Powerpoint and IWBs – It’s time to reclaim analogue teaching

When was the last time you taught an individual lesson without using an interactive whiteboard, without PowerPoint, without pre prepared digital resources? When was the last time you did this for a full day? A full week?

There is a definite default in classrooms across the country, and that default is a digital one. Spending time in hundreds of classrooms every year across multiple phases and parts of the country, it is rare that I see a lesson deliberately structured to be analogue.

Most lessons I see begin within children seated, looking at a giant screen, pre prepared resources clicked through and arrangement of pupils in the class organised in such a way as to maximise screen view. Rarely do I see lessons begin away from the board, with children in arrangements other than facing a screen, and even more rarely do I see lessons begin with real objects, a song, a storybook held in a hand, an artefact, a piece of artwork or simply a discussion. The IWB has assumed shrine like status in our classrooms with its dominance influencing everything from furniture arrangement to curriculum resource design to how teachers spend their time during PPA. But nowhere does it say either in statutory guidance or in research about how to make teaching effective is the IWB championed. “I click therefore you learn” is not a given.

 And I have my concerns about its efficacy.

When we produce a screen, however carefully designed or beautifully dual coded, it is transient, temporary, cognitively ephemeral; it is one click away from forgotten. As we merrily click through pre prepared resources, every slide transition means that the representation of a concept, our careful modelling and our expert thinking made visible simply disappears, meaning our pupils now have to hold this in their own heads for the remainder of the session as we continue. There is often no “Hansel and Gretel” cognitive trail for children to follow if we simply click through.

This can easily be mitigated by accompanying representations on a normal whiteboard or flipchart next to the IWB that can be referred to throughout the lesson, but I rarely see this done. Often the spaces either side of an IWB are sets of drawers or storage or tables or the boards have been papered over to use as display or noticeboards, or there are whiteboards, but these are on other walls of the room. I often share with colleagues my ideal set up, of an IWB with two wall mounted whiteboards either side and a flipchart that I can then use to move around the room if I need to work with a group. These permanent analogue representations are not just a nostalgic trip down pedagogical memory lane, or a reluctance to power up my pedtech, they are a critical part of reducing cognitive load and making expert thinking visible.

If children only ever see pre prepared screens, they are not seeing many aspects of expert thinking made visible. For example, in primary, if children do not see teachers modelling writing using an actual pen, they fail to see correct letter formation modelled, to see the movement of the hand in space, to see the relative size and spacing of words and letters, the formation of letter and spelling patterns and do not get a chance to see the alignment of writing and the articulated thought process of the teacher as they scribe. If they only see or read pre prepared digital input, they are not seeing the very craft they need to use modelled for them. It is rare that I see a classroom now that is rich in teacher modelled handwriting; typing typically trumps all, but in championing the partly completed pre prepared digital writing, we miss out critical modelled steps.

The pre prepared nature of digital resources can also prevent flexibility of modelling. The resources we use should champion conceptual prototyping where children’s emerging thinking can be explored with dynamic interrogations that highlight and illuminate their understanding. Manipulatives, concrete resources, traditional whiteboards and live modelling are all ways in which we can harness this dynamism; there is nothing less interrogative than a pre prepared static screen, or worse, a pre prepared series of static screens that assume a neat trajectory through a sequence with no space for deviation or exploration. In a pedagogical world that is championing adaptive and responsive approaches to teaching, it seems ironic that many of the tools used to deliver lessons are chronically inert and resolutely fixed.

It is therefore worth remembering that the resources we use to teach need to be predicated on response. Teaching is about responding to the emerging thinking in front of us. It is not about producing neat, sanitised sequences for passive recipients to be presented with. Teaching is alive, it is interrogative, it is dynamic; it is fizzing with variables and influences, so the very idea that a route through a challenging concept with 30 individuals all with unique schema and experience can be predicted and planned for with any degree of invariability is bordering on farcical.

In almost 28 years I have never once taught a lesson in any subject in any age group that went the neat way my original lesson plan would have had me believe it should. Misconceptions, previously unseen gaps in foundational knowledge, links, errors and successes all influence a lesson’s trajectory and if there is one thing that we know about learning, it is that it is invisible; therefore pretending that we know exactly how the performance of 30 children in new content is going to go, and so confident are we in this that we can prepare every question, every prompt and every resource in advance is borderline nonsensical. And this is how I still work whether in a classroom with children or working with adults. If I am asked to deliver a keynote or to work with any large group of colleagues on an element of training, I dread the request for my “slides to be sent in advance”. How can I do this? I need to read the room. I need to see people’s responses to the things I’m saying. I need to nip about between elements of any slides, skip over some, linger on others or pull in additional models from other documents in order to respond to colleagues in the room. If I can simply plough through pre prepared content with no alignment or response to colleagues in the room, I may as well have just sent a video. My only request whenever I do any teaching or training is therefore always, “something to write on.” Teaching, whether of children or adults without concrete live modelling to me is an anathema.

