A few more months and then they should move, the 1,300 students of the Wilhelm-Hausenstein-Gymnasium, their teachers and the school management. The new building in Bogenhausen is growing, and the issue of IT equipment is gradually becoming more pressing, says headmaster Uwe Barfknecht. The devices must be ordered soon so that they can be installed at the beginning of the new school year. However, this ordering process does not go exactly as the headmaster imagines: he lacks clear feedback from the education department.
Uwe Barfknecht would like to have interactive touch panels instead of whiteboards for the new high school building. “It would be a shame to set up a new building with yesterday’s standards,” says Barfknecht. The touch panels offer didactic and educational added value: the display is more precise, there are various software programs with a wide range of functions and the panel image can be clearly seen even in daylight. “I’m fighting for the future viability of classrooms and I don’t know of any factual arguments that speak against it,” says Barfknecht. The touch panels are also cheaper.
Currently, whiteboards are replacing the blackboards of old in most classrooms. The education department points out that it is responsible for equipping around 370 schools – there must be a certain degree of standardization in IT, otherwise the whole thing would be too “service-intensive,” says a spokeswoman. However, the goal is to provide schools with IT that meets their needs, and there are currently pilot projects for different equipment variants.
Similar topic to that in Bogenhausen, nine kilometers further west: The Rupprecht-Gymnasium in Neuhausen is currently being rebuilt, and people are already learning and working in the first construction phase. Headmaster Robert Grahl has implemented a pilot project for this part of the building: the school is getting these interactive touch panels instead of whiteboards in some classrooms; Other classrooms will have large monitors controlled by teacher devices rather than touch. A compromise with the education department, because Grahl didn’t want whiteboards either, and his order didn’t go through with the education department. So now a pilot project to find out which solution works.
Details play a role: the monitors would have to be height-adjustable, would have to be integrated into a board system, and that would then be more expensive than the touch panels, says Grahl. More new classrooms will be built for the Rupprecht-Gymnasium in the next three years. “We need a uniform system in our school,” says Grahl. Teachers should have access to the same equipment in all rooms in order to be able to prepare their lessons well.
“It would be good if schools could decide for themselves”
After a long construction period, the Riem high school has been finished for a few months: students have been learning in the new building since the beginning of this school year. Headmaster Günter Förschner says he too wanted an alternative to whiteboards. This was rejected by the education department at the time on the grounds that interactive whiteboards were the standard. “The equipment is very good, the quality of the devices is good, they are easy to use,” says Förschner. But he can understand if other solutions are desired. “It would be good if schools could decide for themselves what fits their media concept,” says the headmaster. But he also understands the city, which has its standards when it comes to equipment.
In the old Wilhelm-Hausenstein-Gymnasium building, teachers and students are currently working with different solutions: in half of the classrooms with whiteboards, in the other rooms with a projector that projects the blackboard picture onto a white wall. It shouldn’t be like that in the new building. “I refuse to order whiteboards for the new building,” says Barfknecht. “I don’t want to miss the bandwagon that could be jumped on now.”
The education department reports that the use of touch panels leads to very teacher-centered lessons – the Munich Lernhaus principle provides for more open forms of learning. Nevertheless, the Wilhelm-Hausenstein-Gymnasium has already been signaled that a positive response to the request can be expected.