidly dump a mass of words and loosely group material in separate slides, Prezi forces you to make more complex editing decisions. The limited word capacity requires you to make decisions about what is important, what is the core, conceptual message. As well, the non-linear trajectory enables you to make interesting decisions about connections between concepts and what degree of emphasis you want to give various concepts.

A basic PowerPoint slide could be effective in getting younger students to describe concepts and to apply them to specific situations. A Prezi could enable older students to engage in genuine higher order thinking, to explore interrelated concepts in a more rigorous way.


An interesting lesson would be for students to create a presentation in PowerPoint and then transfer it into Prezi. This could be the basis for a class discussion around the different mediums and how many of the new media tools require different forms of reading, writing, viewing and even thinking.


(See also this site offering tips on creating a great Prezi.)

I am student hear me roar

I hear a lot about the Student Voice.  But how many schools actually provide platforms for this, as opposed to pay lip service or provide a platform that is highly mediated by teachers or the school executive?

I have been reading Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed,  which calls for a radical response to what he calls the Banking Model of education, where teachers (and the school system generally) ‘deposit’ knowledge into passive students. 

Freire advocated a model of learning that was developed within the cultural contexts of students, which based curriculum resources on students’ everyday concrete environment and experiences, and which were utilised to develop students’ learning. The process was 1) highly dialogic, primarily consisting of egalitarian class discussion, and 2) emphasised action – new knowledge was implemented by the students in a meaningful way, and which had an impact on their communities.

This is a highly authentic model of the Student Voice: it recognises the need for students to ‘speak’ in order to learn and it also enables students to utilise their voice with genuine agency. Freire’s students were poor, largely illiterate ‘workers’ (he was, obviously, Marxist) in Brazil. How might this transfer to the first-world, secondary school environment? We need a platform that students themselves can use: 

MailChimp!

This is a free, online service that enables you to design and distribute email newsletters. Unlike a traditional email format, it essentially delivers a web page that is embedded in the email. This includes the features that a regular web page offers: images, static text, URL links or links to external social media such as Twitter and Facebook.

Distribution is via subscription, controlled by the owner of the newsletter. The owner is also able to view subscriber activity such as the number of newsletters delivered, the number of unique and repeat access to newsletters, the number of users who accessed links within the newsletters, etc. These are displayed within clear graphs and maps and unique parameters can be set, to glean more specific information.

Back to Freire-ian plans...

There is real scope here for student-led newsletters for students. These could be developed out of a specific class as part of a unit of work OR tapping into interest groups across the school (the development of a new newsletter may even be the instigator for such a group).

Because students must opt to subscribe to the newsletter to receive it, they can be informed of it, and given the opportunity to help produce it or submit content, via the school-wide formal newsletter. 

Students could form an editorial committee and make decisions on content and learn how to take responsibility for creating the newsletter. This process would probably be supervised by a teacher, who would assist in developing students’ skills, capacity and knowledge and ensure access to resources. Also, the teacher would focus on creating a sustainable autonomy amongst the students, with the hope that they will eventually be able to train and mentor any new members of the group. It seems important that editorial decision making rests with the students.

This process would develop numerous skills in students. The need to produce a polished newsletter for a wider readership would require the development of technical, writing, editing, proofreading and design skills. In particular, the brief format of the newsletter would require them to make often difficult decisions about content and design. 

Also, a regular distribution would require students to develop skills in time management, delegation and teamwork. They would need to manage the administrative elements relating to subscriptions, usage and communication. They would need to be able to canvass and implement feedback.

The process would also develop certain capacities. Some or all of the students would need to have a capacity for leadership. The students would need to learn to communicate tactfully with students who submit content. They would need to work harmoniously and productively with each other.


The process would have to be effectively managed and supported at the school level and the spirit of the venture – giving a voice and agency to students – would have to remain at its core.

Students writing for other students on topics and issues that are important to them and in their own words: I think Freire would approve. 


And of course the question must be answered: why MailChimp over a hardcopy newsletter? Because students are ON THE WEB. And we all love the Unread mail notice in our inbox, hoping it will bring something interesting.

Finally, though, the impact must extend beyond the core editorial group. After all, Freire sought nothing less than a transformation of society! One idea for a newsletter that might have a broader impact:

A monthly book review 

The review format puts students at ease because anyone can write one – there is no sense of right or wrong, just what you think. A review also has utility. It gives fellow students information they can use.

To allow multiple contributors within a brief space, the newsletter might include single paragraph —or even single sentence or word! — reviews of books, or a group review of a book. It might also include multiple elements, such as illustrations of books, or the much loved book lists (My Top Ten Books or Five Best Books for When You Are [on a deserted island/etc] or Five Best Books About [Love/Friendship/War/] or Top Five [Sci-Fi/Romance/Goth/Fantasy/Non-Fiction] Books, etc.)

This idea has the potential to create, no matter how small, a committed community around a love of books and reading. Every new subscriber to that newsletter, provided they read the material, is another student engaging with literacy and literature in a way that is meaningful and engaging for them. (Freire would definitely be happy.) If it gets one student scuttling off to the school library to hunt down a book, it’s a success.

And the Librarian, if he/she isn’t already leading the group, will be sending you love letters.