Board's IQ: What makes a board smart? Presenter: Hao-Ling Huang Advisor: Ming-Puu Chen Date: 09/16/2009 Somyürek, S., Atasoy, B., & Özdemir, S. (2009). Board's IQ: What makes a board smart? Computers & Education, 53(2),

 Page 2 Introduction(1/2)  IWB investment in Turkish schools can be seen as a part of plans to integrate ICT into the Turkish educational system, with the objective of increasing qualitative and quantitative aspects of schooling.  National educational development programs: Basic Education Program (BEP) from 1998–2006 and the Secondary Education Program (SEP) from 2006–2010.  Educational change is not a unidirectional process (Niederhauser & Stoddart, 2001).

 Page 3 Introduction(2/2)  Successful ICT integration requires linkages among various components. A lack of any components may cause the whole integration process to fail.  IWBs can be a powerful technological aid to help teachers transform the traditional classroom environment into a student- centered collaborative environment.  This research does not aim to generalize the findings to Turkey as a whole, but rather highlights the negative issues influencing IWBs’ effective use in the scope of sampling.

 Page 4 Methodology  Data were collected through online questionnaires, teacher and pupil interviews, and literature review. Quantitative and qualitative data were gathered from a sample of primary and secondary school teachers and students from various Turkish cities.  The teacher questionnaire was distributed online to 270 teachers at 45 public primary or secondary schools in 24 different Turkish cities.  The student questionnaire was sent to 2300 students at 9 schools in 4 cities; each school contained at least one IWB.

 Page 5 Findings(1/5)  State of IWB use  49 of 76 teachers (64.5%) reported that they had not used IWBs at all, even though there was at least one IWB in their school.  Reasons for the non-utilization of IWBs: - Lack of technical competency on how to use IWBs (51.02%). - Lack of pedagogical competency on how to integrate them into classroom activities (48.98%). - Lack of a school plan on the use of IWBs (30.62%).

 Page 6 Findings(2/5)  Lack of in-service training  While initial orientations using high-quality presentation materials were helpful to generate initial enthusiasm, this excitement quickly disappeared if teachers were not given further training on how to make use of this new technology (Glover and Miller, 2001).  There are five stages of technology adaptation - familiarization, utilization, integration, reorientation, and evolution (Hooper & Rieber, 1995).

 Page 7 Findings(3/5)  Lack of in-service training - Levy’s report (2002) also reveals similar observations from the students, highlighting teachers’ inexperience and incompetence with IWBs as well as the interruption of lessons due to teachers’ inabilities. - IWBs cannot bring about the advantages expected in educational settings by themselves (Hall & Higgins, 2005; Miller & Glover, 2002). - It is imperative to realize the advantages of IWBs in classrooms, primarily by providing in-service training so that the teachers can see this new technology as a transformative device to enhance pedagogic change, rather than as an extensive device to support traditional pedagogy (McCormick & Scrimshaw, 2001).

 Page 8 Findings(4/5)  Lack of support and maintenance  6 of 27 teachers using the IWBs in their schools reported facing the following difficulties: - Hardware problems, such as power cuts, low voltage, jamming of IWB’s pen. - Virus problems causing the IWB to run inefficiently. - Visibility problems because of where IWBs are located in classrooms.  71 students responding to open-ended questions about the problems brought on by the use of IWBs emphasized the following: - Hardware problems, such as broken IWB switches and pens, power cuts, low voltage, malfunction of the computer connected to the IWB, wasted time due to the slow start-up of connected computer. - The lack of printers and scanners connected to the IWB.

 Page 9 Findings(5/5)  Administrative concerns

 Page 10 Conclusion  When certain needs are not taken into consideration –such as in- service training, digital educational material, support, maintenance, and administration-related concerns – the investment in educational ICT use is likely to fall short of expectations.  Before such an opinion prevails in the public mind, and before ICT in education loses its novelty to educational actors, necessary measures must be taken by institutions to improve in-service training, digital educational materials, technical support, maintenance, and administrative cooperation.