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Best Tablet PC For Classroom Instruction?
dostert writes "With all of the recent hype of multitouch notebooks, the Apple Tablet, the Microsoft Courier, and the CrunchPad, I've been a bit curious about what happened to the good old pen and slate tablet PCs. I'm a mathematics professor at a small college and have been searching for a good cheap tablet (under $1000) which I can use to lecture, record the lecture notes along with my voice, and post up video lectures for the class. I have seen some suggestions, but many are large scale implementations at state universities, something my small private college clearly cannot afford. All I have been able to find is either tiny netbooks (like the new Asus T91), expensive full featured tablets (like the Dell XT), or multitouch tablets, that really wouldn't allow for the type of precision mathematics needs. I know a Sympodium device would work great, but we really can't afford to put one of those in each room, so something portable would be ideal. All I've been left with is considering an HP tx series. It seems nobody has created a new tablet like this in quite sometime, and HP, Fujitsu, and Dell are just doing incremental updates to their old designs. Does anyone have experience with this?"
I have a Motion Computing LE1600. Its an awesome little thing.
Check it out. I got it used for around 400$ with a docking station.
www.gainsaver.com
Motion computing is the only place i have found a true tablet PC that is not a just a laptop with the screen turned over.
It was the HP TC1100. Great tablet. It had a half-size keyboard but didn't feel cramped. Sturdy construction and decent enough battery life for being used. Too bad mine got stolen. I'd say it would probably fit your needs as long as you don't require recent connections or bleeding edge performance.
It had great tracking on it and I regret not getting one earlier in my academic career.
Man...I wish I could find the burglar's who stole it.
import system.cool.Sig;
They're slate PCs and they're damn good.
In my experience, Motion doesn't skimp on hardware, is reliable as hell, and the external batteries will LAST - my little brother's old LE1600 still gets six hours of battery life off the primary and secondary batteries with everything on and cranked up to full (and Win7 Professional).
No matter what manufacturer you go with, I strongly urge that you go to Windows 7 for this - the handwriting support is worlds better than in Vista, and that was a hell of a leap from XP Tablet.
They are kinda expensive, though.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
...1 year to 18 months. There is a plethora of tablets about to hit the market it seems obvious to me that waiting will yield much more choice and better value. Prices would fall after a handful of competiting products have gotten on the market. This will also put more pressure on netbooks which will become cheaper, and the low end of the full laptop market will ratchet down in price too. Apple, Crunchpad and Microsoft, would be the three I'd seriously consider. A lean towards the latter two depending on what software you want to run.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
> It seems nobody has created a new tablet like this in quite sometime
Because it seems nobody really wants tablet (slate) computers. They are really neat and cool, until you have to *use* them. Then you usually find out that the interface is awkward, viewing the screen is uncomfortable, holding them is strange, and typing on a real keyboard is 100 times faster than trying to "write" or touch virtual keys one at a time.
Sure, there are some specific applications where they work quite well... but there aren't that many such applications. So demand is low and prices are high. This is one reason manufacturers started flirting with so-called "convertible" tablets- really just a standard notebook but with a swivel, flip tablet-like screen. Of course, those have issues too- they tend to be more fragile, more expensive, and heavier than just a plain notebook.
Try these guys.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/yc2dwco [norhtec.com]
It's a great price at $435.
I'm sure the battery life is greater than average by looking at the hardware.
It certainly is basic.
And yes, it does run Linux.
But if you really want a touchscreen device on the cheap there are touch screen kits for most popular notebooks, just search on ebay. There are also touchscreen monitors bellow the 200 bucks, these can be hooked up to the existing desktop in the classroom and serve just right.
I would advice you not to set high hopes for resistive touchscreens, they tend to reduce the lcd brightness and contrast while incresing reflections and diffusing the image, if your really really want this implemented try before you buy.
As someone who works in a multimedia department that co-ordinates AV purchases for a government institution (or at least tries to), my advice is to work with your AV guys on this one. Get a comprehensive solution that works for everyone. Otherwise you'll have a situation where you, the keen individual, will have a working solution that only you can use. Others will want one and either do something themselves (badly) or pressure the AV guys into implementing something too fast, too soon. Then whatever you have done will not work with what they have done.
