Celebrity educationalist Marzano‘s talking up the interactive whiteboard, something I’m ignorant of, but something that looks pretty Disney, pretty cool.
Mr. Hopper in the video demonstrates its use in the classroom, and one can tell he’d be somewhat engaging as your whiteboard equipped teacher, what with his effervescent video style and all.
In his clear-headed post, Harry Keller punctures neat holes in the coolness of whiteboard technology.
In my opinion, all the benefits that Dr. Marzano presents can be achieved without using an interactive whiteboard. Less expensive alternatives exist. The boards use up valuable classroom space and have a very high cost. If you gave each of the teachers in a school the money that might be spent buying (and maintaining) an IWB, would they spend it on one, or would they find better uses for the money? More to the point, if you gave them the alternatives of an IWB system or a projector along with the difference in cost to spend on other classroom material, which would they be most likely to choose? In these days of declining school budgets, let’s spend our education dollars wisely.
Makes me wonder how the data-driven, results-oriented, standards-based and smartly-goaled Robert Marzano could get so bamboozled. Suivez l’argent.
The Wikiness 
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