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

Then why didn't that happen with notebooks?

[crazyjj]

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?

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Tablets won't for the same reason laptops didn't. People will show up with any number of different make/model of tables with different versions of different operating systems on them with different capabilities and different versions of different applications then fold in that the user's will have varying levels of skill is the use of these devices...

You'd end up with the instructor (usually not all that technically savvy) using up the class time trying to get their presentation/software/whatever to work on everybody's device rather than actually teaching anything.

Between the above reasons and arcane licensing restrictions on a number of specialized software titles we still maintain actual computer labs, you know, rooms full of PCs, something we were told would go away more than ten years ago.

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:Then why didn't that happen with notebooks?

[Anonymous Coward]

All this ignores the obvious: from a human factors perspective, one large surface with professor walking around and touching it seems to work best.

For another example of this *style* of interaction but with everyone participating from a screen, see weather forecasting. The meteorologist is blue screened in so he can gesture and such.

So long as there are physically students in the same room as the teacher, there will be a large shared screen that actually has stuff on it. For remote only, in theory the professor could be blue-screened onto the materials, but given the more interactive nature of education, it's probably that a professor would still have a big screen simply to make modifying the contents less awkward.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

You think designing a presentation in HTML is easier than Powerpoint?!? Hell, my dog could probably put together a Powerpoint presentation. With HTML, even something as simple as getting a graphic to go exactly where you want it can be a pain in the ass.

I know the MS hatred here is strong, but don't kid yourself. Powerpoint is #1 for a reason. And one of those reasons is that it's braindead simple and easy to use (and I've known even CS profs who need braindead simple)

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

[h4rr4r]

A good presentation sure is. 99% of Powerpoint is bad presentations though.

Being worried about the exact spot a graphic is in makes me think you want to create bad presentations.

Powerpoint is #1 because it lets you turn 5 minutes of information into an hour long lecture with useless graphics and animations.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't get much of a chance to observe kids across the range of education and you are involved in IT futures at all, it is worth looking at and thinking about.

Notebooks have always been just expensive enough and big enough that, while kids had access to them, they had to make an effort to get them and use them. 7 years ago, when you had a laptop, you still had to put in effort to understand how to connect one to the internet and then make it happen -- often involving money. That is where the change happened.

The generation of current under 10 year olds had access to always-connected-tablets/phones before they encountered formal education. Today's Jr High kids weren't quite reading when mom first put an iphone in their hands to distract them, and they have been fixated on them ever since. Kids don't have go get the laptop or carry one around. They just pull the small tablet out of their skinny jeans when they are and use their bigger one when they can, if they want to.

This is the first generation that will be far more comfortable with the touch/glass interface than a physical keyboard by the time they hit the workforce. They don't know a world where the internet wasn't always and immediately at their disposal and have never experienced a life where they had to put in effort to find access or understand even the basics about how it works. They play game and live their social lives on them, they get Christmas and birthday gifts for applications or services on them, they watch television and movies on them and they read on them. Oh, and they learn on them all the time. Everything from lets-play videos, to cooking and dancing, foreign languages and even how to make their own videos for the internet are all things I've seen my own kids absorb via youtube on a tablet as something they chose to do 'for fun'. And it was far more normal and engaging for them to do it on "their own" tablet than a laptop or normal computer.

The current batch of undergrads, which is really the end of the laptop generation, has adopted phones/tablets as well obviously. But more importantly, so has the current generation of graduate student and they are the teaching workforce and heirs apparent of the current faculty. Universities that maintain large footprint wireless networks are seeing record numbers of concurrent connections and it is changing IT strategy across higher ed. You already can't walk 10 steps on a large university during the semester without seeing a tablet and that was never the case with laptops. That's with the generation of people who had to learn to switch to tablets.

So yeah. Tablets are different. And it isn't just marketing hype. If you are like me, you find them somewhat convenient at times but also annoying to use and you would rather stick with what is comfortable. But for kids today, laptops are the annoyingly quaint technology.

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

[BitZtream]

Being worried about the exact spot a graphic is in means you give two shits about how your presentation looks. It's a presentation, so like, visuals are sort of key.

You've already failed.

Powerpoint presentations are almost universally bad because people spend more time making the presentation than they do making the content they are going to speak about, and you're just type type of person confirming that fact.

The visuals of a presentation either need to present and image/animation/movie of something that can't be described by the speaker accurately enough, or simply a rehash of the major bullet points of the presentation itself.

The powerpoint IS NOT THE PRESENTATION, it is a SECONDARY AID to help with the speaker's description.

Unless the aspect ratio is WAY off, it is irrelevant. HTML is PERFECTLY acceptable for presentations if they are done properly.

The issue you have with HTML versus powerpoint means you're doing it wrong in the first place, not that HTML is the issue.

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.

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

[ColdWetDog]

And the reverse is even truer - given a good teacher, it makes no difference what technology they use or if indeed they use any technology at all.

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

[RatherBeAnonymous]

Perhaps they would... If they were employed to produce word documents.

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.

Which tablets?

[History's Coming To]

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.

OpenAFS

[Rich0]

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?

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

Cell phone cameras

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Camtasia, Evernote, Graphics tablet, mic

[javamage]

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)

• * They can review the entire lecture easily
• * They can focus on what I'm currently saying, rather than on writing down what I just said (some still take notes, but they're much more top-level outline than all the details). This has greatly increased the flow of the class.
• * If a student cannot come to class, they can still see everything that I did
• * It allows me to review what I've said in previous terms

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.

The reliavility factor and chalk boards

[sdguero]

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.