I see keen individuals all the time. Work with the people whose job it is to get this working.
And what the guy said about waiting 12 - 18 months is spot on. Remember how many touchscreen phones there were and how good they were before the iPhone came along? Exactly. The landscape is about to change and adopting new tech now will be expensive. Wait.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
I work at a school district here in California that we've used OEM'd Gateway M285/M295 tablet PCs for a few years, and they've served their purpose. We've got hundreds of these units.
The good:
They do what they're advertised, and thats it. The math teachers like them, and thats about their only purpose.
The bad:
The drivers are funky. They seem to only work well with the factory image (LOADED with junkware). This makes creating and maintaining software images for the units cumbersome, not to mention the seemingly impossible task of finding a virgin version of WindowsXP Tablet Edition. The displays aren't very bright, which is painful in well-lit classrooms. The physical design (especially the keyboard) doesn't seem to hold well to a lot of use. Battery life is decent.
The worst:
The original OEM who we purchased them through has gone belly up. Even though our laptops had warranties, they all mean nothing now. Gateway doesn't support us. And the pens seem to fail at an alarming rate, and cost $79-99 each.
On the flipside, our district is moving to Mac, and thats been working very well. Apple's support for education makes you wonder why the rest of the industry hasn't caught up (its the customer, stupid!). We're at a standstill right now as to what to do with our aging tablets (that we get ZERO support for now). We don't want to get stuck in the same position as before, but Apple is also a proprietary system (but their support is awesome!!!).
I really, really like to see some good web-apps (ala Google Apps), or mutli-platform/open-source software that the students can use.
'/dev/wit' is not available.
I had a Fujitsu T4210 for a few years and after seeing people struggle with LOUSY HP and Dell notebooks, I was very surprised at how zippy that little tablet was. (Can't comment on the latest round of tablets). It was fairly robust as well... survived a 3 ft plunge onto a concrete floor (I wouldn't recommend it as a regular practice though!)
Whatever you do be sure to uninstall the Norton Security trialware that comes with it. Performance will be significantly better.
Dont do it. My school had exactly what your trying to do and they got rid of it because it cost an arm and a leg to do it right. I personally like the feature but they basically needed a dedicated room and production crew to do it. (They did it for a while so students could video commute to class). For me as a TA and a student the best solution has been simply use a projector which can project a piece of paper and scan the paper later and post it online. If you really want some kind of video. The best option ive seen is a laptop with power point hooked up to a projector and a external microphone. If you want a tablet esq feature get a usb drawing pad for 100 bucks....itll save you an arm and a leg.... Its funny around here you see a lot of old professors using tablets etc however most of the younger professors use the old fashioned tech. I think part of growing up with all the technology is realizing when not to use it..
I work in the tech department for a small public school district with a heavy emphasis on educational technology integration in the classroom (we have a 1:1 laptop program as well). A few years ago, we did an experiment with tablet PCs, where we purchased 5 different models from the major vendors (IBM, HP, Fujitsu, Acer, and Toshiba), played around with them, and then offered them to a few teachers to try out. The only one we had any success with was the HP tc4200, which was given to a Primary teacher who used it extensively for a year.
The Thinkpad was the best unit in terms of 'feel'- it was light, solid, with a good battery life. However, both the first and second models we got were sent back because of poor performance (very slow to boot up, high latency during operation, and a tendency to run very hot). The Fujitsu was too heavy, as was the Toshiba. The Acer (Travelmate C200) was great in terms of performance (dedicated 256MB Nvidia graphics, 2GB RAM, etc), but was a bit bulky due to its built-in optical drive. In addition, Acer's method of sliding the screen up from the slate position was stupid, locking it into one angle when using the unit as a notebook. I'm using that one as a gaming platform now (three years later!). The HP tc4200 was, quite frankly, the best tablet I have ever used. It's light, sturdy (not quite as solid-feeling as the Thinkpad), and quick. The lady who used it said she never felt it was annoying to carry it around her classroom for most of the day. In addition to the tablet, we gave her a wifi-enabled projector, so she could work untethered while moving about, and this worked perfectly.
