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no one has made the large touch screen that you plugin to the LAN and it just does that ...

Sure they have -

http://smarttech.com/Home+Page...

There are several companies that make electronic white boards. I have seen them in use a couple times and they are used in distance education. An example:

http://smarttech.com/Home+Page/Solutions/Business+Solutions?WT.ac=homepage_bus

I would also love a digital marker white board in conference rooms that I didn't have to erase, and could email as a screenshot when we're done. Right now, we take a picture of the whiteboard with our phones!

Here you go: http://smarttech.com/Solutions/Visual+collaboration+solutions/Products/Appliance-based+whiteboards+and+displays

In K-12, if you consider something like an interactive smart-board, you're not really teaching differently. Yes, it's fancy and expensive, but from a teaching perspective, it's still really a 1 way communication from teacher to student. Is it really much different than a blackboard? There certainly is an advantage in that curriculum can be standardized and shared amongst teachers, but that mostly helps teachers, not so much for the students.

Now, what does work? Anything that allows for individual assessment and instruction. Something like the smart response system. Allows a teacher to present a question and record individual responses from every student. The teacher knows immediately if the students know the answers and can adjust instruction on the fly. Responses can be anonymized, which removes the stigma for students raising their hand with a wrong answer.

Or putting a piece of software in students hands which tracks their progress. I've seen software which teaches a skill, lets say 3rd grade math. Students answer questions. The software tracks their progress, presenting additional instruction for areas which the students answer questions incorrectly and less instruction for the parts they know. The same software can produce reports on students' progress. You end up not with a class of third grade students, but a finer distinction. Students are in grade 3.2 or 3.5, and the teacher/principal/department head/parent knows about the progress on a weekly basis, not just every marking period.

New tech can and does enhance the modern classroom. The problem is implementing successfully. Designing lessons that utilize the tech is difficult sometimes.

Using the whiteboard as an example, the new tech is called a smart board. http://smarttech.com/

We use a program called SynchronEyes which does most of these things, allows you to see essentially thumbnails of what each machine is doing, see its status remote on/off etc. It's Windows only. I see they've changed their product. It's called SMART Sync now. I don't see pricing which is probably not good. Here's a link
It's a pretty front end for VNC like functionality which would be free/oss but nowhere near as easily set up (but I'd wager largely what people will say since you specifically mention Linux and Windows and it works on both). I'm not really an expert on this part, but SychronEyes has worked well, after I added it to a custom Ghost image for that lab and set the clients to use hostnames instead of usernames for identification. It might be overkill for what you need though.

This is really good advice here. I've used a rebranded (Smart) Wacom tablet in my classrooms for several years now. It takes about a week to get used to, and you sometimes need to push/encourage newbies to keep using it. Once they get used to writing on it, it's fantastic. Beyond that, you aren't tethered to one spot in the room.

The only downside is, because of the surface, drawing accurate curves (ie. graphing anything that's not linear) is pretty hard. I have a whiteboard that is pretty low glare, so I project directly to the white board, and use a marker to draw over the projection when I have to graph.

I just bought a tablet this year, and there are some nice things about it, but a wireless tablet is a great low cost (around $300/each) solution.

We recently deployed some in-house high-tech classrooms with video/lecture recording in Truman State, MO. Professors and students *love* it. There were some advanced math courses going on and the students really like the ability to interact in-class as well as review the lecture after each class session.

The interactive equipments we used are pretty cheap, but you will need to talk with the AV/Instructional design guys in order to set them up. We used the equipments from Smart Technologies to provide an large, beautiful interactive whiteboard. It's not very expensive and is under $1000, provided you already have a projector in the room - and you have a huge, wonderful thing to write on. If you want to go with an even cheaper option, Smarttech provides a thing called the AirLiner to provide Wacom tablet alike functionalities over bluetooth (that you can use while walking around the class and hand to students as well!) The deal? They come with a software suite that is specifically designed for classroom use, which is not groundbreaking but is really a joy to use. Basically it will turn the whiteboard to a notebook and a presentation platform with as many pages as you like with as many types of multimedia contents as you like. Then it will export lecture notes to a PDF file that you can provide the students to download and review later on. The software also runs on Linux and Mac with no problems at all if those are one of your concerns.

For audio capture, again you really need to talk with the AV guys, if they have some decent clip-on wireless microphones laying around. We use a dedicated system to capture the audio (and classroom video also) but I imagine the same functionalities can be achieved by plugging the receiver into the computer, and record the audio using a software application such as Audacity.

We recently deployed some in-house high-tech classrooms with video/lecture recording in Truman State, MO. Professors and students *love* it. There were some advanced math courses going on and the students really like the ability to interact in-class as well as review the lecture after each class session.

