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College CIO Predicts Tablets Will Kill Smart Boards
CowboyRobot writes "Keith Fowlkes (vice chancellor for information technology and CIO at the University of Virginia's College at Wise) has a commentary at Information Week in which he makes the point that moving forward, colleges will be able to dump all the 'smart' classroom tools and devices (e.g. electronic whiteboards, clickers, projection systems, etc.) and will only need to support students' tablets. The reasoning comes down to the return on investment, which is easy to argue for tablets but not for other classroom technologies. Standardization of video across devices remains a problem, as does the issue of where files are stored and how they are shared. But these are solvable problems and we will soon see the day when electronic whiteboards are a distant memory."
I think the issue of file storage was solved by openafs a long time ago, certainly at the scale of a small university.
Let's put aside the fact that a LOT of professors don't like the idea of students even bringing smartphones into class, much less tablets and notebooks. Let's put aside the fact this guy sounds like someone whining about his budget, who has possibly been approached by a slick salesman who's sold him on the idea of some app that's just going to require a "small investment." Let's put aside the fact the professors are still, by and large, a bunch of old farts--many of whom are still using the same blackboard presentations and transparencies that they were using 30 years ago.
To me, the most obvious counter to this assertion is the notebook. Students have had notebooks en masse for 10-15 years now, and THOSE didn't really revolutionize the classroom. And if notebooks, which are way more powerful and open than tablets, didn't really change things all that much--then what makes him think that tablets will?
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Tablet for the actual interaction, projector so all the others can see.
That would certainly kill off the need for smart boards, which are just obtuse to work with in general.
Makes sense. Why have just the one big screen that can display information when you could have a whole department devoted to a system that can push information to a wide range of tablets with different operating systems, software installations and capabilities. It's far more fun trying to work around the 30% of students who don't have LaTeX installed, the 42% without Flash, the 19% without an HTML5 browser and the guy who should be expelled because he prefers a notebook and pen.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
I think "standardization of video standards" would be the biggest bugbear here - which college student will want to avoid a device that uses the latest Retina display or equivalent, if it means the 640x480, or equivalent "low-end" spec of the time will look either tiny or crappy on their screen? Look back a few years - we had the VGA "standard", XGA, WGA, etc., then the whole 4:3, 16:9, or 16:10 aspect ratio shift.
Uh, sure. Ever try to actually get it working? Good luck doing that on iOS - it is a royal pain on Linux, let alone Windows.
The sad thing is that OpenAFS is the only networked POSIX filesystem I'm aware of that actually works reasonably well and is secure. Pity that nobody actually uses it. NFSv4 with all the features enabled looks to be almost as good, and just as painful to set up.
Why is it that I can take any Windows box and right click on a folder and turn on sharing, enter a password, and get something that is fairly secure, and yet the same feature does not exist on Linux? Sure, for a fortune 500 company setting up Kerberos and such makes sense, but to share a few files between two PCs?
I now do much of my shopping online. If I want a pair of Levi 501's, it doesn''t matter where they come from. As long as it is convenient and cheap. This is what has been dooming many brick and mortar stores. If this is true for stores, it may be more so for brick and mortar schools. With online courses and lectures, much of the need to waste gas money and driving time has evaporated too. My youngest son is taking college math classes and more online from an good University. The cost is far lower for him and class size is almost irrelevant. This goes way beyond white boards and tablets.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
It shows that this guy is from IT/administration and not a teacher.
Projector/smartboard/blackboard serve completely different purpose than a textbook/tablet/notebook in the classroom. It is sad that someone who is in charge of this stuff doesn't have a clue how these things are actually used.
"colleges will be able to dump all the 'smart' classroom tools and (...) will only need to support students' tablets"
Only? So that's how many OSs again? iOS, a bunch of android versions, linux flavour, firefoxOS, firefoxOS, chromeOS, sailfish, i've lost track. I'm sure their IT departments will be thrilled to ONLY support tablets.