My suggestion is to get one of the tc4200's- they are dead cheap these days, and you can upgrade the RAM and hard drive easily if you wish. I have seen them for $400. Not only that, but you can even shoehorn OS X onto them if you are bored- I did that with our for shiggles and it was awesome for a few days before I missed my Macbook Pro too much!
Most projectors these days have built-in wifi for wireless projection (at least from Windows computers!), and this can really make a huge difference for instructors.
From a pedagogical perspective, you can even justify the cheap route and buy a bluetooth-enabled Wacom tablet. Sure, you don't get a screen built in, but for $250 you get the mobility of the tablet, as well as all the functionality of the penabled software such as Smart or Promethean offer. You can mark up notes, documents, etcetera and save your notes, email them to your students, and so on.
But my money's on the tc4200.
"Apparatus dignosco occultus, satis non supernus."
Biggest Carbon-based Tablet for a child - Big Chief writing tablet.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I have had the same dilemma. I teach an algorithms course at UVA; it is math- and proof-centric. I wanted the ability to "write like one might on a black board" but to also record my writing and my audio so that my lectures can be easily posted online for students to review later. I have used several different tools for this task:
(1) Toshiba Tecra? Windows tablet/Powerpoint/Camtasia. I would make my slides in Keynote. Export to Powerpoint. Give lecture on the Toshiba, use Camtasia to record, and then export to a flash and ipod format for the web. The best part of this is that Powerpoint+Camtasia+Tablet is well-integrated. Powerpoint allows you to mark up a slide using the tablet and save the strokes. Keynote and Powerpoint-on-Mac do not have this feature. However, this laptop belonged to a colleague. It was old, faulty, and involved hassles. Fonts would be routinely messed up between Keynote and Powerpoint. I researched new windows tablets to buy, but could not bring myself to buy one. I happen to use a Mac; I feel anxiety and unctuousness when I have to interact with a windows interface.
(2) Instead, I purchased a Wacom Cintiq 15" display. You can connect it to any laptop, and you can write on it like a tablet. It is also pressure sensitive; a pleasure to use. I used this with my Airbook in the following bizarre combo: Airbook-->VGA splitter--1-->projector and --2--> to Cintiq. Thus, I would get one presenter display for the airbook and one screen on the Cintiq/projector that was public. Unfortunately, Keynote did not allow writing on slides. Either did Powerpoint-on-mac to my surprise! I tried various "screen grafitti" applications on top of Keynote, but none of them would allow the markup to be saved. Finally, I came upon the "Jarnal" program---an open source program written in Java---that allows a notebook functionality. You can import PDF files into it and annotate them. Thus, my workflow is something like: Make slides in keynote--->Export to PDF--->open as background in Jarnal--->Lecture. Jarnal can also record the strokes and play them back. However, I found that a screen capture program "iShowU HD" could capture both audio and everyone that was presented. I would then transcode this into flash and post. This worked for 1.5 semesters. Jarnal is sometimes flaky. It does not render PDF correctly all the time. However, it exports your strokes to PDF, and it saves them in an easy to read .jaj file for future processing. We also use jarnal to grade homeworks online and return them online (no paper printing!),
(3) My current setup is this: Axiotron Modbook + Jarnal + Camtasia for Mac. The Modbook is a mac tablet. I thought it would be fantastic, but it hasnt really solved all of the problems. The pen/tablet interface is fine on the Modbook---but a little flaky sometimes. Jarnal is open source; and I really believe in using open source when I can. The recently released Camtastia for Mac works very well, but misses an important feature that the Windows version has: it allows the slides or pages that you use in your lecture to be bookmarked. The Mac version, however, is intuitive to use for me, and I have given 9 lectures so far without too many problems. It is also very convenient to come to class with just a tablet (instead of the contraption in (2)). You can see the results of some of these lectures from say http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~shelat/4102/2009/09/23/l9/#more-179 (skip over the first 15 min which is a guest speaker discussing if you want to see the jarnal/writing part). I do not use keynote animations (only drawings of data structures, algorithms, etc). Thus, the setup is the best one for me overall.
