Day 315: The Death Of A Projector

Fifty days to go in this project. I’m still, I always be will be, surprised at how well this is going. It might not always be the most interesting thing to read, but it’s been written every day…

Today a disaster occurred. The projector in my room failed. Now, there are rumblings in the education sector that all the money spent on interactive whiteboards in schools may have been wasted and could certainly have been spent elsewhere. The amount, roughly equating to £6 per child per year since their introduction (I wish I could provide a link to where I read that), isn’t huge, admittedly, but still.

The issues stem from the fact that some people aren’t using them well. They didn’t receive training for what is, honestly, a fairly advanced piece of kit. The trouble comes from an inability to produce your own activities for the boards – that leads to a reliance on other users to create them or on commercial products which drive the cost up even more. The commercial ones generally don’t add that much value to lessons in the long run either.

The biggest problem with not having a whiteboard is that I don’t really have much usable board space as the majority of a wall is taken up with it. Add in to the equation that I have a huge dry wipe board BEHIND the SMART board which I could use instead…

It is similar to the one shown in the photo here, except mine stands out from the wall somewhat.

It poses the problem also of replanning lessons for the rest of the week. Like them or not (I personally love my SMART Board), my planning is utterly dependent on a set of slides that go alongside the written lesson plans. A busy week ahead then…

Geocaching: tonight I tried three caches, finding the third one. Not a very exciting place – a small wood weaving around an industrial estate – but it’s surprising how these things can exist alongside each other. Geocaching never ceases to surprise me!

Related articles:

• Interactive Whiteboards?
• Do Classrooms Need Interactive Whiteboards?
• The long and damaging shadow of Interactive Whiteboards
• Interaction at the whiteboard
• The Rise of the Interactive White Board
• Do Classrooms Need Interactive Whiteboards?
• Module 8- SMART Boards
• Smart Boards in education.
• Interactive Whiteboards
• Interactive whiteboards!!