The interactive equipments we used are pretty cheap, but you will need to talk with the AV/Instructional design guys in order to set them up. We used the equipments from Smart Technologies to provide an large, beautiful interactive whiteboard. It's not very expensive and is under $1000, provided you already have a projector in the room - and you have a huge, wonderful thing to write on. If you want to go with an even cheaper option, Smarttech provides a thing called the AirLiner to provide Wacom tablet alike functionalities over bluetooth (that you can use while walking around the class and hand to students as well!) The deal? They come with a software suite that is specifically designed for classroom use, which is not groundbreaking but is really a joy to use. Basically it will turn the whiteboard to a notebook and a presentation platform with as many pages as you like with as many types of multimedia contents as you like. Then it will export lecture notes to a PDF file that you can provide the students to download and review later on. The software also runs on Linux and Mac with no problems at all if those are one of your concerns.

For audio capture, again you really need to talk with the AV guys, if they have some decent clip-on wireless microphones laying around. We use a dedicated system to capture the audio (and classroom video also) but I imagine the same functionalities can be achieved by plugging the receiver into the computer, and record the audio using a software application such as Audacity.

I wonder if this can be considered prior art for at least part of this patent (like the statement ' a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a one-dimensional vertical screen scrolling command'): http://www2.smarttech.com/kbdoc/190

Well the ones I was responsible for when working IT in a primary school were definitely touch sensitive: SmartBoard 600 Series

It may not be common place in the US, but as I said, they're in almost every primary school over here, and in a lot of them there's one in every classroom.

• The first time you do anything, it will take 4 times longer than normal. Plan accordingly
• For the first week or so, you'll go a little slower than you normally do. Keep at it. You're just on the learning curve. After 2 weeks or so, you'll find that you're actually being more efficient
• Technology is great for speeding up all of those little logistical things that we have to do in class. Erasing the board is my bugaboo, because I use lots of board space. Now I just hit "next page," and I save 2-3 minutes a period. That's another example, or extra one-on-one time with the kids who need it.
• If you can, don't work from the front of the class. The thing that I loved the most about my slate is that it allowed me to cruise around the room as I lectured. By breaking that invisible wall, students became more focused, horseplay dropped off, and I could more easily identify those students who were lagging behind or struggling. Some kids just NEED you to be their extra-special buddy and stand by them for the period.
• You have colors now. GO NUTS! I use colors to highlight important terms or to discriminate between steps in a math problem. Don't neglect the potential of the on-screen highlighter either (it's for more than just highlighting words the way you did in your college textbook).
• Any easy way of spicing up your lessons: You have a diagram. Go on Google Images and find a real-world picture that illustrates the diagram. Fade it and put the diagram over top of it. Now you have a diagram, and the kids immediately see how the diagram could exist in the real world. I do it for slope, by browsing the Mars Rovers page for pictures of a hill. I put the hill on a grid, and we talk about slope. I take a minute to talk about the challenges the Rover team faces as they plan the route for each rover.
• Another easy way: Pick a concept that the kids have difficulty getting. Google the concept with keywords like flash or applet. See if you can't find some kind of interactive doo-dad that let's you play with the concept. Figure out how you can use it in class. If possible, have a weak student do the button pushing when you demo the app in class. I do some variation of this when I teach Trig transformations (precalc) and writing a line to connect two points (Algebra). Don't overdo it though. I go for one flashy lesson each unit.
• Recording notes has been a mixed bag for me. I recorded them and put them online for kids to download. I had no problem getting kids to continue taking notes in class, because I made them. Since I had the slate, I could see who was NOT taking notes and get them working again. I even did notebook checks where I made my [freshmen] produce/turn in notes from two weeks ago. My problem was that no one would take advantage of the on-line notes. I use Googl

• The first time you do anything, it will take 4 times longer than normal. Plan accordingly
• For the first week or so, you'll go a little slower than you normally do. Keep at it. You're just on the learning curve. After 2 weeks or so, you'll find that you're actually being more efficient
• Technology is great for speeding up all of those little logistical things that we have to do in class. Erasing the board is my bugaboo, because I use lots of board space. Now I just hit "next page," and I save 2-3 minutes a period. That's another example, or extra one-on-one time with the kids who need it.
• If you can, don't work from the front of the class. The thing that I loved the most about my slate is that it allowed me to cruise around the room as I lectured. By breaking that invisible wall, students became more focused, horseplay dropped off, and I could more easily identify those students who were lagging behind or struggling. Some kids just NEED you to be their extra-special buddy and stand by them for the period.
• You have colors now. GO NUTS! I use colors to highlight important terms or to discriminate between steps in a math problem. Don't neglect the potential of the on-screen highlighter either (it's for more than just highlighting words the way you did in your college textbook).
• Any easy way of spicing up your lessons: You have a diagram. Go on Google Images and find a real-world picture that illustrates the diagram. Fade it and put the diagram over top of it. Now you have a diagram, and the kids immediately see how the diagram could exist in the real world. I do it for slope, by browsing the Mars Rovers page for pictures of a hill. I put the hill on a grid, and we talk about slope. I take a minute to talk about the challenges the Rover team faces as they plan the route for each rover.
• Another easy way: Pick a concept that the kids have difficulty getting. Google the concept with keywords like flash or applet. See if you can't find some kind of interactive doo-dad that let's you play with the concept. Figure out how you can use it in class. If possible, have a weak student do the button pushing when you demo the app in class. I do some variation of this when I teach Trig transformations (precalc) and writing a line to connect two points (Algebra). Don't overdo it though. I go for one flashy lesson each unit.
• Recording notes has been a mixed bag for me. I recorded them and put them online for kids to download. I had no problem getting kids to continue taking notes in class, because I made them. Since I had the slate, I could see who was NOT taking notes and get them working again. I even did notebook checks where I made my [freshmen] produce/turn in notes from two weeks ago. My problem was that no one would take advantage of the on-line notes. I use Googl

