Roundtable on the interactive whiteboard (Part 1)

During the 2010 AQEP congress, which was held in St-Hyacinthe from November 3 to 5, an interesting round table allowed four guests as well as participants to discuss the topic of IWBs and other technological tools in class. Today: presentation of the participants and the issues discussed.

This round table was an initiative of De Marque, a company well established in educational technology, which represents the interactive whiteboard Activboard, but which is also interested in content and activities related to IWBs in general (Editor's note: De Marque is also the publisher of Infobourg).

The participants :

The moderator was Simon De Jocas, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at De Marque.

The guests were:

• Pierre Poulin : primary school teacher for 17 years, especially in 6^e year. He created the class of his dreams, at the Wilfrid-Bastien school of the CS de la Pointe-de-l'Île, a technological class of 21^e century, which became his doctoral research subject (see in particular the article An iclass in St-Léonard). Pierre Poulin has a SmartBoard in his classroom.
• Isabelle Massé: director of the Wilfried-Bastien school, where the first guest, Pierre Poulin, teaches. She supports the expansion of technology in her school.
• Claude frenette : Animator RECIT at the level of private educational institutions. He has been using IWB for about 3 years, he has already taught elementary and secondary school as a music specialist.
• Yves Nadon: teacher for 31 years, currently in 1st year at Notre-Dame-du-Rosaire school, CS in the Sherbrooke region. He is an author of children's books and has owned an iPad, iPod, MacBook, TBI Activboard for a few months, but, above all, a magnificent collection of children's books that is always available to his students.

The three questions of the debate:

Question 1: Do IWBs and other technological tools constitute a real revolution?

Question 2: Are the accessories offered around IWBs really useful? Are there other more suitable technologies?

Question 3: What recommendations would you make to a colleague who wishes to integrate ICT in his classroom?

Not to be missed in the coming days!