Classrooms are becoming increasingly digital as schools adopt interactive displays and artificial intelligence tools that can help teachers prepare lessons, visualise difficult concepts and give students more ways to participate, although researchers caution that technology alone does not guarantee better learning.
Smartboards, also known as interactive whiteboards, have been used in schools for more than two decades, but advances in artificial intelligence are giving the technology a new role.
Modern systems can combine a large touchscreen with internet-connected educational content, digital textbooks, video, diagrams, collaborative exercises and AI-enabled tools. Teachers can write directly on the display, manipulate objects, annotate documents and, increasingly, use software to generate or adapt learning materials.
The shift comes as governments and education providers grapple with how to incorporate AI into classrooms without weakening the role of teachers.
The global education technology market has expanded rapidly alongside wider adoption of digital learning. UNESCO’s 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report said at least 220 million students were enrolled in massive open online courses in 2021, compared with virtually none in 2012. It said digital technology could improve teaching by increasing opportunities to practise, expanding access to materials and personalising instruction.
But UNESCO also warned that evidence about the effectiveness of education technology remains limited and that technology should support, rather than replace, human interaction between teachers and students.
From blackboard to interactive screen
The basic idea behind the smartboard is not new.
Interactive whiteboards emerged in the 1990s and were adopted extensively by schools in countries including Britain, where the government invested heavily in the technology during the 2000s.
By 2007, interactive whiteboards were widely used in British schools following a large-scale government rollout. Turkey subsequently deployed smartboards in more than 570,000 classrooms as part of a nationwide information and communications technology programme that began in 2011, according to UNESCO.
The technology has since evolved from a digital replacement for a blackboard into a platform for multiple classroom functions.
A teacher discussing the human body, for example, can display an anatomical model and manipulate it on screen. A mathematics teacher can move geometric shapes, graph equations or demonstrate transformations. In geography, satellite imagery and interactive maps can replace static textbook diagrams.
AI adds another layer.
A teacher could use an AI-enabled classroom system to generate a quiz based on a lesson, simplify a passage for younger students, produce examples at different levels of difficulty or create a visual explanation of a scientific concept.
The board can then become the interface through which students interact with those materials.
The teacher remains central
The strongest argument for smartboards is not that they make teachers unnecessary, but that they can expand what teachers can do during a lesson.
Digital content can be prepared in advance and brought together on one screen rather than requiring teachers to move between books, computers, projectors and printed materials.
AI could also reduce some preparation work. A teacher preparing a lesson on photosynthesis, for example, could use an AI assistant to generate discussion questions, create a short assessment and produce different explanations for students with different levels of understanding.
But the quality of those materials still depends on the teacher.
UNESCO has repeatedly stressed that technology should be used on education systems’ terms and to reinforce human interaction rather than substitute for it.
That distinction is particularly important as generative AI becomes capable of producing lesson plans, text, images and assessments in seconds.
A smartboard can make a lesson more visually compelling, but it cannot by itself determine whether students understand the material, whether an AI-generated explanation is accurate or whether a particular teaching method is appropriate for a class.
Evidence suggests benefits, but not a technology miracle
Research on interactive whiteboards has generally found positive effects, although the evidence is more nuanced than technology vendors sometimes suggest.
A meta-analysis published in Interactive Learning Environments examined 23 high-quality peer-reviewed studies and found that interactive-whiteboard instruction had a positive effect on students’ cognitive learning compared with traditional lecture-based teaching. The researchers also found that the impact varied depending on how teachers used the technology.
Another meta-analysis covering 47 experimental studies reported a statistically significant positive effect of smartboard use on academic achievement.
More recent research into smart classrooms has produced similarly encouraging findings. A 2024 meta-analysis of 21 empirical studies found a significant overall positive effect on learning outcomes, although the authors noted differences in how “smart classrooms” were defined and implemented.
Yet UNESCO has warned that positive outcomes cannot automatically be attributed to the technology itself.
Interactive whiteboards were widely adopted in Britain, for instance, but research found that they were often used simply as digital projectors rather than as genuinely interactive teaching tools.
Teacher training can make a significant difference.
In Spain’s Catalonia region, a programme that supplied interactive whiteboards and devices to more than 600 schools found that teachers often initially used the boards mainly to display digital textbooks and slides. Teachers who received specialised training were more likely to use them interactively, including creating content and allowing students to write on the boards.
That points to a central lesson for schools investing in AI-powered classrooms: buying hardware is easier than changing teaching practice.
The digital divide remains
The expansion of smart classrooms also raises questions about inequality.