I've had a chance to play with a interactive whiteboard i think it was from these people...
They have just done done a study into many different brands for use in schools in NSW, Australia. I'll post more when i get to work, I haven't had a chance to read the report yet.
more here

I just got an interactive whiteboard for my room, and I've been looking around for useful animations for the kids. Classzone has a number of these, you just have to select the right textbook. I'm teaching in Maryland with the "Algebra 2 2007" book. If you choose a different book, you may wind up with the older version of their site. That's just a bunch of PDF's of the supplemental workbooks. Animations of concepts are the way to go I think. This is especially true when kids can manipulate the process themselves. Classzone has these in Shockwave format. There's one for slope where you can move either of two points on a 2d line, and the slope computation appears, the rise and run are shown, the line is redrawn, etc. You could certainly do the same lesson with a chalkboard or overhead projector but for visual learners, seeing the change will make a big difference. That's my hope anyway.

The best approach seems to be like one of the other posters said: don't think of it as "what can I present with a projector," instead think of it as "what can I do to present Chain Rule interactively?" Also, please do avoid powerpoints. One of the other teachers in my building has written a series of powerpoints and just stands at the board flipping pages. Make sure you have kids using the new system and thinking about ways it can help them. For example, being able to enlarge, recolor, print, etc your handwritten notes can be a boon for students with certain special needs.

Some of the other posters in this thread are talking about the larger issue of technology in classrooms. That's fine and all, but I didn't ask for this interactive whiteboard. Now that I have it, I'm trying to make it worthwhile for the kids. Often that's as much control over the larger issues as teachers have.

For commercial users, the packaging as a single compact device will be interesting. I can see this being used to enhance the Mini auto boutique, allowing the customers to design the car. I can also see this is certain corporate setting.

For education, I don't know. Schools that want tech already have smartboards, and they can be had inexpensively. It would be nice not to have to deal with projector. OTOH, I am unclear on the size and OS. Articles have intimated that there one has to use specialized developers, which may mean this is intended to be a Xbox rather than a commodity product. Why buy into a whole new thing, when a Mac and smartboard will let you do everything using industry standard tools, like flash, java, photoshop, etc.

This is good news as is shows that MS is trying to buck the commodity trend and come up some real products. If the software works, this will be a great little product, and will open the door for competition.

Well, actually, they have. (Okay, it's a whiteboard, but you get the idea.)

You couldn't outfit every classroom with this for that money yet though.

But that's really a strawman anyway. It's not an either-or situation: distribute iPods or not have anything the kids can take home. One of my H.S. teachers tape recorded his lectures on cassette tape. You could record the lectures and put them online to download and let kids listen to it on their computers at home, or on their own iPods. If someone is really financially disadvantaged enough that this isn't an option, the school could have some players that you could check out from the library.

There are plenty of ways to achieve about the same effect without being fiscally stupid.

The white paper on this site describes a number of techniques that could be used.

Actually, while funny, your story is becoming a reality today. Many, many schools are starting to move beyond the whitboards of yesterday and are starting to implement SMART Boards, which actually do have an "undo button".

Smart boards aren't anything special at all. It's very good technology, don't get me wrong. You display your computer's screen up on a board, and you can write on the board / click buttons / etc, and it all works correctly.

However, it's nothing new. The high school my mom teaches at in Jasper, MO has had them for about 5 years. They have a graduating class of around 30 each year, and the students are often late to their first class because it took longer than usual to feed the cattle that morning. They have never had a single non-white student. They are that far behind the rest of the country, and they have these Smart Boards. The school I went to in Neosho, MO is slightly larger, with 250 kids in my graduating class, and we have the Smart Boards as well.

MO schools have them. It's not specials that M$ schools would.

I use a digital whiteboard at work. It's placed on top of a multi-thousand dollar plasma screen and and the whiteboard itself cost thousands also. I think the company that makes it is called Smarttech. It's a nice thing but there are many frustration/time consuming aspects of it. If I were a billionaire, I wouldn't want to waste my time fiddling with a whiteboard that--in the end--would give me a little better control over my demos and presentations.

What I'm trying to say is that I bet he was waiting for this technology to get to a point where maybe the two units came as one and were more sleekly integrated. The maintenance/recalibration of this thing is a pain and there are times when we have customers sitting in front of us and we're trying to present to them but we have to run through some diagnostics.

