I've been a bit slack of late and I know that a blog is only as good as the contributions that are put in it. It's nearly been a week since the ActivBoard has been installed in my classroom. It's a first on a few levels - one, it is the first one of six here at our school and, I'm prepared to be corrected, it is the first ActivBoard to be installed in a state primary school here in South Australia. We did a fair bit of research before settling on this particular model as most interactive white boards here in Adelaide are of the SmartBoard variety. In a quick history thumbnail, I received a phone call last year from a guy at a company called Electroboard who distribute SmartBoards in South Australia to come and do a demo at our school. Our education department DECS had a deal with them as the preferred model to support our internet provider Educonnect with their video conferencing capability. Well, he came out, did his demo to me with our teacher-librarian checking in from time to time. Based on that, we decided to put in a submission for the 2005 school year budget to use with our Problem Based Learning program. My boss came back to me and said, "What is this interactive white board thing you want here?"  It seemed most of the staff were oblivious to the world of interactive whiteboards until ...............
Earlier in 2005, our school leaders were invited to Canberra to accept a $20 000 National Excellence In Schooling award. While the leadership team were there, they got to check out the name most dropped in the Australian world of interactive white boards, Richardson Primary School.  Finally, they knew what I was talking about. But my boss was talking about ActivBoards, not Smart Boards. It turns out that school started with SmartBoards but nowadays, all of their classrooms sport ActivBoards. After viewing a presentation from Peter Kent (Richardson's deputy on leave - currently working as Education Consultant for Australia's ActivBoard distributors) they were convinced that a board in every classroom at our school was a perfect way to follow our school vision of "using up to date technology" for learning.
So the rest are getting installed later this week. Keep watching this spot for more information as we travel down this very exciting road.