School Board Wants 2,000 Interactive Whiteboards for Elementary Students
The whiteboards are part of a $14.5 million technology investment that would also include installing wireless Internet.
Chalkboards will soon join the ranks of record players, typewriters and paperback books, at least for elementary school students in Montgomery County Public Schools. The school board recently approved a request to put interactive whiteboards in every elementary classroom by start of the 2013-14 school year, according to a statement from MCPS.
The whiteboards, which already are in use at dozens of schools throughout the county, are part of a $14.5 million technology reboot that also will provide building-wide wireless Internet for every school in the district that doesn’t already have it.
Of the elementary schools already using interactive whiteboards, many were bought with money raised by school PTAs, the Washington Post reports.
“We need to make sure we have a level playing field for all of our kids,” said Patricia O’Neill, a school board member. “The boards can’t just be for kids in schools that have affluent PTAs.”
If approved by the County Council, MCPS will need to purchase 2,000 interactive whiteboards to ensure each elementary classroom has one, the Post reports.
Read more on the Washington Post website.
Does your child's school use interactive whiteboards? How important is the technology for young students? Tell us in the comments!
Steven Easley
6:47 am on Tuesday, September 18, 2012
What would prompt this demand for technology? Perhaps poor results in grades? An even playing field is cited here as the typically cry for equality and one that is absolutely false. Does having a piece of equipment spark the mind toward education? Perhaps but none so much as that of a qualified teacher. I have spent my career fixing broken companies and I have never turned around a company based on technology, it has ALWAYS been the people. This delusional thinking all we need is technology is exactly that...DELUSIONAL and this author plays right into it, obviously educated by some school system that believes people respond to things rather than people.
Deb Sullivan
11:36 am on Tuesday, September 18, 2012
How interactive is a chalk board? I know my students respond well when the whiteboard shows concepts in says I could do without the technology. Lessons can be shared amongst staff, freeing up valuable time that can be spent on collaborating and supporting students.