Not cool.

Now imagine those customers were interested in million dollar contracts with you.

When I graduated college, I went back to work as a sysadmin at my old high school. When I got there, they had just completed their first year with four smartboards as a trial. The year I arrived, we opened up a new building with 13 new SmartBoard Systems. There are several different companies that do this stuff, but the SmartBoard is kind of the leader in the industry -- http://www.smarttech.com/

The total setup runs around $15 grand, plus or minus depending on what you do with it. The projector is the most expensive part, at around $5-6000 for a really nice one. The board itself runs around $2000, for the basic model. To make it easier to start up, we had a touchpanel on the wall with various functions on it - turn on projector, show computer, show video, show laptop, blank screen, increase volume, etc. That really helped make the whole setup a lot easier to use for people.

Since we had them for so long, we had a pretty good understanding of what works and what doesn't.
The neatest thing about the SmartBoard is that you can kind of make it what you want. If you want it to just be a whiteboard, it can do that. If you want it to be a glorified powerpoint viewer, you can do that. If you want to really get into it, you can start to do all sorts of cool interactive applications with it. Smart Technology's software has improved markedly in the past few years, and the new version allows you to embed all sorts of multimedia objects, and best of all -- Flash! There is a TON of potential with the new capabilities.

Because it is so versatile, it integrates very easily and very smoothly into existing classrooms. Teachers typically find it very easy to use, provided you have done a good job with setup. Maintenance can get to be time consuming -- teachers rely on these things every single minute of the day, and they have to be working all the time. But there are like two-dozen points of failure. Then there's the projector -- the bulbs cost about $500 each, and last about 1400 hours. Maintaining the SmartBoard setups consumed probably about 20% of my time overall when I worked there.

Through my four years there (I just quit in May to go to grad school at CMU), we eventually ramped up to just over 30 of them. Every teacher wants one, and most teachers used them pretty well. Is it $15,000 well? Probably not, but the students really like them, and a dedicated teacher can REALLY do a lot with them.

I taught for two years, in both a SmartBoard classroom and a non SmartBoard classroom. I taught programming, and having the ability to show the programs on the board and edit code on the board was just fantastic. At one point, I did get moved to a classroom without a SmartBoard and with just a regular old chalkboard. Personally, I preferred using the chalkboard, but really just because: a) if you want to use the smartboard well, you should be prepared for class -- I was never prepared, b) I write a bit too fast and too sloppy for the SmartBoard to pick it up well, c) I like having a LOT of space on which to write, d) playing with chalk is fun. If I had more time to put into the class I was teaching, I would've really gotten a lot more out of the SmartBoard capability when I had it.

A lot of schools are faced with increasing pressure to bring computers and "technology" into the classroom. The primary thrust has been laptop programs. Personally, I think the laptop has very little place in a HS classroom. Our neighboring school did the laptop program, and they had some up and more down with it. The laptop creates a barrier inbetween the teacher and the student. In theory, it creates a more self-driven learning approach. But in High School, 99% of students are not self-driving their learning, they are playing games or on AIM most of the time. And the support costs for a laptop program are astronomical. In contrast, the SmartBoard is a teacher-driven approach that restores the focus back to the front of the classroom and the ma

We have this system fully implemented where I work and have been using Smart Boards since '98.

The only hardware is the actual smart board. It connects to any computer running Windows through the serial port and uses IR to xmit/receive the info. There are other features like connecting it to student workstations so students in the back can view what's display without straining their eyes. The instructor controls that by switching user monitors to blank, local computer, or white board screen. The typical system usually used 2 display monitors. The smart board displays what is available on one monitor while the instructor can bring their guide up on the other monitor.

While trying to teach electronics, this is a great tool for showing signal flows and making notes on the scat. Oh, by the way, you can still use dry erase markers on these boards. Definitely worth their weight in gold and easy to use.

You can get more info http://www.smarttech.com/.

I teach algebra in Orange County, CA, and have been using one of these for most of the last school year. My school has probably 85% of the classrooms equipped with these, with the remaining 15% due to get them early next year. I use a Smart Board with a 12" PowerBook and an Epson LCD projector*. It is front projection, which can be a pain (especially when my clueless 7th and 8th graders look directly into the beam), but I do enjoy using it. With the Smart Board and a PowerPoint** presentation, I can cover more information in a class period than I can by just sitting at an overhead projector. This also allows me to have the full text of what I'm saying on the screen as I'm saying it, which allows both my auditory and visual learners to acquire more of the imformation. I craft the presentations in such a way that the example problems show every step of work on each click of my wireless presentation remote/laser pointer. If I need to highlight/underline/circle/do anything by hand, there is a selection of pens at the ready, just as if I was working at a chalkboard or whiteboard. However, I find being able to walk around the room while I explain how to factor trinomials does wonders for keeping my students on task.

