[ubuntu-us-ma] Interactive Whiteboard

[Chris Giroir]

http://blogs.umass.edu/teachoit/2009/01/30/the-best-tool/

Interesting blog post by a friend about this type of thing (kind of,
doesn't really help with your problem).

Chris Giroir

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 10:29 PM, Danny Piccirillo
<danny.piccirillo at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> 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/~johnny/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 mature), so it will all be outdated soon.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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>>
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