About five years ago I visited a school that was part of the National Test Bed Project where large IWBs had been installed into every teaching area, including the nursery. The staff were provided with substantial wooden stepping blocks to enable the younger pupils to operate the IWB. I watched FS children using the IW board and observed:

• They were required to be too close to the 'image' to be able to see the whole of the screen;
• Their body blocked the relevant part of the image, but they could not easily move to a position which would reveal their working area because of the confines of the blocks;
• When they concentrated on the task, they had to be accompanied by an adult to ensure their safety;
• They could never reach the whole of the board from any one block level.

It was evident that this arrangement was ineffective and under certain conditions even dangerous. I decided to look for alternative methods of allowing pupils interactive access to this form of technology.

Seven Smart Interactive Plasma Boards were purchased through Matrix Displays, eight schools signed up for the project and the 8 interactive plasma boards were installed.

By the end of the year, we were amazed by the response of teachers, parents and pupils to the boards. We had made assumptions about what would happen, but most of our volunteers succeeded beyond expectations. Inevitably some styles of working were enhanced when using the boards and there were some things that didn't work at all.

We embarked on the second year project schools in the late spring of 2006. At BETT 2006 I visited the U-Touch stand, makers of bespoke interactive overlays for industrial and commercial uses. We had very specific requirements and they were able to create two versions, infra-red and optical touch-sensitive, to allow us to compare the two technical solutions with pupils, as it appears that the more obvious choice may not be the most child-friendly option.

By creating our own combination of elements with the help of Matrix Displays, we feel we got a much ''better' final product then the previous year.

We now had 12+1 schools (12 new generation + one from last year) systems running in the the 13 Foundation Stage classrooms. The teachers regularly attended the training days and took part in presenting a session at the ICT Conference in Rheged Visitors Centre in March 2007. It is they who populated these web pages with pictures, reports, files and presentations which have been available for others to download and use now that the project is complete. (July 2007)

The project continues into 2007-8 academic year with 12 different schools. There are further changes in order to keep up with developments in technology and falling unit prices. Plasma technology is improving, but LCD technology is making great strides, but always on the back of public expectations and purchasing.