Australian report supports global research on SMART Boards and 1:1 laptops.

The longitudinal DER evaluation 2009-12 led by Dr. Sarah Howard from the School of Education at the University of Wollongong has been completed and is available online at http://www.dec.nsw.gov.au/about-us/how-we-operate/national-partnerships/digital-education-revolution/rrql/research

The final report was written in 2013 and concluded that that the long term impacts related to changes in teaching practice. Also a recent article in the Australian Educational Leader reported on the long term impact of the Digital Education Revolution.

http://www.dec.nsw.gov.au/documents/15060385/15385042/DERNSWEvalImpact.pdf

What is interesting is that the report is consistent with the work that was published by Filigree Consulting in January 2013 which indicated the importance of combining  one to one  lap top implementation with Interactive white boards to gain the best outcomes for student achievement.

The teachers in the NSW Case Studies “spoke about changes in their practice particularly around the use of interactive white boards. In regards to lesson preparation,

“Teachers reported that while they may not always require students to use laptops in the classroom, they were using theirs for lesson preparation and for lessons using interactive whiteboards. Findings show that teachers most frequently “develop instructional materials” and “research and develop lesson plans” using a computer and different pieces of software while online focused tasks, such as maintaining a website and sharing teaching resources online have shown steady increase over the past three years. Teachers across all KLAs report increases in use of laptops and computers to prepare for lessons.

 

I prepare lessons mostly using SMART Notebook – that’s all the interactive stuff. I use it to showcase – connect it to the SMART Board and whether it’s to access YouTube, whether to show students how to do a certain activity…”

In regards to the use of interactive white boards the report indicated that “access to an interactive whiteboard was found to have an impact on teachers’ use of laptops in their teaching. Trends in the 2011 data found that teachers had limited access to an interactive whiteboard and thus their use of the laptops was restricted. However, the 2012 data has highlighted that increasing installation of interactive whiteboards in the classroom has influenced how teachers deliver lessons.

Yes, it has changed [my teaching], also my delivery, especially now that I’ve got the interactive whiteboard… Because I had the SMART Board, I made up a PowerPoint [for] everything that was talked about in the reading comprehension – there were pictures, there were YouTube clips – so it was a different style. Things that I’ve been doing for the past few years are now changing since I’ve got that…”

 

It is obvious that educators both in Australia and globally using high level s of collaborative technology with best practices are more likely to report positive results on a range of education outcomes.