Samenvatting

Nowadays many schools are innovating and often do so by purchasing new electronic school boards. My training school did this as well. They bought several ActivBoards to modernize the school and its way of teaching. The only problem was that many teachers did not know how to use it and the school was wondering whether the ActivBoards were effective or not. Therefore I wrote this report. In this report there is one main question, which is the point of particular interest, in which the effectiveness of the use of ActivBoard in the classroom is being investigated together with the points of interest of teachers as well as pupils when this device is incorporated into schools.

In order to answer this main question I investigated several resources. I used some books on this topic, but mainly I did my research on the internet. I researched several studies on this topic and searched for different websites which were suitable as a reliable source. To get a broader view of the users' opinions within the training school, I did a check-survey amongst the pupils and my colleagues.

The results of this investigation were clear. Many experts say that the use of ActivBoard is very effective when it is introduced and incorporated carefully. A good training course or workshop is necessary for teachers to be able to use it confidently. The theory of Mishra and Koehler, Technology Pedagogy Content Knowledge (TPCK), shows that it is important for teachers to show a close connection between the three elements in teaching, viz technology, content and pedagogy. This theory is an addition on Shulman's PCK theory from 1986.

The teachers and pupils show in the check-survey that they agree on the fact that the device brings new and better opportunities in the classroom, but more knowledge is required. Teachers say that they do not feel confident in using the device. As a result the electronic school board has not been used by teachers as much as it could.

The research, done by Marzano, showed clearly that the effectiveness of the ActivBoard can be enormous when it is fully incorporated. He says that his study has shown that there was an increased effect of 16 percentile points amongst the pupils in the test schools.

My recommendation to my training school is, in order to have an even greater effect of the ActivBoard, to provide suitable training opportunities for all teachers. With training opportunities I mean training courses and workshops which focus on the practical use of ActivBoard and show how to apply ActivBoard into lesson plans.