(4) Cheapest and surprisingly good solution: The Livescribe pen. (I received one to try for free, but it is only $129). You must write on special paper with dots. The pen has a camera and a microphone. You can give lecture and use one of those "overhead camera" contraptions that takes a picture of what you are wri
I have the misfortune to have an HP TX, from the 2xxx series. They have massive overheating problems, some of them have cores that won't actually run at the advertised frequency, and worse still, the wacom layer will NOT work properly due to the overheating problems.
The way they're designed, the primary vent is on the rear right-hand side of the laptop. If you use the laptop for a while and it starts getting hot (and boy does it get hot), that vent will screw with the wacom layer, causing your cursor to jump to the lower-right corner of the screen and right- and left-click randomly in that area. Yeah, right there, where the system tray is. You can imagine the problems this causes.
The only way to prevent this from happening is to disable the wacom layer entirely, in which case you have an expensive, underpowered laptop with a bright screen and a single shoddy hinge assembly. No touch or wacom interface at all. It completely defeats the purpose of having a tablet PC.
I contacted HP about this several times and they refused to admit that it was their problem, despite the fact that numerous other people have complained about it as well. It's a crippling defect. This crappy product and their crappy service have completely turned me off of all HP products. Do not even consider the TX series.
http://www.tenjou.net/
I've been using the Livescribe since June of this year in my meetings, and it'd be perfect for this use, particularly if you're the lecturer (vs. listening to the lecturer in a large hall).
Livescribe records your handwriting and your audio, synchronizes them, allow you to play back your audio from any point in the recording by touching the spot in the notes later (on the notebook, or on your computer), and allows you to upload the notes and audio to a community site. It does a really good job at recording your voice, and there's room for many hours of it on the pen. It's a good writing instrument (much better than the cheap-ballpoint tip in the "Fly Pentop" which uses the same handwriting technology, but doesn't record audio, isn't as polished an experience).
You'll want the pen, and a few of the hardback journals (so they provide something solid to write on as you pace or stroll).
the 2GB pen (vs. the 1GB) is $199, can find it at any Target, and comes with one Livescribe notebook (you'll need to use Livescribe's special paper, but they offer a number of good, flexible and classy options).
Much lighter than a pentop, and arguably less fragile, less of a theft target.
Only downsides:
These things don't stop the pen from being quite useful. More info at Livescribe site.
i teach economics at the university level, and i have a lenovo x200. it is way outside the $1000 range. it has a wacom screen and the stylus is very precise (we do lots of crazy math too ya know). my normal computer is a mac, but i LOVE this thing. lightweight, LONG battery life (5hrs easily), and very sturdy construction. its currently running vista and i've had no problems (core 2 duo 2.0, 4gb ram)
i'd either save up (or convince them to give you more money - if your university is in the US and receives perkins funding, you might go that route. as long as you teach perkins eligible students, your grant administrator can probably find the cash (it might take bribing them with chocolate though..lol)) or, if there is a PC in the room invest in a wireless/bluetooth tablet that you can just carry to the classroom with you. you are going to have a hella-hard time finding all that you need for less than $1500 (unless you go used - our university wont buy used), and one of those cheap ones will just fall apart. one of my colleagues got one of the $1000 HP offerings and HATES it. a year later, the screen flickers, the battery sucks, and the tablet is not very sensitive.
good luck!!!!
I teach chemistry at a small college and have been using the combination of prepared notes in OneNote and the tablet to write on them in class. I use Camtasia to record the lectures and post PDFs of the completed files as well as audio podcasts and screencast videos onto the web for the students. I have a simple Toshiba Portege tablet which serves its purpose very well, although it is taxed by compressing the video. Toshiba still sells a convertible Portege laptop/tablet like what I use for $1200 - I'm sure you could find a used one on ebay for much less.
I would recommend a tablet highly over a dedicated in-classroom solution because it has the flexibility of moving from classroom-to-classroom, as well as recording some dedicated online-only lectures at home (like I was just doing tonight).
