INTERACTIVE WHITEBOARD AND GEOMETRY LESSONS IN
PRIMARY SCHOOL
Urška Bučar
Primary school Dolenjske Toplice, Pionirska cesta 35, SI-8350 Dolenjske Toplice, Slovenia
Branko Kaučič
Department of mathematics and computer science, Faculty of Education, University of Ljubljana
Kardeljeva ploščad 16, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
Keywords: ICT, Interactive Whiteboard, Primary School, Mathematics.
Abstract: Interactive whiteboards are modern technology in schools. They are especially suitable to be used in
primary schools. Some authorities already recognized that and help schools equipping with them. Now,
when a moderate number of schools are having them, minority of teachers proactively use them, while
others are waiting to get prepared materials for them.
In the paper we discuss the usage of interactive whiteboards and present our software for interactive
whiteboard that can be used in the first grade of primary school for geometry lessons. Reasons to develop
own software and results of experimental usage are given, too.
1 INTRODUCTION
Over the last 20 years information-communication
technology (ICT) has become an integral part of all
levels of education. It is used in primary schools,
secondary schools, faculties, private educational
institutions and organizations. During that period,
different ICTs emerged. Last 7 years many schools
all over the world enriched their activities by using
interactive whiteboards (Gavin, 2005).
Without doubt we can observe that IWBs are
becoming ubiquitous feature of many primary
school classrooms. For example, UK provided
extensive funds for integrating IWBs into primary
schools (Coghill, 2005; McCormick, 2007; Moss,
2007). Impressive examples are also in Australia
(Lee, 2003) and in Sweden (Markman, 2008). Some
authors also believe that IWB will become the
preferred teaching media in China (Hui-xian, 2009).
In 2007, the Ministry of Education and Sport of
the Republic of Slovenia started cofounding
purchasing of the new interactive equipment. In
October 2008 they started to supply primary schools
with the IWBs. Nowadays many primary schools
have at least one IWB, some are still lacking them.
Using ICT in schools is not obligatory. In some
schools some teachers are much more proactive by
using IWBs. They prepare guides of how to
effectively use the IWBs in the classrooms, prepare
the materials and the software, which will be
presented in this paper.
The organization of the paper is the following.
Section 2 describes IWBs, benefits and drawbacks.
Lacking of proper materials for the IWBs is
emphasized. Section 3 describes the software
Matko’s world of geometric objects we developed
to be used with the IWB in primary school for
mathematical geometry lessons in the first grade of
school. In Section 4 we present some results of the
observations we made on using our software and
Section 5 concludes the paper.
2 PRELIMINARIES
IWB is comprised of an electronic whiteboard, a
projector, an electronic pen, computer, whiteboard
operating system and software, and other
accessories. The contents of the whiteboard can be
pointed to, selected, operated, and processed directly
by using an electronic pen or by hand, depending on
the IWB’s hardware. It combines computer and
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INTERACTIVE WHITEBOARD AND GEOMETRY LESSONS IN PRIMARY SCHOOL.
In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education, pages 446-449
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electronic technology and can be seen as an
intelligent communication platform between
computer and users (Xing-fu, 2005).
With proper capacity and knowledge of teachers,
the ICT and especially the IWB can be used in all
phases of learning process. Although the ICT will
probably significantly change traditional classroom
environments in the future, in schools most teaching
is still done in classrooms in conventional ways.
Teaching is usually performed as the following four
types: frontal work, group work, work in pairs, and
individual work. IWB is a technology that supports
all types. Figures 1 and 2 show two examples of
teaching with the IWB.
2.1 Benefits and Drawbacks of using
IWB
Some benefits and drawbacks for different ages of
pupils can be found in (McCormick, 2007). Among
many benefits for the pupils and the teachers we
observed the following: interaction, collabora-tion,
ownership, involvement, individual needs, ICT
skills, novelty of experience, diverse resources,
quality resources, individual results, sharing, and
school interconnections.
As other technologies the IWBs are also prone to
some drawbacks. Mostly we experienced the
following ones: calibrating, limited collaboration,
pupils left aside, contact sensitivity, electricity
problems, and sharing resources.
Figure 1: IWB and frontal work.
IWB is a very young technology, and resources
for many lessons are still not yet developed. If they
are developed and ready to use, they are probably
licensed by companies or publishers and have to be
bought by schools or by teachers. Prices are too high
and teachers are therefore left to themselves. Last
year an initiative of The National Education Institute
Figure 2: IWB and individual work.
of Slovenia (NEIS) started to organize meetings for
teachers that wish to use IWB. The meaning of these
meetings is basic acquaintance with the IWB and
associated software, which can be seen as the first
step of using IWB in Slovenia. By Hooper and
Rieber (Hooper&Rieber, 1995) this is the first phase
from five phases of introducing the new technology.
