The global use of interactive whiteboards has grown rapidly over the past decade, with UK schools most likely to use them, a new study has shown.

With an interactive whiteboard, images from a projector or computer are displayed on a touch-sensitive board so the whole class can see them. This means that teachers can use a wide range of drawings, diagrams, animations and graphs in their lessons.

Researchers from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development found that industrialised countries were increasingly adopting the technology, with even greater saturation predicted over the next three years.

In the UK, 80 per cent of classrooms have the boards. Internationally, the figure is 12 per cent and is expected to rise to 20 per cent by 2015. Turkey, in particular, recently launched a five-year project to equip 620,000 classrooms.

The study says that the boards can be highly effective but calls for better training for teachers.