Smart Stuff

I'd be the first to admit that I'm biased in terms of believing the educational benefit of SMART Boards as an educational tool. I had my first experience using a SMARTBoard more than a decade ago and I immediately appreciated the fact that a simple teaching tool had been transformed into a powerful resource - capable of making the learning experience more interactive, more transportable/transferable and more transparent for learners.

From eSchool News: Study Links Interactive Whiteboards to Improved Student Performance
The link to the report in the article above is broken. Here is the correct link: http://insight.eun.org/shared/data/pdf/impact_study.pdf.

More on what was said above - esp. since the article seems to focus more on engagement and motivational benefits associated with usage (at least from the brief bit that I've had time to read). Clearly the two aforementioned items (i.e. engagement and motivation) are byproducts of most interactive learning experiences. Another obvious advantage of interactive whiteboards is the ability to simplify content retention, sharing and future modification through content-storage features (thus saving time and effort which can in turn be focused on other more meaningful educational endeavors - and allowing further reflection and discussion that might otherwise be challenging or impossible for logistical reasons). Finally, in terms of transparency - by enabling students to see everything that is going on and potentially replay entire processes at a later point in time, specific procedures as well as more general lifelong learning processes can be more effectively modeled in instructional settings. Being able to see process in addition to outcome/output makes for a powerful learning experience. In sum - it comes as no surprise that they found evidence to support the benefit of using interactive whiteboard technology as an instructional tool - and I suspect that future studies will identify additional benefits.