Well, finally someone takes aim at Marzano and Promethean

[Michael Scott]

In my last blog entry, I expressed skepticism about the research that was recently presented by Robert Marzano about the Promethean brand of interactive white boards. Promethean obviously had a lot riding on the roll out of the research. If you go to web site, you'll see Marzano's mug pasted all over the page touting the results of the study. Michael Jordon couldn't have gotten his picture on a Wheaties box any faster.

I am not an academic, but I do have background science, and the entire structure of the research was suspect from beginning to end. You can get the entire paper from Promethean, but be ware.... the are building the contact database by requiring you register with them. I quickly got a sales email from one of their reps. Gotta hand it to them, they are well capitalized and aggressive in their sales approach. I got the report here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/14646326/Marzano-Preliminary-Report-on-ActivClassroom

I tried to post my VSTENING blog entry into Prometheans Blog, but they wouldn't post it. That's not the end of though. Dr. Jonathan Becker of Virginia Commonwealth's Educational Leadership Department recently took the time to carefully read the study and taken the time to do something nobody in the education research community has done: peer review (who would have thought of that?)

His five part review started this week. You can start with Part 1 here:

http://edinsanity.com/2009/06/02/marzano_part1/

I won't give away any of the subplots, but he isn't cyncial like me, and just lays out the facts as he see's them. He also has the background and credentials that a mere instructional technologist like myself does not have. His conclusions do not paint Marzano or Promethean in a very good light.

People get upset with me when I go on these rants. They like their Active Boards. Guess what, I love my interactive classroom technologies too. I think they have great potential to increase student engagment and have a huge role to play in creating effective classroom environments. What I hate about the instructional technology business is bogus claims of effectiveness directed at school or district administrators who swallow sensational claims as truth without so much as reading anything about the actual research. I guarantee that someone will attend a conference this summer and come back to my district and ask why we don't invest in Promethean equipment because the research says "their" technologies produce results. Even if Promethean's reports have some valuable info in it ( it doesn't), you could substitute any Interactive product used effectively. If I'm not mistaken, real research in education psychology and instructional technology closed the door on media comparison studies a long time ago.

Just to make sure that I give full disclosure about my conflicts, we have both Smart and Interwrite Products in my division. I'ver presonally done the PO's for lots Interwrite stuff and recently got a classroom MOBI set. Both of the aforementioned vendors adverstise about effective classrooms, but no sales person has attempted persuade me with bogus research. And for what it's worth, the people that I know who use Promethean products seem to be happy with the company. Our neighboring school district is complete Promethean shop. They could have sold me with reliable products and support. Making stuff up about the effectivness of their products doen't help.