If you’ve spent any time reading the Radical, you know that I hate Interactive Whiteboards—and the companies that sell them as instructional silver bullets—with an unhealthy passion.
Recently, though, I’ve dialed back that passion. I guess that’s because—thankfully—conversations about teaching with technology have started to shift into healthier places.
I hear less and less from educators who just HAVE to have an IWB.
More importantly, I hear less and less from school leaders who are ready to plunk down their schools’ already limited technology budgets on a small handful of glorified presentation tools that do NOTHING to change teaching and learning in our schools.
That lull in the lunacy ended this week.
You see, I bumped into a friend who is a well respected instructional technology leader in his large middle school. He was completely jazzed because his principal had asked him to help spend the school’s technology budget.
That excitement was short-lived, though. Turns out that his principal—who’d recently attended a conference and seen a slick presentation in the vendor hall—had already bought and paid for 6 IWBs.
Total cost: $18,000.
Stew in that for a minute, would you? Do you have ANY idea what you could do with $18 THOUSAND dollars?
Here are 5 different ways I would spend that cash:
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