An iPad and Apple TV can combine to provide an advantageous alternative to more expensive, traditional interactive white boards.

Guest writer and High School Principal David Mahaley is using this approach and offers his insights, and observations from educators in his school.

With the integration of the iPad into the instructional environment, teachers and students have discovered many new ways in which the device can expand and enhance the learning environment. With the iPad, the Apple TV can offer a flexible, complete, and cost efficient alternative to the traditional interactive boards populating our classrooms.

Image by K.Walsh, Apple TV logo source: www.apple.com/appletv

As a school administrator and teacher, I have explored the Apple TV and its offerings as an alternative to one of the many types of interactive whiteboards currently available to instructors. We have committed our school to issuing every high school student and instructor an iPad. All instructors are expected to explore and integrate the device in their instructional setting to maximize the learning experience and student/professional productivity.

Historically, we have relied upon the interactive boards as a way to infuse the technology of the computer and software to the learning objectives found in the various content areas of our curriculum. Married to this idea is the use of the laptop, that is tethered to the projection device for the board. This inherently ties the teacher to one location or space in the classroom. Immediately, this presents some problems when professional educators are asked to circulate and monitor student activity around the room.

The use of the Apple TV in combination with an iPad in the instructor’s hand provides a mobile platform from which classroom activities can be initiated. Through the use of several apps, teachers can provide notes, display steps and processes to problems, initiate the display of media (pausing and resuming as needed from any location in the classroom), and allow students to participate from their own seats in a variety of interactive activities. This is different than the remote control of a connected teacher laptop to a traditional interactive board. Movement within and between apps is measurably better than the laptop interface, and navigation on the iPad screen directly to the Apple TV is visually more intuitive.

I am not looking to marginalize and discount the various software applications that can connect your mobile device to a laptop and thus to an interactive board.  Interactive whiteboards are a solution, however, through my experiences, a much more cumbersome one than our exploratory use of the iPad and Apple TV. We should explore the instructional and budgetary implications of a move towards this new option.

Any administrator who is charged with the responsibility of observing and commenting on teacher performance in the classroom finds themselves looking for moments throughout the class period where the instructor demonstrated their ability to circulate and monitor the students as they participate in the lesson. Freeing the instructor from the string of cords is a step in the right direction. With the Apple TV, the teacher connects wirelessly to the device and can be in any location in the classroom – in fact, they can be anywhere that they can continue to be connected to the network. Secondly, you now offer the teacher the opportunity to switch quickly and efficiently between applications via the iPad without having to dash to the front of the room to manipulate the programs on a laptop tied to a stationary location. With applications available today, and more coming around the corner, students have the capabilities to connect to the Apple TV configuration from their own device in order to share and present their own work.

A quick cost comparison of the hardware and software required between the traditional interactive whiteboard and Apple TV will show the potential savings with little to no loss in quality of the final product. I have found that the typical interactive board with projection system and document camera runs typically three times the cost of the Apple TV combination. Apple TV requires the purchase of a flat screen television (wall mounted), the Apple TV box, document camera – if desired (plug and play), and the necessary connection cords.  I have put together the Apple TV combination for less than $1,200 in my classrooms. My local rep waiting to sell me more interactive whiteboards has no comparative alternative that can compete with this price.

Other issues begin to surface through a closer examination of the training and compatibility of the various interactive boards. To learn to use the interactive board effectively requires many hours of training, revolving around their proprietary software tools.  Many of these are not directly transferable between technology platforms. The Apple TV opens the door to the instructor to use any of the thousands of applications available in the classroom without compatibility issues. This puts the control of content and presentation back into the hands of the teacher and releases them from the limitations of proprietary software provided by the interactive whiteboard companies.

I recently asked my instructors who were long standing Smart and Panaboard users in my school to come give the Apple TV a try. Overwhelmingly they believe that the applications and freedom provided by the iPad and Apple TV combination is a much better solution for their instructional needs. One asked about the software package that is touted as a key component with all of the interactive boards. While much time and effort has been spent developing these for the interactive boards, largely as a selling point by vendors to school systems, much of the offerings of the software can be duplicated by a small set of applications for the iPad available for download now. At the end of the comparison, I could not justify that the software bundle with any of the interactive whiteboards could justify the thousands of dollars difference between this and the Apple TV arrangement.

It is time to get financially and instructionally “smart” in the classroom when it comes to interactivity and technology. The Apple TV, in conjunction with the use of the iPad, offers new possibilities to our teaching professionals and at a tremendous cost savings.

David Mahaley is currently the Principal of the Franklin Academy High School in Wake Forest, NC. He directs several iPad initiatives in his and other schools. He received his Master’s Degree in Instructional Technology Leadership from George Washington University.

Related Posts (if the above topic is of interest, you might want to check these out):
Using The iPad As A Digital Whiteboard (Plus 4 Cool Free Apps To Try It Out)
The year of the iPad in Education: they’re being distributed in more schools every day.
Study shows 15% improvement in 5th grader’s fractions test scores after playing iPad Motion Math game for a week

There are some nice free Digital Whiteboards apps available for the iPad. Free rocks.

