Lit Review: The Digital Learning Classroom

I read an article called "The Digital Learning Classroom: Improving English Language Learners’ academic success in mathematics and reading using interactive whiteboard technology." It was written by Omar S. Lopez and published in a journal called Computers & Education in May of 2010. Here is the link if anyone is interested: Link to Article. I chose this article because I'm interested in ELL students and because I've yet to see these interactive white boards (IWB) but already want one!

The article focused on how the use of this particular technology could close the gap between English Language Learners (ELL) and non ELL in math and reading. The students in his study were 3rd grade and 5 th grade students in a town in Texas with a high ELL population. The reason he chose this group is because if you don't pass the Texas state tests in those grades, it's grounds for retention.

The author then took the Texas educational principles and tied them to how the IWB couild help foster these principles. Just to give you an idea, he writes " The first principle of effective instructional practice states that students’ learning builds on their previous experiences. Teachers can use IWBs to link students’ prior experience with new learning, for example, by bringing their home culture, interests, and experiences into the classroom through digital images, music, and multimedia. The result is that teachers can use IWBs to create learning environments where students are able to construct their own knowledge as teachers scaffold students’ learning with new content knowledge." I thought this was such a good thing to include because any new thing that's being done in the classroom needs to be tied back and justified to the curriculum.

The next part of the article went on to explain that there's not a lot of emperical data to compare this research considering the technology is so new. He then went on to explain how he would collect data and evaluate scores between the digital and non digital classrooms. In the end, he said there is evedence that IWBs did help  ELL students make some gains.

I guess I would have liked to read more about the certain activities that were done rather than about what the board could do. It also talked about the importance of teacher training with the technology and how to properly tie it to curiculum. For example, many teachers that first recieved these IWBs only used them as fanceyer overhead projectors. They didn't actually change their lessons to make them more interactive for the kids. Not the ones in his research of course, he made sure they were up for the proper use of them:-)