Virtual Realities

Smart Technologies, founded in Calgary in 1987, introduced its first interactive whiteboard in the early 1990s. It was a wall-mounted unit that allowed teachers to connect to the internet, run animations, and generate electronic notes for their classes. Smart continued to innovate with advanced touch-sensitive displays throughout the decade and was hailed by many as a harbinger of a new era. That’s certainly what Daisy Christodoulou thought when she began teaching high school English in 2007–08. She was wowed by the board’s promise and committed to taking full advantage of it. In spite of her best intentions, though, Christodoulou quickly found herself using the latest ed‑tech gadget as an ordinary classroom projector — rarely turning on its more sophisticated features. She wasn’t alone: that’s exactly what most of us did.

Over recent decades, billions of dollars have been invested in education technologies like the Smart board, along with laptops and tablets, yet...