The screen and the sand-timer: The integration the interactive whiteboard into an early years free-flow learning environment

This paper aims to explore how the Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) is situated in the social and material conditions of an early years free-flow learning environment. It examines how the affordances of the IWB and the expectations of the surrounding classroom impact on how activity involving the IWB unfolds. It achieves this through an analysis of observations, documented through video, of how children enter into and exit from activities involving the IWB during free-flow activity time. We share the different types of entrance and exit observed, and what these suggest about the social and material conditions in which IWB is situated. Based on these findings, we suggest opportunities for the disruption of existing patterns of integration of the IWB into the learning environment, so as to explore the potential for more collaborative and creative engagement with the technology. Specifically, we argue that the emphasis on turn-taking that characterises the early years learning environment – an emphasis reinforced by the inability of the IWB to support simultaneous engagement by multiple users – is prompting children to engage individually with the resources and miss opportunities to create and play together.

This manuscript has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Early Childhood Research: Sakr, Mona and Scollan, Angela, The screen and the sand-timer: the integration the interactive whiteboard into an early years free-flow learning environment, Journal of Early Childhood Research, Volume: 17 issue: 3, pp. 190-204. Copyright © 2019 The Author(s). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1476718X19851538