Any teaching resources therefore need to be dynamic. They need to be interrogative, and they need to be live. Visualisers have gone some way to supporting this live modelling element, but they too have their limitations, in that they can create a strange detachment. Unless a conscious effort is made to avoid doing this, teachers can become trapped behind the visualiser, not stepping out in front of it to physically orient children’s attention around the larger projected image. There can then become a disconnect between what the teacher is doing under the visualiser and where children need to look. Children are hard wired to follow the eye, mouth and hand of an adult. If the adult’s hand, eye and mouth are trapped behind the visualiser but the content being modelled is projected elsewhere on a large digital board then there is a potential for modelling to be less effective than it could be.

If visualisers are to be used, then stepping out from behind them and physically orienting children’s attention around the completed large projected image will help to orient attention to the correct elements of what has been modelled. Fail to do this and we are relying on children understanding this orientation without it literally being pointed out. I see this frequently in classes with older children and in secondary where teachers have frequently become trapped behind a visualiser and inadvertently “teach from the side” with no subsequent standing in front of the actual board and orienting children’s attention and thinking. The small-scale orientation under the visualiser is then often not matched by the large-scale physical modelling in front of the larger board. This then misses out on additional cues for learning such as beat and designed gesture, and the positive effects of spatial reasoning and spatial memory.

We also, when we default to digital, can miss some essential experiences that analogue provides. Recently I was working with a headteacher on task design and effective modelling who told me about a science lesson in Y1 on classifying materials and commenting on their properties. The teacher was using a pre prepared screen containing an image of three objects, made of paper, plastic or wood. The class were asked to talk about the properties of materials simply by looking at the pictures. There were no practical objects to look at, feel, interact with. The whole teaching input was done digitally. Asking a child of five to explain the properties of wood versus plastic without handling the resources themselves not only demonstrates expert blindness during lesson design, but prevents opportunities to cement the understanding of the properties in practical physical experiences rather than abstract part formed notions of flexibility, smoothness or texture. When children have objects and resources to use practically this encourages gesture, discussion, use of senses, interrogation and conceptual prototyping. To teach a lesson on properties of materials or parts of a flowering plant or many other concepts from across the curriculum by presenting these as digital projections, is not only subject to the lack of potential adaptation through use of pre prepared resources but precludes them from understanding concepts or ideas in their fullest by divorcing them from the real life objects or processes that they are endeavouring to understand.

Our digital resources may initially be relatively swift to produce but they run the risk of children taking longer to truly master concepts or ideas as they can inadvertently or very easily prevent the live modelling, the permanent representations, the tactile experiences, the adaptation and expert thinking made visible that we know support and underpin effective teaching and learning.

Often now planning is equated with making slides. I often hear colleagues bemoan there being “no slides for a lesson” or “I hadn’t been given any slides” or “I need to make my slides.” There is of course no sense in teachers trying to draw their own detailed maps or accurate graphs and diagrams if these can be produced effectively, accurately and swiftly by using a digital resource, but a set of slides is not a lesson. A series of digital representations is not planning. Pedagogy is not synonymous with PowerPoint. The resources we show and use with children need to be a tool for us to demonstrate, to model, to explore, to respond, to interrogate. I often say to colleagues, “Do you want to see my best lesson?” and simply pull a pen out of my pocket. This is not to be glib or deliberately facile but to remind colleagues that we do not need to click to be effective. Teaching and subsequent learning will always predominantly be expert thinking made visible to the novice. How better to demonstrate this than to articulate expert thinking in real time, highlighting and recording the key learning points using permanent written representations that do not disappear with a tap or a click, all whilst responding to the learners’ emerging thinking and adapting what you say and do.

Our over reliance on digital input also has an impact on many other aspects of children’s experiences of learning. Whereas no one would argue that predictability and a sense of routine are unimportant, I cannot begin to fathom what it is like to know as a child that pretty much every lesson, every day, every subject, every week will likely begin with looking at the equivalent of a giant TV. The learner diet will of course benefit from key familiar approaches and elements but especially in primary, these need to be rich, varied, movement dense, collaborative and interpersonal, tactile, joyful and diverse. If we tracked our children across a day or a week, how many times would they be bottoms on seats, eyes at the front and how many times would they be up on their feet, hands and bodies busy and productive?

In my work with hundreds of schools on curriculum, task design and how children learn, I am increasingly seeing the IWB championed as king of cognition. But, I feel a revolution is necessary. I began my teacher training in Liverpool in 1994, a time before IWB, before schools had the internet, before teachers had a laptop, and when the only digital resource was Granny’s Garden on a BBC computer in the corner of the room. I trained across Liverpool for four years and learnt how to teach from colleagues who had taught successfully for decades themselves with only chalk and a pen. I was lucky enough to watch masterclass after masterclass in my early training of experienced teachers using highly responsive strategies in classrooms with nothing more than themselves. Our digital age has allowed us to access and present information with increasing rapidity and aesthetic and organisational efficiency, but it has seemingly relegated many aspects of effective responsive teaching, sidelined by a technological juggernaut. In the words of one of Liverpool’s most famous sons, “Imagine” what teaching and learning could be like if we reflected on exactly why we use digital materials in the way that we do. Are they always the best way to present, interrogate and share content? John Lennon also sang of “Power to the people” and I personally think it’s time for a real digital revolution, one where what we know about how learning happens drives our decision making, not whether or not it’s on a screen or slide. Let’s do more “Imagine” and less “Power(point) to the people.”

It’s time to reclaim and champion the beauty and effectiveness of analogue teaching.