Does the tech make me a better teacher? No, but it does allow me to keep the attention of my 180 hormonal 7th and 8th graders on a bright and sunny June day where you can smell the ocean on the breeze. Do all of the teachers who have Smart Boards at my school make use of them? No. Some simply do not want to while others do not know how to use them or integrate them into their lessons. Here is where the system starts to show flaws. The level of training we receive on technology is almost non-existant. My school and school district could stand to do much more there.

Smart Boards and computers are excellent tools to use in education, but are not a panecea for all of education's ills. Smaller class sizes would be an excellent first step. I have between 35 and 38 students per class, which is far too many to give any kind of individualized attention to in class. 25 to 30 per class would be really nice, and being able to achieve that mythical 20:1 student to teacher ratio would be heaven. Another thing that would be of big help to the level of education we can provide would be to have elemetary teachers who are not afraid of math. So many of my 7th graders barely know their multiplication tables, much less any trace of pre-algebra skills like how to work with formulas. Heaven forbid that I throw a fraction into a problem. We're trying to fix the problem of under-performing schools by making the Jr. High and High Schools so much more advanced, but we aren't getting the foundations laid securely enough to allow that to work. Better pay would be nice, but I'd much rather see math specialists at the elementary levels and more teachers in general first. Education is the foundation of every other career. If we do not support it properly, we're going to see more and more of the other professions suffer in the near future.

* - When using my LCD projector or overhead projector, I do not have to keep my room "oppressively dark." I have mini-blinds on my south-facing bank of windows and paper covering 80% of my north-facing windows, which is sufficient to be able to see either image source. In fact, my students almost uniformly prefer the dimmed room and natural lighting opposed to the harsh flourescents flooding the room. There is a chorus of groans whenever I turn the lights back on. Supposedly, we were going to get blackout curtains last year, and to be fair, we did get the runners installed, but here it is, 9 school days left, and no curtains yet. The paper stays on the windows.

** - I only use PowerPoint because it has Equation Editor and MathType. If Apple (or a third party) has something similar for use with KeyNote, I'd switch in a heartbeat. Maybe I should submit an "Ask Slashdot" for that one...

...a Smart Tech Smart Boardrotated 90 degrees. Not only can you write on them, but it will digitize the writing into the computer.

I know some people here know more about this topic than myself, but I can say that there is a high success rate at this school, and they teach about as fast as possible (Arabic fluency is achieved in 63 weeks of class). But I feel that too much tech will drown the basics out.

And I agree with the poster that said class size is important. 1:12 ratio is a good goal imo. Not too many to have people left out, but big enough to have variety is speaking partners for the students.

I teach Java at Southwestern Illinois College. We have two semesters (Java I and II). One thing the students seem to like is all of the FREE software I expose them to, as part of the class (Java, Eclipse, and Tomcat).

Not only do I teach the students how to write Java programs, but I teach them how to install and configure the software. Unfortunatly, we might not get to all of the materials becuse of the pace I set; but it is all available for them. As a technology note. All of the classrooms are equiped with SmartBoards

Truth be told, if I had the cash I'd be snapping one of these up in no time. The biggest use that I've found for a tablet is during meetings with co-workers. As an engineer, I find myself drawing diagrams to explain things all the time. Being able to just draw on the screen to do this or to explain a drawing would be great! Plus, once you're finished drawing said explanation, if you need it you can save a screenshot or just erase the drawing and move on. Plus it saves a whole mess of paper that I'd just lose anyway.

The important reason for the pen isn't so much as a replacement for a keyboard, rather as a way to enhance what's already on the scren, or to make quick additions to already-existing files to be changed at a later date. Of course, that this one has a keyboard is another bonus. Type when it's faster, then take the stylus and touch the document up to be fixed later. It's sort of like a Smart Board but portable, and a lot cheaper.

Believe me, I'm tempted to spend the extra money to get one of these when I next get a new computer. (Potentially in addition to a desktop). With so many employers giving out company notebooks, it would be the next logical step, as I see it.

Although, I can see this may not be for everybody, just like PDA's aren't for everybody.

One of my favorite pieces of technology I've ever gotten a chance to play with is the SmartBoard Interactive Whiteboard It's a whiteboard that's touch-sensative. Basically, combine it with your favorite projection monitor and you've got a 60 inch touchscreen monitor. Just like any other touch screen, anywhere you tap the board is treated like a mouseclick in whatever application you're using. As an added bonus, "magic crayons" (really nothing more than plastic styluses) are at the bottom of the board. When the board detects one of the pens removed from its holder, it treats all touches as requests to draw on the screen.

It's a great presentation tool to liven up a powerpoint and avoid the need to have to walk accross the room to get the next frame. Furthermore, playing solitare with foot-high cards is quite fun. :)

NC State seems to have it working.

Here are the installation directions for the driver.

Your prize is our encouragement to travel to Redmond and deliver a 2x4 clue stick to Bill Gates. Be sure to chant out "Here's another one you blew the call on" while delivering it.

btw, for meetings, we use a Smart Board which allows drawing on a white board and saving off to pdf (or other format) for later distribution. Works wonders, very popular with everyone that uses it, effective, and wasn't envisioned by Mr. Gates.

