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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c B. (2010).

INTERACTIVE WHITEBOARD AND GEOMETRY LESSONS IN PRIMARY SCHOOL.

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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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