Hmm Jenny.. I'm not so sure
What started me on this line of thought was a paper in the Economic Journal
New Evidence on Classroom Computers and Pupil learning by J.Angrist and
V.Lavy in the Economic Journal October 2002
The evidence suggests the contrary - strongly, and points out the
opportunity cost involved. As I went on to say what is the the opportunity
cost of an Electronic Whiteboard? - a hell of a lot of other resources.
I am very interested in the behaviour of Economists. Sam Brittan is forever
telling us to analyse ourselves with our own tools.
It seems that even with strong evidence against, we cling to original
hypotheses no matter what. Ronald Coase has a lot to say about this tendency
and thinks it is valid - and that many discoveries are made by refusing to
believe the evidence!!!
Whilst Friedman has taken the Baconian line of dismissing a hypotheses once
evidence exists. One way around this is the logical positivist method -
anybody making an argument must state their backgrounds and biases first.
Hence - a person whose job it is to provide computing in the classroom is
likely to suggest its useful (and they may be right of course) - thus their
argument can be assessed in that light.
You might have seen the guy from Wales winning the teaching award yesterday
- his classroom was like the USS Enterprise. But as far as I could see he
used his whiteboard to run a quiz - well at the end of the day it is just a
quiz and the same learning could be achieved with scraps of paper.
It seems from my chair that when a school is about to spend £5000 the
question should be, what learning can be achieved with this £5000. Not.
"lets have a whiteboad because so and so has one" or "it will look good on
parents evening". £5000 is 10 years budget for our department.
Maybe someone is doing some work on this somewhere? But I think if I was
head I'd spend £1000 on training the teacher to how to make use of the
whiteboard first before buying it. This is akin to the development economics
argument of sustainable development. From what I have seen to date they get
used as big TV screens and for 2 lessons a year on breakeven charts.
|