Check out http://webs.anokaramsey.edu/aspaas/2061/ for the stuff I've been doing. This is for a hybrid (half-online) organic chemistry course that only meets one day a week for lecture and lab. A course like this probably wouldn't be possible without the tablet handwriting and screencasting tech.
From a student.
Don't do it. If you want a new toy buy one and play with it, but leave it out of the class room.
I've been through several "let's get all high tech with the teaching" initiatives, and they all failed miserably.
The vast majority of the class ended up suffering through the mandatory attendance lectures and took notes from the book instead.
There is no concept in mathematics at that level that you cannot teach with a stick and a large patch of dirt.
Indoors, a chalkboard will do.
Any additional complexity or whizz bang gadgetry is at best a distraction and at worst a complete waste of your student's time.
I used a Thinkpad X61 tablet pc for note taking and lecture recording while doing my bachelors in EE, and still use it as a regular notebook and note taking now as a grad student. I recently loaded Windows 7 on a SSD and it flies. The screen's 1400x1050, so no screen real-estate complaints here. Most of the time I type my notes, but when I need to write down equations and diagrams, I flip it around and draw them, then go back to typing when I need to. It's fast enough to be a regular use noebook, especially with the new SSD. I love it. The sad thing is they don't make 12.1 inch IPS high res screens anymore, as the latest incarnation, the X200 tablet, uses a 1280x800 screen that's far inferior. Still I think it's worth a look.
Or you could bypass the issue all together and go with a "digital paper" solution. I think the questioner is mistaken asking "what is the best tablet PC", and instead should be asking "what is the best method of achieving what I want". Solutions like Oxford Papershow use a form of patterned paper (very faint) that you draw on with a bluetooth-enabled pen, and it then transforms pretty much any computer into a tablet. You have to use it to get a real feel for it, but it's incredibly easy to set up (at least the Oxford Papershow tool) and you can use it on as many or any computers you want. Arrive in lecture theatre, plug in USB dongle, spend three minutes setting it up and you're good to go. You buy the initial device (pen and USB dongle combo) for around UK£100, I think. Then pads of the special paper are around UK£10 for a pad of a 100 sheets, I think. It's an expense, but it's upfront and works out okay actually. Certainly better than a lot of ongoing licences depending on how much you use. You can even print out copies of your slides onto the special paper in advance so that you're drawing on your powerpoint slide or whatever. The whole thing can be recorded, you can use it as a normal interface like a mouse, it's really surprisingly good.
The above sounds like a sales pitch. I have no connection to the company though our university is now trialling the product. I would rate it as better than spending the money on a tablet for a lot of people's needs. Windows only so far as I know, but I could be wrong.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
the only thing I've tried so far is cellwriter, which works fairly well, but it's symbol based rather than word based like the hand writing recognition software of Vista. So it takes longer and isn't nearly as fun to use.
Can handwriting recognition be used only as an indexing tool? There is no point in changing what you actually see in the handouts.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
I'd highly recommend you check out Classroom presenter from the University of Washington. It's what I and some friends have used previously with our tablets (currently a tc4200 but previously a tc1100) to give in-class presentations.
I do security
I am currently a college student, and am at least minoring in math (Considering a double major). When I started I was 10 years out of high school and had forgotten so much that I had to start way back at Math 055 (Basic Algebra). Since then I have taken, in succession, Intermediate Algebra, College Algebra, Trig, Calc I, Calc II, Calc III, Linear Algebra, Proofs, ODE, and am now in Discrete Math. What I have discovered for myself, and from discussions from other students is that we learn the most and the best from instructors that use a good old fashioned chalkboard. It slows you down enough that we can take good notes and still follow what you are doing, it gives you something big enough to clearly point at when you are talking about a piece of what you are doing, and it largely prevents you from just displaying preprepared notes that you post online afterward and hope we manage to follow. If you feel we should have material supplemental to our notes and the textbook, make a handout or post such material online. Math has been successfully taught for ages using a chalkboard. Perhaps there are improvements that can be made to how we teach math, but believe me, switching to a tablet PC is not one of them.