Here's a low-cost way to do that sort of thing using a Wii remote: <a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none;"> </span></a><a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/">http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/</a><div>
<br></div><div>There's a related video here: <a href="http://www.alltogetherwecan.com/2009/01/31/wiimote-whiteboard-in-education-a-tutorial/">http://www.alltogetherwecan.com/2009/01/31/wiimote-whiteboard-in-education-a-tutorial/</a></div>
<div><br clear="all">There's a lot of potential with the Wii remote ...</div><div><br></div><div>Brian<br>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 10:01 PM, Danny Piccirillo <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:danny.piccirillo@gmail.com">danny.piccirillo@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
What a nightmare...<br><br>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 The technology is pretty new (well, maybe it's been around, but these solutions are not mature), so it will all be outdated soon. <br>
<br>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, <a href="http://openoffice.org" target="_blank">openoffice.org</a> can already do that...). Whether or not teachers use interactive whiteboards, tablets, or <b>the tools already available</b>, they need to be able to do so effectively. Throwing money into a new piece of technology won't fix that at all...<br>
<br>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. <br>
<br>SO, i need help coming up with the best alternative to this interactive whiteboard crap. Please let me know if you have any ideas! <br><br>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? <br>
<br>Thanks so much! <br><font color="#888888">.danny<br>
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