But look why they are bad. There's funding to these schools, but funding isnt the issue. You dont need fancy-schmancy school building to teach better. The problem is 2 fold in education.


The main problem we have with highschool and below, teachers are forced to teach 30-50 kids a class, even a teacher who cares cannot teach 30-50 people with just chalkboard and 10 year old textbooks. You need to use the technology to help teachers do their job, you need to give teachers the tools they demand to teach 30-50 kids instead of trying for the impossible goal of making classes smaller.

1: MANY teachers dont care/teach
2: The bureaucracy prevents effective teaching through inane policies


The difference between college and highschool, in college it doesnt matter if a teacher cares, in college it doesnt matter if a teacher is good at teaching, the students are given the tools they need to educate themselves, and the teachers are given the tools to give lectures and answer questions from big classes with 50-100 kids. Our colleges are doing a good job, why not apply it to our highschool? Its proven to work at Harvard, MIT, Yale and these other schools.

Getting rid of teachers and giving jobs to those who love to teach (similar to computer geeks to enjoy to do computer stuff, for free...). That'd cut down on bad teachers. I even had a teacher who told my mom (I was in kindergarten), after she asked the cirrculum, "Like it matters, it's not your ability to change it".


Lets be realistic, people arent going to teach for free. Sure I'd teach but I wont do it for free. Also I need the TOOLS to teach 100 kids, this would require we update the technology, perhaps using smart boards like you see here http://www.smarttech.com/

Japan is doing this, Europe is doing this, our schools however are wasting their time arguing about how to do things instead of actually just spending money and funding the schools like everyone else.

Also, the bureaucracy prevents students from doing their own things they like. I went to public school and I wanted decent programming classes along with network classes (big network in class to use). But NOO! School policy that students cant have any power, even on a closed network. I wanted experience on computers that would be hard to me achieve otherwise. Instead, I was held back by the standard REQ'd classes along with inane teachers who didnt want to be there in the first place.


I went to crappy highschools and good highschools, the job of a teacher is to teach kids to educate themselves, to act more as a guide, or a coach, but without the proper tools a kid cannot even teach themselves. When I went to the terrible school the books were almost 20 years old, we werent allowed to take the books home because the teacher was concerned about us stealing them, the teacher would do nothing but sit and eat donuts and drink coffee, perhaps give the daily homework assignment, and tell us to read chapters in the book and punish the kids who decide not to read it right then in the class.

In the good school everything was different, teachers gave students REAL assignments which required teamwork, I actually had to think, do research, write papers, and the teachers would review my work, comment on it and send it back to me giving me time to revise it and improve it before submitting the final product. This work would go into a portfolio which would be reviewed to see if I'd graduate or not.

You see, the current school system is so focused on tests, passing tests, or getting good scores on the SATs that kids arent taught skills which help them learn, they are taught to pass a certain test, trained to get a high score on the SAT, and kids get judged more on their attendence and homework assignments than they do on their actual classwork. The structure of the bad schools just sucks, the tools suck, in the good school there were 2 sometimes 3 computers in eve

But look why they are bad. There's funding to these schools, but funding isnt the issue. You dont need fancy-schmancy school building to teach better. The problem is 2 fold in education.


The main problem we have with highschool and below, teachers are forced to teach 30-50 kids a class, even a teacher who cares cannot teach 30-50 people with just chalkboard and 10 year old textbooks.

You need to use the technology to help teachers do their job, you need to give teachers the tools they demand to teach 30-50 kids instead of trying for the impossible goal of making classes smaller.

1: MANY teachers dont care/teach
2: The bureaucracy prevents effective teaching through inane policies


The difference between college and highschool, in college it doesnt matter if a teacher cares, in college it doesnt matter if a teacher is good at teaching, the students are given the tools they need to educate themselves, and the teachers are given the tools to give lectures and answer questions from big classes with 50-100 kids. Our colleges are doing a good job, why not apply it to our highschool? Its proven to work at Harvard, MIT, Yale and these other schools.

etting rid of teachers and giving jobs to those who love to teach (similar to computer geeks to enjoy to do computer stuff, for free...). That'd cut down on bad teachers. I even had a teacher who told my mom (I was in kindergarten), after she asked the cirrculum, "Like it matters, it's not your ability to change it".


Lets be realistic, people arent going to teach for free. Sure I'd teach but I wont do it for free. Also I need the TOOLS to teach 100 kids, this would require we update the technology, perhaps using smart boards like you see here http://www.smarttech.com/

Japan is doing this, Europe is doing this, our schools however are wasting their time arguing about how to do things instead of actually just spending money and funding the schools like everyone else.

Also, the bureaucracy prevents students from doing their own things they like. I went to public school and I wanted decent programming classes along with network classes (big network in class to use). But NOO! School policy that students cant have any power, even on a closed network. I wanted experience on computers that would be hard to me achieve otherwise. Instead, I was held back by the standard REQ'd classes along with inane teachers who didnt want to be there in the first place.


