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.

Comments

Or, projectors and tablets together

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Or, projectors and tablets together

[Stewie241]

Yes, for math/science especially, you need something that the professor can walk up to in front of the class and point to things. i.e. point out what part of an equations he/she is talking about or use gestures to illustrate a relationship between two parts of something.

Re:Then why didn't that happen with notebooks?

[h4rr4r]

No matter make nor model nor OS, there is already a nice presentation system that works with all of them. You are using a version of it now. Making a simple website that replaces power point should be something any professor can handle.

Re:OpenAFS

[robmv]

You know It exist, it is called Samba. Install, add the resource to share to the configuration file (or use the distribution GUI for it) and done. Samba is not only for Windows interoperability, it works perfectly between Linux boxes, it even has protocol extensions for better *nix interoperability. then if you need a real secure setup for your company, then use NFS with Kerberos

Terrible idea

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Then why didn't that happen with notebooks?

[ColdWetDog]

okay using just html diagram a 3 stage amplifier at the component level (with voltage/current values).

Man, that's easy - Take a picture of the diagram from the book using your cell phone. Email it to your desktop. Paste it into Word. Now, save it as a .pdf and import it into Powerpoint.

Jeez, you'd think technology was hard or something.