" I think the issue of file storage was solved by openafs a long time ago, certainly at the scale of small University."
LMFAO... and yes, I am a Carnegie Mellon Alum and yes, when I was in Grad School I did manage to hack my research Linux box enough to be able to mount my Andrew share. Having seen how people who aren't in grad school at CMU actually use computers in the real world, somebody needs a bit of a wakeup call.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
why pay for expensive hardware and software and support when you can just make your students buy the required hardware?
by now most android tablets and the ipad are at pretty much feature parity with almost all the popular software available on both platforms
you don't need widgets or live wallpaper or the ability to enable/disable your radios easily to do school work
The technology to replace the smart board is already out there. Most phones and tablets have an app that will act as a mouse, allowing the instructor to roam the room while moving through a presentation and writing. Wireless writing pads allow a student to do the same from anywhere in the room.
The advantage of each student having a tablet, of course, is that a student may view a presentation closeup, interact with assessment using things like polleverywhere, as well a engage in impromptu content. The disadvantage is that a certain percentage of the student will be updating their facebook and playing WoW, but that is nothing new and why so many colleges have high drop out rates.
All this, however, can be a supplement to the smartboard. The real problem is that the people who make the actual Smartboard are very proud of the their product, have really tightened licensing. To be honest, the software is what makes the smartboard worthwhile, but, as I said, most people don't use the software. In the long ago it was because teacher were not trained in using it, now it is rich web content.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
One of the main problems with this idea is that while tablets may certainly offer a good way for professors to guide students, they also come with a plethora of non-educational distractions (i.e., games and the Internet). I use lots of technology in my classroom and students frequently study Internet topics, but in the classroom itself all electronics are banned except those used by me. Students just cannot resist the distraction offered by cell phones and laptops, and classroom discussion suffers as a result.
Tablets didn't kill smartboards - cell phone cameras did. I've been in over 100 different client boardrooms and seen dozens of smartboard setups, but I've never actually seen one that worked properly. A plain whiteboard and a cell phone camera, on the other hand, capture the notes very simply and effectively. It may not be the fanciest solution but it's by far the most convenient.
Dump the professors as well, that way we can get knowledgable people to teach, who know their topic and can do it remotely costing far less than the bloated salaries tenure gives.
Make college affordable again..
Most wireless routers can only support 50 clients at a time and that's in theory on the specs, not in practice. So unless they want RF-proof walls and 1 router per classroom, and no other 2.4GHz devices in the entire school, I think there might just be a little problem getting them on the network to stream course materials and presentations. So no, tablets in every students' is an idiotic idea that won't work.
There is no way I can get rid of the ceiling projector and the link to my laptop. There is an instructors desktop that is hooked to the projector also but I choose to use my own laptop as I have all of my lessons on that machine. I give demonstrations and tutorials all the time and work students questions live so they can see how I solved particular problems. I need to be able to show this to students. Now, we could get rid of the projector if there existed a way for me to privately share my screen with all of the tablets in the classroom all at the same time. Maybe something out there exist where I can do that but I'm not aware of it. Oh, and BTW, tablets are a LONG way away from being able to run Maya so for the immediate future at least, my particular need for a portable high end workstation is not going to go away either.
"TV, a medium as it is neither rare nor well done." Ernie Kovacs
I don't think that tablets are going to kill all of the elements of the smart classroom, particularly the projector, which is still way to useful. But it will kill many of them. The smartboard is dead. Ded. I use my iPad and my projector along with the Doceri software. My solution was 1/2 price of the smartboard in the classroom next door, and allows me to roam around the room while presenting. I can also create my presentations wherever my iPad is as opposed to needing to be in the room with the smartboard or at a PC with specialized software.
Instead of clickers I simply have all of the students twitter answers to me. Since it is not graded, it is ok if some student forgot to charge their phone on a particular day. I do have a couple of iPod Touches for use by students who don't have a phone that can tweet.
I can't find my
Any fucktard who can't use the simple phrase "in the future" is spouting buzzwords and can safely be ignored. Clear enough?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
College faculty are almost never unionized. Your comment is just plain ignorant.