Although many teachers are inspired with the
IWBs and their usage, now they are waiting for
proper resources supplemented with instructions
how to use these resources in lessons (syllabus). As
we can see, one of the benefits of using the IWB is
also the biggest disadvantage.
3 IWB’S SOFTWARE
IWB is always supported with software and resource
database management. Resources and materials that
teachers prepare and use depend on the curriculum
and the syllabus. Accompanied software is very
general and “only” teachers’ imagination and energy
are needed. As stated before, such resources can be
successfully used and can improve the success of
teaching (Coghill, 2005; Condie, 2007; Gavin, 2005;
Hanson, 2006).
3.1 Matko’s World of
Geometric Shapes
Accompanied by the facts that Becta research
showed 20% increase in success in mathematics
(Becta, 2007), and that IWB offers better manipula-
tion with geometrical shapes and objects, and our
aim to couple the real and the abstract world, we
decided to develop our own software for the IWB.
The software is called “Matko’s world of geometric
objects”, or shortly just Matko by the main character
(shown on figure 3). It was developed in
INTERACTIVE WHITEBOARD AND GEOMETRY LESSONS IN PRIMARY SCHOOL
447
collaboration with company Videofon, Flash and
Promethean Activ Studio are used. It is designed
specifically for teaching (learning) geometric shapes
such are triangles, rectangles, squares, circles and
geometric objects such are cubes, blocks, spheres,
cylinders, cones and pyramids. The didactical
approach in Matko is “from real to abstract”.
As a must have feature according to (Bandoh,
2000) in the main menu (figure 4) teacher can select
different scenarios: classification of geometric
objects, cube, block, sphere, cylinder, cone and
pyramid.
Figure 3: Main screen of Matko's world of geometric
shapes.
Figure 4: Main menu.
Teacher can always come back to the main menu
by using buttons on the right side of the screen
(figure 5). Each scenario has the instructions for the
teacher, like the one shown upper right on figure 5.
It is shown on the demand and teacher can choose to
use it or not. Each scenario also has a video showing
real objects that introduce pupils to learning subject.
Figure 6 shows a screenshot from the video where
Matko classify objects based on their shapes.
After introductory video teacher can use
exercises that are offered in Matko. Figure 7 shows
some of these exercises where pupils classify and
sort objects, search for objects behind curtain, play
the memory game, search and name the objects.
Figure 5: Menu buttons on the right and the instruction for
the teacher.
Figure 6: Accompanying video.
Figure 7: Different exercises in Matko.
4 OBSERVATIONS
The usage of IWB and Matko was tested in primary
school Dolenjske Toplice. 32 pupils aged from 6 to
7 years in the first grade were introduced the IWB.
At first, by using resources and materials that
teacher personally prepared with the IWB’s
accompanied software. At the same time, in primary
school Preska pri Medvodah 18 pupils of control
group were taught the same lessons by conventional
methods, without ICT. Pupils from Dolenjske
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Toplice were highly motivated, more than pupils in
control school. Some of the advantages and the
drawbacks mentioned in subsections 2.1 were
observed.
Later pupils were introduced Matko’s world of
geometric shapes and the main character Matko. All
geometry lessons (in both schools) were performed
in 14 days which is the maximum number of days
for geometry lessons at that age. After these lessons
pupils were individually asked 18 different questions
about IWB and about the Matko. Overall result was:
that pupils liked IWB and Matko (especially the
games as they called the exercises),
they reported that they saw much familiar and
new things at the same time in movies (video
sequences in scenarios),
they liked when teacher read the instructions,
they liked to repeat the actions which were
shown in video sequences, and
the most liked exercises were the hidden objects
behind the curtain.
In both schools an additional observation was
done before and after geometry lessons. 50 pupils
were orally tested for their prior and learned
knowledge. Discriminative analysis showed that
both groups of pupils were statistically comparable.
Analysis of the post test showed that pupils that used
IWB had better results. On average results were 22%
better, specifically by objects 27%, by shapes 16%,
and by curves 22%.
The results are close to the results in (Becta,
2007) and (Condie, 2007) what proves that IWB is a
learning improving technology. In addition, as in
(Bandoh, 2000) pupils were well focused when IWB
was used.
5 CONCLUSIONS
Interactive technologies and especially IWB are
technologies that enrich teaching and learning
activities. Over the world a lot of schools are already
equipped with IWBs. Same is in Slovenia, although
too many schools have none or only a small number
of IWBs, or they even have them in classrooms
where teachers never use them. There is an initiative
that helps teachers about basic IWB usage, but there
is still a lack of proper instructions for individual
lessons (syllabus), resources and materials.
For teaching the geometry lessons on geometric
shapes, objects and curves in the first grade we
developed the IWB software called “Matko’s world
of geometric shapes”. Software is still in developing
phase but already exhibits improvements in learning
outcome of pupils. In the future, the lessons in
Matko will be expanded to all curriculum contents
for first three grades of primary school and extended
analysis including more pupils will be done.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Authors would like to thank to company Vodafon.
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