I went to crappy highschools and good highschools, the job of a teacher is to teach kids to educate themselves, to act more as a guide, or a coach, but without the proper tools a kid cannot even teach themselves. When I went to the terrible school the books were almost 20 years old, we werent allowed to take the books home because the teacher was concerned about us stealing them, the teacher would do nothing but sit and eat donuts and drink coffee, perhaps give the daily homework assignment, and tell us to read chapters in the book and punish the kids who decide not to read it right then in the class.

In the good school everything was different, teachers gave students REAL assignments which required teamwork, I actually had to think, do research, write papers, and the teachers would review my work, comment on it and send it back to me giving me time to revise it and improve it before submitting the final product. This work would go into a portfolio which would be reviewed to see if I'd graduate or not.

You see, the current school system is so focused on tests, passing tests, or getting good scores on the SATs that kids arent taught skills which help them learn, they are taught to pass a certain test, trained to get a high score on the SAT, and kids get judged more on their attendence and homework assignments than they do on their actual classwork. The structure of the bad schools just sucks, the tools suck, in the good school there were 2 sometimes 3

• Teachers from all subjects are being expected to integrate technology into their lesson plans. In many cases the students know more about the tech than the instructors. The place I work provides training opportunities for instructors, but many don't seek them out or resist.
• I find limited utility in using computers in teaching some subjects such as English. For example, one shouldn't be teaching how to use a word processor in an English class. It takes away from the core reason for the class. I do realize that people need to type up papers on computers, but that activity should be done in general labs staffed with support people to help students who don't have these skills. However, see below about stressed support staffing problems.
• Grants are usually given for new equipment purchases, not maintenance or infrastructure. In my employer's case, that has meant a large new base of installed systems, which increases the need for tech staff, but since there is no budget for that, tech support suffers. Infrastructure such as networking and back-end servers suffers. And most importantly, the issue of replacement cost is not considered. For example, we currently have 2,000 computers. If you use a 5-year replacement cycle, which I consider not enough, you're looking at having to set aside around a half-million dollars a year to replace equipment. Despite this, we continue to add new labs. Eventually we'll have hallways full of computer ghettos... It's hard to convince people that that fast p4 today will be a dog 5 years from now (or two whenever longhorn or whatever comes out and basically uses a back-end database running on each desktop to store data instead of a file system... ooo, that'll kill a currently fast machine I'm sure...)
• I find teaching vendor-specific programs in a college unwise, for example, programming in Visual Studio or network design using literal examples for a Cisco environment. For example, I wonder about former students who were taught dbase III when that was hot. If they were taught the concepts and theory, they could then adapt, if they were taught just dbase iii, they are now in need of retraining. But that's just a personal opinion.
• Many computer textbooks are horribly rigid and instructors are unable to adapt in some cases. For example, stupid personalized menus in Office apps. After getting way too many complaints like "The print menu disappeared" and trying to tell people to hit the chevron, we hear that the book doesn't say to do that, so we turned off personalized menus in a GPO. Then some instructors using a different book say "The book tells the student to go down to the chevron at the bottom of the menu to expand it, but our system doesn't do that. How can I teach when our system doesn't match the book?" Another example, a textbook that tells students to do create files and dirs on the C: drive, which we have locked down via ACLs. Some instructors actually expect us to toss out desktop security so they don't have to tell students to use Z: instead of where it says C: in the textbook. And speaking of textbooks, a curse to all textbooks that include a CD-ROM that requires software to be installed to use it.
• Computers can be a big distraction in a classroom. For example, students IM'ing each other during a lecture. Some teachers are looking at IT for a solution, which I believe we should offer, but due to staffing shortages, right now everyone is putting out other fires...
• A few years ago, there was a big push to wire every K12 school in the state to the Internet. I remember thinking "Ah, who is going to manage all of this stuff?" One school district in my area has *one* IT person who runs around to about 20 schools. Talk about a job from hell... The schools hardly ever see this IT person, so they often appoint the most computer-literal teacher to handle many of the issues, taking that person away from their main job of teaching.
• One tech I really do like is a single desktop in a classroom with a "smart board", something that allows an instructor to not only manipulate the mouse by touching the board, but also to annotate what's displayed with markers and save the board notes and displays at will to pdf files for later review by students. No desktops at the desks to distract students, cheaper to spread tech to every classroom, and students can practice what they learn later in a lab exercise of some sorts. I have taught evening classes before and I can first-hand testify that a lesson plan that has students repeating what you do on their own desktops drags down the pace tremendously. There is always one or two that claim that their computer isn't doing what you demonstrate and you have to stop, go back to them, and help them catch up.

Digital Paper/Ink Digital Paper

This new paper, with electronic ink would mean one book could hold all your books. One piece of paper could be your news paper, magazine, even your favorite website. One peice of paper could have all your schoolwork on it.

