The best tech in the classroom? An old-school whiteboard

Once upon a time, there was a “techvangelical” teacher.Every lesson she taught involved a dizzying array of technology: flipchart voting, notebook computers, moving text boxes and images that danced before students’ eyes.This teacher even presented research on how VLE forums could be used to enhance learning, and participated in research on harnessing creativity through building websites. How else, she wondered, would she be able to engage the students? After all, most of them hated reading and writing, but they loved technology. Everyone said so.All went well for a number of years, but the technology was beginning to get creaky, the students were getting fractious (the dancing PowerPoint was hardly Fortnite) and the learning just wasn’t where it should be.Things needed to change. The focus needed to shift. This teacher (me, if you hadn’t already realised) needed an overhaul.