How does the Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) help in promoting practices of inquiry and modeling in science classroom?

Interactive Whiteboards (IWB) are touch interfaces connected to a computer. As such, they enable the user not only to write and draw on the screen as with traditional whiteboards, but also to insert and drag pictures, as well as to navigate or highlight on the screen. In this paper, we analyze the potential of these educational tools in secondary school science education from the perspective of promoting students' participation in the scientific practices, focusing on inquiring and modelling. To this end, 20 physics, chemistry and biology experimental workshops have been analyzed. All these workshops were carried out in a computer-based laboratory and were addressed to 13 to 17-year-old-students. The workshops are structured around a learning sequence that includes the following stages: exploration of students' previous ideas, design of experiments, development of predictions and hypothesis, experimental data gathering and analysis, and group elaboration of consensus models. The analysis has made possible to characterize which actions carried out with the IWB are used in each stage of the defined cycle, and to identify those relevant episodes where the potential of the device is key in encouraging students to participate in inquiry and modeling practices.