A well-equipped school with high-speed internet, modern displays, AI software and trained teachers can offer students learning experiences that are difficult to reproduce in schools without reliable electricity, connectivity or basic digital equipment.
UNESCO’s 2023 report warned that access to technology remains uneven and argued that investments need to consider relevance, equity, scalability and sustainability rather than simply the availability of devices.
This issue is particularly significant in developing economies, where education systems may still face shortages of classrooms, textbooks, teachers and electricity.
For such schools, an expensive interactive display may deliver less educational value than additional teachers, teacher training, connectivity or learning materials.
The economics therefore matter.
A smartboard is not a one-off purchase. Schools must pay for installation, maintenance, software subscriptions, internet connectivity, teacher training and eventual hardware replacement.
AI systems can introduce additional costs, including cloud computing and software licences.
More screen time is not necessarily better
There is also a potential downside to the rapid digitisation of classrooms: distraction.
OECD data from the 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) found that students who spent up to one hour a day using digital devices for learning at school scored 24 points higher in mathematics, on average across OECD countries, than students who reported no such use. After accounting for students’ and schools’ socioeconomic profiles, the difference was still 14 points.
But the relationship turned negative when students used digital devices for learning for more than an hour a day.
PISA also found that about 30% of students across OECD countries reported being distracted by digital devices in most or every mathematics lesson. Those students scored 15 points lower in mathematics, after accounting for socioeconomic factors.
The findings do not prove that devices caused lower performance. But they demonstrate that more technology does not automatically mean better education.
For smartboards, the distinction is important because the screen is controlled by the teacher rather than being a personal device in each student’s hands. A well-managed interactive display may therefore have different effects from unrestricted smartphone or tablet use.
AI changes the equation
Artificial intelligence could nevertheless make smartboards more useful than the interactive whiteboards of the past.
Traditional smartboards largely digitised existing classroom materials. AI can potentially make the classroom environment responsive.
A teacher could ask an AI system to explain a difficult concept at different levels, generate examples based on students’ questions or create exercises during a lesson.
Students could interact with simulations, ask questions about displayed material or work collaboratively on the same digital canvas.
AI can also potentially help teachers identify gaps in understanding by analysing responses to classroom exercises.
But this raises concerns about accuracy, privacy and bias.
Generative AI can produce plausible but incorrect information, while systems trained on incomplete or biased data can reproduce those weaknesses.
Student data also becomes more sensitive when educational technology records performance, behaviour or interactions.
UNESCO has called for stronger governance and regulation of emerging AI technologies in education, particularly as generative AI develops faster than many education systems can establish rules for its use.
Africa’s opportunity
For African education systems, smart classrooms could offer a way to expand access to high-quality learning content, particularly where specialist teachers are scarce.
A school without a physics specialist, for example, could potentially use interactive simulations and remotely delivered content to supplement classroom teaching.
UNESCO’s GEM report highlighted the European Union-funded Go-Lab initiative, which provides access to about 600 virtual laboratories to students and teachers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics across 50 countries in Europe and Africa.
Such systems could be particularly valuable in science education, where physical laboratories are expensive to build and maintain.
But technology cannot overcome fundamental infrastructure constraints on its own.
Schools need electricity, broadband, functioning devices, teacher training and technical support before sophisticated AI systems can become useful at scale.
The classroom is changing, but the teacher is not disappearing
Smartboards are therefore better understood as part of a broader transition from static teaching materials to interactive digital classrooms.
The technology can make lessons more visual, allow teachers to bring multiple forms of content together and create opportunities for students to participate directly.
AI could take that a step further by making digital classroom content more adaptive and easier for teachers to create.
But history offers a warning.
The experience of interactive whiteboards shows that simply putting new technology in classrooms does not necessarily transform education. In many cases, an expensive digital tool becomes little more than a replacement for an old one.
The most important variable remains how teachers use it.
For policymakers and school administrators, the question is therefore not simply whether to install AI-powered smartboards, but whether the investment improves teaching enough to justify its cost.
The schools that gain the most may not be those with the largest screens or most sophisticated AI systems, but those that combine technology with trained teachers, sound pedagogy, reliable infrastructure and clear rules for responsible AI use.
The classroom of the future may still have a teacher standing at the front of the room.
The difference could be that instead of writing on a blackboard, the teacher is interacting with a digital environment that can generate, visualise and adapt learning materials in real time.
That would make AI a teaching instrument rather than a replacement for the teacher, and potentially one of the more consequential changes in classroom technology since the arrival of the internet.
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Mohd Hassan has extensive experience in news gathering, editing, and writing for the newswire industry, Contact – Info@impactnews-wire.com
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