This kind of system has already been integrated into some of the more technically competent medical schools.
When I was teaching, both in high school and in college, I used the blackboard.
It is very efficient and powerful.
I don't need to charge the blackboard, it doesn't have bugs, it works the same every classroom/school I go to and I can invite students to the board to do some work and they can use it easily to.
All students can just copy it, make a picture of it, videotape it, whatever is their own personal preference.
Add a projector to show some things with my computer and I have everything I need to teach.
Haven't used a smart board so can't really judge on that, but the concept is simple:
A blackboard is an easy tool for the teacher/school, getting the information from it is the students problem. Notebooks/tablets/... and getting the information on them is suddenly the schools/teachers problem. And really, there simply is no time for a teacher to occupy him/herself with that.
As with most cutting edge tech, it's chief use is to push the expensive part downstream.
For NewsPapers, printing press cost a lot of money.
Much cheaper to produce a web site and have people go there instead of wasting all the expensive newsprint.
Why put tech in the class room when you can require students to provide it themselves?
This is like saying that we can do away with all those expensive school busses since everyone is going to have fancy new electric cars. The bus is how we bring together a group of students and take them somewhere together.
If you look at a classroom there is a very large surface at the front of the room that the teacher uses to collect the attention of everyone in the room and then take them somewhere together. This is not the same experience when everyone is looking down at their tablets.
Now how about tablets (or anything else for that matter) that can automatically sync with the smart board (or it's future replacement) -- that would be excellent. No more madly writing down notes, students can instead spend their time watching and listening.
oh for ... sake.
The SmartBoard physical device can be replaced with a $50 Wiimote ($20 clone) and infrared light pen ($30)
The SmartBoard software, on the other hand, is what you're really paying for.
Here's a free alternative to the software:
http://open-sankore.org/
The only person who we should even consider giving tech to is the teacher.
What kills the SmartBoard and tablets in the class is the low resolution. It's like drawing with a crayon. And it's difficult to face the students when using it.
I've found the best alternative is a simple document camera that can be built with an HD webcam (requires a minimum 1024x768 projector as well) and some free software I wrote. And yes, I used this in an actual classroom during my student teaching.
http://coteach.org/1000-classroom/
I put together the $1000 classroom to try this stuff out. Give me a steady supply of dry erase markers for students to use and a document camera and I'm happy. With the document camera I can sit or stand facing the students while I write. And everyone can see clearly what I'm writing. For student interaction, they come up and write on the board.
But, this is why I'm not rich. I'm not in the business of selling overpriced worthless crap to the education system.
Work Safe Porn
Having worked for a "smart" board maker a few years ago, we did a study that dealt with a problem where most teachers used their fancy new expensive interactive smart board as nothing more then a second monitor and glorified projector, if even at all. Our software tracks board touches and saw that there was very little user interaction. In the same study we saw a huge proliferation in the use of tablets in schools which are highly interactive and touchable.
The reality is that the education systems are slowly changing away from the 100's year old paradigm of people lecturing to a new concept of students "exploring" education at their own pace. Not all students learn at the same pace, some students learn math and logic faster then language, others the opposite. Forcing all students to study the same subject matter at the same time is why schools are good at creating failures rather then successes. A child that doesn't do math by grade 3 should not be considered remedial, for instance, and thus shunted to a system of lower expectations, their math skills may have clicked in later in development and could be as or even more proficient then anyone else that learned math earlier.
So, the concept of a fixed focal point for a classroom is slowly eroding to more student-centric learning. The idea of self-guided learning is an emerging concept in many schools where the curriculum is a serious of self-guided lessons where the "teacher" is there to help students understand the lessons when they struggle.
The problem with the company I worked for (and why I left) was that in spite of having this study and seeing their product tucked away in a corner being unused, they still insist on creating single focal point solutions for the classroom and only loosely investing into tablet based solutions. Sure the concepts of collaboration and interactivity between students is important, but not necessarily the only way to proceed with education. Smart boards are still expensive and often underutilized and in spite of some initial interest level from students, quickly become bored with the technology, unlike tablets.