I found myself wondering how the iPad might work as a Digital Whiteboard, to project, as well as to use collaboratively. I also wondered if there might be some free apps that provide this kind of functionality (there are so many decent free apps for the iPad).

First step, hit the App Store and search for “whiteboard”. I narrowed the search down by selecting Price = “Free” and Customer Rating = “4+ Stars” and found 8 apps. I downloaded each one and spent a little time with them. Four of these apps were pretty cool and definitely worth sharing. The others had drawbacks that led me to eliminate them from further consideration.   

Four recommended free digitial white board apps:

ScreenChomp
This TechSmith app was rated (an average of) 4.5 by hundreds of users. ScreenChomp provides 9 colors but just one pen size. You can import pictures to use as your background. Mostly importantly, you can record your whiteboard session for play back, and the recording will include audio. Recordings can be saved to the ScreenChomps app, and can be shared via email, Facebook, Twitter, and accessed through a URL.

This app is a great example of combining a few simple features to make a tool that is very useful. Here’s an example ScreenChomp video I created: http://www.screenchomp.com/t/Z2xnmkfS.

ZigZag Board
ZigZag Board had one unique offering among the free tools I looked at, which is the ability to select and resize things you draw (as well as move or delete them). It is similar to some of the other apps in that it has a small selection of pen colors and the ability to adjust the thickness of the pen (but no ability to pull a pic to draw on). ZigZag also allows users to have a ”meeting” with the app. The meeting functionality was easy to use – I started a meeting from the iPad app and then joined on my laptop, but I was only able to view the whiteboard session there, I could not actually participate in it (not sure if this works differently when you join from an iPad, we had a network issue and couldn’t connect from another iPad).

Unlike most of these other tools, Zig Zag requires the user to create an account. Once you sign up, there’s a nice page-by-page tutorial on how to use the drawing tools and how multi-touch gestures work within the app.

SyncSpace
SyncSpace allows for a choice of 9 colors, 4 pen thicknesses, and 2 pen styles (solid or dashed), which was more than the other apps provided. Two unique features the app has are its ability to scale the screen to any size (it seems that you can shrink or expand your whiteboard indefinitely), and its synchronize capability, which allows for true collaboration. My son and I tried this and it was easy and worked well. You can also export files as PDFs, post them to Facebook, Twitter, or Campfire (a collaboration app), or email a link to other iPad users.

One down side of SyncSpace is that it did not work in landscape (horizontal) mode, making it a little less ideal for projecting.

Jot!Free
The Free version of Jot has a pretty nice set of functionality including: 4 colors and 4 pen sizes, the ability to move a drawing and to add a background, and to add text. You share your drawings via email or save them as a photo. There’s a premium app available for $4.99 that provides more colors, more line widths, 5 fonts to select from, and live sharing.

The other four apps shown in the search results I eliminated for the following reasons:

• Show Me Interactive Whiteboard: Show Me seemed like ScreenChomp without the audio recording capability.
• Doceri Remote: Required the installation of an additional application in order to use it, and it appeared that I would probably have to pay that app at some point.
• Sign+: This should not have been in the list as it for creating a “digital sign”, and does not have the interactive nature of a true digital whiteboard.
• SMART Bridgit Conferfence: This requires you to have a SMART board and applicable server in place.

Connecting the iPad to a projector or HD TV
This seems pretty straightforward if you have the right components. I can’t wait to try this, and I’ll be sure to share my results here.

• You will need the Apple Digital AV Adapter ($39) and an HDMI Cable (under $10).
• Your projector or TV will have to have an HDMI interface.
• This eHow article explains the basic process of connecting your iPad to your projector.

If any readers have experience doing this, using these or similar apps, please tell us about it. I’m sure there are other decent free IWB-type apps for the iPad2 that I could have found by searching on different words or phrases, so if you know of any, please drop a comment and let us know about them. As always, questions or other comments are also welcomed!

Related Posts (if the above topic is of interest, you might want to check these out):
10 Excellent iPad Applications for Teachers
iPads In Education – How’s It Going So Far?
Seton Hill University’s iPad rollout – more insights from a model implementation

Part Two of our look into results and best practices being generated from iPad rollouts in education.

Last week we started looking at rollouts of iPads in schools by searching out, reading, and summarizing findings in articles discussing these types of programs. This week we continue our examination of this topic by sharing take-aways from this excellent article in the March/April 2011 Educause Review. Educators Mary Ann Gawelek, Mary Sparato, and Phil Komarny from Seton Hill University wrote this highly informative overview of the recent introduction of iPads at their university.

Objectives
What was Seton Hill out to accomplish with this effort? The program had among it’s principle objectives:

• Increased student engagement in learning
• Widespread adoption and use of mobile technology, providing instant access to information
• Creating a teaching and learning environment that goes beyond the traditional classroom
• Enhancing creative and critical thinking through the development and use of interactive teaching strategies
• