Guest Post: NC Teachers Ditching Promethean Boards

A Director of Instructional Technology from North Carolina has sent us the rationale behind his district's ditching of Promethean Boards.  We have never, ever seen the purchase of Promethean Boards discussed with this detailed analysis, or with the weighing of cost versus benefit by the Montgomery County Board of Education.  The parents in the Bertie County School District are fortunate to have Mr. Samberg as their Director of Instructional Technology. 

My name is Mark Samberg, and I am currently working as the Director of Instructional Technology for the Bertie County School District in Windsor, North Carolina...  I interacted with your organization [the Parents' Coalition] recently, regarding our decision to discontinue installation of new ActivBoards in our schools, and instead move to AppleTVs connected to iPads.  At your request, I'm providing information on the reasoning behind this decision.   

I wanted to start with a little background.  Our district is located in rural Northeastern North Carolina.  We have approximately 2,800 students, about 90% of which qualify for free or reduced price meals.  Through a grant, we were able to install Promethean boards in all of our elementary school classrooms approximately five  years ago.  Our middle school principal was looking to expand the use of ActivBoards and other interactive technologies in his school, but outfitting his school with boards would cost well over $100,000.  This simply wasn't feasible in a district our size.  In addition, some of the projectors and boards already in place have started to fail.  Absent any new grant funding or initiatives, each ActivBoard that needs to be replaced (at an approximate cost of $5,500) represents about 8% of the total IT budget this year, and if funding cuts hold, would represent about $35% next year.  It's simply not feasible to replace even one of these boards when they break.  In addition, the projector mounts are proprietary - we must purchase a Promethean short-throw projector should a projector fail.  These projectors cost about $1,000 more than a lower-end short-throw projector, and about $1,500 less than a regular ceiling-mount or cart-use LCD projector.  Finally, all of our classrooms have standalone LCD projectors, many of which are relatively new. 

In addition to the equipment initial cost, we looked  at the total cost of ownership.  The short-throw projector bulbs that are used by most IWB vendors are very expensive, to the tune of about $300-350 each.  Typically, they need to be replaced one per year.  I have no data to back this up, but it seems they need replacement more frequently than other projectors.  The only thing I have to prove this is my own observation, and there are many other factors that could lead to that.  Most newer cheaper projectors have cheaper bulbs. 

The two other things that we looked at were usage/pedagogy, and the evolution of the technology.  While all elementary teachers have IWBs in their classrooms, most teachers use them most of the time simply as projector screens, and not the interactive capability.  In every classroom I ever taught in, I had an IWB as well.  Again, much of the time, I used them to project, but usually abandoned the use of the whiteboard in favor of the document camera, again making the board a very expensive projector screen.  Also, the board still favors a teacher-centered classroom, and limits interaction to the teacher, or a single student or two.  In short, while the IWB definitely has a value-add in the classroom, the cost of the equipment still (in my opinion) isn't worth the return for the percentage of time the boards are used for their interactive capability.  

Also, while there have been incremental improvements, IWB technology is almost a decade old.  While the IWB has stayed relatively consistent, a whole new generation of technology has emerged in human-computer interaction.  Whereas a touch interface was revolutionary ten years ago, it's now commonplace, almost to the point of expectation.  Purchasing a whole-system solution like a Promethan Board locks us in such that we can't try new things as easily as technology changes.  While the IWB is the most mature technology, Microsoft is bringing the Kinect to education markets (http://www.microsoft.com/education/en-us/products/Pages/kinect.aspx), a device by a company called LeapMotion is poised to make a huge impact on the human-computer interaction market (http://www.leapmotion.com/), a company called SmallLab learning is bringing a movement-based system to the classroom (http://www.smallablearning.com/) and Windows 8 is going to be designed around touch interfaces, which means that we will be seeing many, many more touchscreen devices in the months ahead. 

While all of these products are in the developmental phases, Apple has moved forward with their new solution called "AirPlay" (http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/airplay/?cid=wwa-us-kwg-features-00001&siclientid=6381&sessguid=18279e0f-07d9-4d81-a633-0bf8a006fd7a&userguid=18279e0f-07d9-4d81-a633-0bf8a006fd7a&permguid=18279e0f-07d9-4d81-a633-0bf8a006fd7a). 

By purchasing an iPad and connecting an AppleTV device to our existing projectors, we could wirelessly stream the display of an iPad to the projector.  Because we already had the projectors that we could reuse, the total cost for the iPad, Apple TV, and adapter for the projector runs about $700, instead of the $5,000 that the Promethean boards would have cost.  There are Apps available for the iPad that allow for you to write on the iPad screen, annotate documents and web pages, display websites, and play videos.  These were the major functions that teachers were using the IWB functionality for.  Additionally, because the iPad could be streamed wirelessly, teachers could walk around the classroom and use the iPad from anywhere in the room.  In classrooms with multiple iPads, multiple students can take turns streaming their devices to the projector for other students to see.  So in addition to being a significantly cheaper option, it provided the teacher with much more flexibility.   

They can also use the camera in the iPad as a portable document camera, even though they already have document cameras in their rooms.  Of course, they still have their laptops and document cameras that they can also connect to the projectors.  However, many of the teachers who have tried this haven't needed to connect them for anything - they've done everything from the iPad.  If you don't have any projectors in the rooms yet, the total cost to get started would be around $2,500 - still around half the cost of an IWB [Interactive White Board] solution.  This would give every teacher a ceiling mounted projector with audio, a document camera, an Apple TV and an iPad, with all of the connectors.  The reason it's so cheap is that now each individual component (with exception of the Apple equipment) can be bid separately, and given to the lowest bidder, because each piece is modular.  Also, when it comes time to replace equipment, there is no vendor lock-in. 

The teachers who have been using this solution so far are loving it, because they can move around their classroom, they get to use iPads, they don't have to calibrate the boards, or do much more than plug and play.  There is a disadvantage in that a lot of the pre-made educational materials that Promethean and SMART provide aren't available.  There is also a dependence on several different Apps, instead of a "one stop shop".  However, these factors aside, this has been a much more cost-effective solution that has provided a much greater benefit to our teachers. 

I'm happy to discuss this further and answer any questions that you may have.
Thank you,Mark Samberg