Better integration between smart boards and tablets would be the only way to save this company, but alas, is being greatly overlooked.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I've been recording and posting my lectures at JHU using Camtasia for many years...
I whiteboard using a graphics tablet (Wacom Bamboo fun, drawing ink notes on Evernote). I write code examples on the fly in Eclipse (and if Android apps, run them in an emulator or use droid@screen to mirror). I surf to websites. When I rarely have slides, I show them. Everything I say (using a headset mic) and do is recorded using Camtasia. After class I do some minor edits and post the videos and example code from the class on the course website after class.
Much less expensive than a smartboard (even moreso if you use alternate recording software), and the students love it (almost everyone comments on it in the evals)
I'm a little surprised that the students still come to class... I suspect it's because they like being able to ask questions and interact with the other students.
Question to slashdotters, mostly because I think the majority here are either college educated, in college, or likely to head to college. If you walked into a classroom and they did not have whiteboards, chalk boards, or an overhead projector, and instead required you to download an app (even if it's Android or an iPad app), what would you think? I ask because I'm finishing my Masters now and I'm in my early 30's. When I was in college, I was old school, handwritten notes in a notebook, and even today I still operate that way. I occasionally bring my laptop to class, but admit the temptation is strong to not pay attention so I often do not. I notice at most 2 or 3 people in a class of 20-30 have and are using a tablet to take notes.
So if you went into a class like I described above, someone like me would be forced to by a tablet in order to take the class. What is your opinion about that?
With a Smart board he can progress through solving the equation, while what he is writing is either projected, and/or automatically recorded so it can be played back later.
You can do that with a pen based computer too. I've actually seen people do it reasonably effectively with a pen based Windows machine that was projected.
A tablet would be the perfect tool for certain types of presentations (think math class) and especially for note taking IF someone would develop one that could actually make good use of a stylus. (no one has yet) Fingers aren't very good at writing mathematical equations or entering text. Typing is fine if you just have text but no drawings or equations. But if you need drawings and/or equations nothing has yet been developed that improves on a pen and paper for input.
I understand why Apple and Google don't do it but I'd dearly love an iPad or Android tablet that I could take notes with. They are being dogmatic about the interface being just finger based because of all the really bad pen based apps that would be out there but we're missing out on a really useful tool as a result.
I had several professors who had classes moved to get older rooms with chalk boards 10 years ago. The main complaints I heard were that dry erase boards were hard to clean, the markers were more expensive/dried out/missing/bigger, and that the dry erase boards had to be replaced every 2-3 years if they were used a lot. These professors (some of the best I had, including an amazing CS prof) put up with all short comings of chalk (like breathing in all that nasty dust) because chalk had never left them stranded MULTIPLE TIMES in front of there classes the way dry erase boards had.
I'm a college professor.
The clickers, which are expensive for students, were never needed in the first place. The people who pioneered this teaching technique started by having students raise hands to vote. They observed that some students were reluctant to be embarrassed in front of their peers by raising their hands for a choice that might be wrong, so they handed out large cardboard cards with letters ABCD on them. Students held up the card so only the professor could see. Worked great. The clickers are a waste of money for students, and the extra functionality they make possible is extremely minimal in proportion to the cost.
The idea of only supporting students' tablets is silly. It may be true at the University of Spoiled Children that basically everyone owns a laptop or tablet and brings it to school, but I assure you that that's not true at the community college where I teach. My students are generall extremely cheap and extremely broke. The projector works great. It's up at the front of the room where everyone can see it. If I need to point to it, I can pick up a meter stick and point. If I depend on students to have tablets, then at any given time some big percentage of them will be off task for a variety of reasons: don't own one, didn't bring it to school, dead batteries, using it to play games, doesn't have the right browser plugin, doesn't have enough resolution, wifi isn't working, ...
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