SympodiumInteractive Lecture technology, This allows students to view the board, as well as move along at their own pace doing their own thing. This would allow a student to learn more due to the class not slowing them down. Its interactive so if a person wants
more detail about something they can get it.

Reason, Logic, Cause and effect.

This is something schools never teach and this is one of the most important things we must teach kids, as well as adults.
Example

Now, lets have bush raise the school budget to 150 billion from the little tiny 20 billion that it is, (currently we spend 400 billion and rising per year on the military)

I dont see why schools need paper in this day and age, I dont know if ebooks are the answer, I actually would prefer the use of digital paper and smart boards

SmartBoard Technology

For clarification, the files created through this use the RealPlayer VirtualInk plugin. The board system used by this teacher is actually Mimio (by Virtual Ink (redirects to mimio.com)), not smarttech.

Retaliation appreciated with humor. But, on that issue, we've got several different versions on the way, each of which is less graphic and code intensive.

Actually, we've got a linux driver, and some of our programs ported over to Linux. You can use the board as a mouse and do annotations. Take a look at our software features webpage:

http://smarttech.com/products/smartboard/software. asp

-Tim Cowley,
Software Developer,
SMART Technologies

This company has been making smart white boards for several years now, and I've seen them used in a number of local (Calgary) businesses and post-secondary schools. A friend of mine used to work for this company (run in part by an HCI researcher) designing the software bits.

The software also lets the board act as a giant mouse tablet, making all of your software touch aware. Project a web page and touch the board with your finger and it's the same as if you clicked on the link.

I've done demonstrations for several high schools and colleges in our area who've been interested in new teaching aids.

Our college has a 67" smart board. 67" touchscreen with rear projection. It's absolutely amazing. The software has built in OCR. The instructor can use his finger to write, and then have it appear as typed text. In white board mode you can save anything you do, and go back to a diagram you drew 10 classes ago. I don't think I could say enough about it....it's just amazing.

I honestly don't see how our program could function properly without it. Like the microwave, I can't imagine life without it.

I've used SmartTech's SmartBoard regularly over the past few years. Here's my impressions:

There is a bit of a learning curve; it's not a huge one, but enough that unless someone makes a small bit of an effort, they never will use the technology.

*However*, once you put the time in to know how to effectively use it, it is an amazing technology.

Being able to flip to a new page with a tape on the board, and flip back and forth between pages is huge. Also, in cases where you need *just* a little more room but don't have it, you can select the whole area, and reduce it in size a bit, and draw the stuff you wanted to add. Extremely handy. It's cases like these that it *saves* you a lot of time.

Being able to have a full web/printable transcript of a session is also a huge timesaver.

SmartTech's software also has features for timing agenda's, assigning task responsibilities, and other very neat conferencing features. (Also supports remote whiteboarding, good for those videoconferences).

I've always wanted to try Mimeo's unit to compare, but never had the time. Hardly new technology, but definitely very useful.

The biggest problem is that in order to make best use of these types of units, you also need an LCD projector, which makes the cost of the SmartBoard/Mimeo unit look pretty small.

-me

We've used smartboards in some systems at work. Basically it's just a digital whiteboard. The image is shown using a projector. Whenever one of the pens is picked up, the software on the computer detects it and freezes the image. You can then draw on the board, and lines are shown. It's of course possible to save the image. The problem is that you have to stand in front of the board, blocking the image. It comes with 4 "pens" (with different colors) and an eraser. The board is just touch sensitive. By detecting which pen (or eraser) the user picks up it uses the correct color (there is one place for each pen, if you put the green pen in the blue tray and vice versa a blue color will be used even if you pick up the green pen.

The software we used was for windows, but the web page says that some of the features are available for Mac and UNIX/Linux too.

SmartTech

In regards to your focus on the inside of the classroom - you might be interested in a company called Smart. I've purchased and installed two of thier boards now and they're a big hit. They're a step beyond a computer with a projector. It not only allows educators to stand up in front of the projected computer screen and actually control the computer by touching it, it also allows them to put any student workstation up on the projector as well, such as for a class critique of student work.

I went out of my way to arrange training for the faculty who would be teaching in these labs. Most of them showed up, a few still don't get it. But for the board is used every single day, that much I know.

I think you mentioned Blackboard, too. We've been using it also and it's been great for us. We periodically arrange for 2-hour how-to sessions for faculty. Adoption of the system has positively exploded. Naturally there are plenty of faculty who will never use it, but as you say the students pressure them and we provide the training...so in the end more and more come to use it.

I saw a demo of their first generation whiteboard at about 3 years ago, and it was fantastic. They used a serial protocol (though I'm not sure if they publish it). They do have driver software for Linux. One interesting advantage to using a low data rate serial protocol is that you can record anything that people have written (and erased), so you don't have to worry about screen captures or other low-resolution saves before erasing stuff. You can also replay things later.

They even have rear projection whiteboards and plasma panel overlays.

As for software, there have been several suggestions already, and I would think that a group of Linux-savvy scientists should be able to convince this cool hardware to work with some of that cool software. (at least in theory :)

Have fun.