Metaphors of High School Students about the Concept of "Interactive Whiteboard"

Abstract

The primary aim of this phenomenographic study is to discover the perceptions of high school students regarding the concept of “Interactive Whiteboard” through metaphors. Phenomenography, which is a qualitative research method, was used in the study. The research group of the study consisted of a total of 162 students studying at the 9^th, 10^th, 11^th and 12^th grades of the information technologies department of an Anatolian high school of commerce. In order to collect the research data, each student in the research group was asked to complete the gaps in the sentence “Interactive Whiteboard is like…; because…” Content analysis techniques were employed for the analysis of the data in order to group the metaphors created by the students based on their common features. As the result of the analysis of the collected data, it was found out that the participants created 41valid metaphors. These metaphors were classified under 6 conceptual categories in terms of their characteristics. In conclusion, it was determined that the students had highly positive perceptions about “Interactive Whiteboard”. However, it was observed that some of the students perceived “Interactive Whiteboard” as an unnecessary device.