February 2008 — News

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Improving Instruction with Interactive Whiteboards (on the Cheap)

by Dian Schaffhauser

The Dennis-Yarmouth Regional School District in South Yarmouth, MA faces obstacles not uncommon to many school districts: poor state testing scores, declining enrollment, and a diminishing budget for classroom resources. But that hasn't stopped Lory Stewart, director of instructional technology, from doing everything she can to squeeze out the money necessary for bringing interactive whiteboards into as many classrooms as possible.

Although it's too early to tell yet, she said she believes the district will see a marked improvement in its middle school math scores as a result.

Stewart describes the Cape Cod district's student population as diverse and highly transient. About a fourth of the population changes every quarter. "We have very opposite ends of the spectrum financially.... Real estate values are very high, but we have students who are very poor--who live in campgrounds in the summer and hotels in the winter."

Much of the challenge in meeting its annual AYP--adequate yearly progress--is owing to poor test scores among the district's special education population. "We're not bringing them along as far as we should," said Stewart.

A Math Epiphany
The district's adoption of a new approach to teaching math started when Stewart attended the annual Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference three years ago. She sat through a session about interactive whiteboards, which showed the use of RM Math Framework, math software from RM Education, a U.K. company.

"I was wowed," she recalled. "I asked a few questions. I got up. I walked out of the room. I stood outside the door for 10 seconds. And I turned on my heel and went back in and sat down for another session. It completely captivated me."

An understanding of its power occurred for her, Stewart said, when a 45-degree acute angle was shown up on the screen as part of the demo. "It's flashing to me in red. Then all of a sudden, up comes the rest of the circle in blue, flashing the arc around the balance of the circle. The light went on for this 57-year-old woman. An angle is only that portion of a circle. It's all working on the circle being 360 degrees."

She returned to work and told the director of instruction, "This [is] the best thing I've ever seen in my life." They requested a Web demo by the company, which happens to have a United States office 20 minutes from Stewart's district offices.

Then a group from the district visited middle school math classes in another district that had adopted the software that same year. "We came home that day," said Stewart, "and said, 'OK, that's the route we're going too.'"