[ubuntu-us-ma] Interactive Whiteboard

[Danny Piccirillo]

That did cross my mind but i figured it wasn't worth the extra hardware and
it seemed to be a lot of work to set up (although i admit i didn't really
look that much into it). That's why i thought just using tablets would be a
much better idea.

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 10:26 PM, Brian DeLacey <bdelacey at gmail.com> wrote:

> Here's a low-cost way to do that sort of thing using a Wii remote:  <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/%7Ejohnny/projects/wii/>
> http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/%7Ejohnny/projects/wii/>
> There's a related video here:
> http://www.alltogetherwecan.com/2009/01/31/wiimote-whiteboard-in-education-a-tutorial/
>
> There's a lot of potential with the Wii remote ...
>
> Brian
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 10:01 PM, Danny Piccirillo <
> danny.piccirillo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> What a nightmare...
>>
>> My school keeps investing money into testing out these things. They want
>> to make a decision on which to buy a big order of. Basically, interactive
>> whiteboards let teachers draw on the screen from the front of the room and
>> save their lessons, etc. My school is faced with sales pitch after sales
>> pitch and all the teachers are excited so it seems. We'd need to buy their
>> proprietary hardware and software, train teachers, etc. I'm trying really
>> hard to make the case that this is a really really bad idea. The technology
>> is pretty new (well, maybe it's been around, but these solutions are not
>> mature), so it will all be outdated soon.
>>
>> Teachers get excited about every new piece of technology with any new and
>> uselesss features. They want to use it for the sake of using it, regardless
>> of whether they can use it effectively. Students are not any more engaged,
>> if not less, when the only new aspect of their lesson is being able to click
>> on a train and hearing it go CHOOCHOO (powerpoint-- i mean,
>> openoffice.org can already do that...). Whether or not teachers use
>> interactive whiteboards, tablets, or *the tools already available*, they
>> need to be able to do so effectively. Throwing money into a new piece of
>> technology won't fix that at all...
>>
>> I'm trying to propose a better long term solution and find free software
>> alternatives to this. My suggestion was using a tablet PC and software that
>> allows you to draw on the screen. Simple screenshots (or screencasts) can be
>> used to save lessons, if nothing more advanced is already available. This is
>> also a great place to fit Ubuntu in the classroom since they'll be investing
>> in new computers for this anyways.
>>
>> SO, i need help coming up with the best alternative to this interactive
>> whiteboard crap. Please let me know if you have any ideas!
>>
>> P.S. Handwriting recognition seems to be something that is included in
>> some applications for tablets...shouldn't there be some sort of framework or
>> something for this so that any application can use it? Does this already
>> exist or is there a good place to suggest this?
>>
>> Thanks so much!
>> .danny
>>
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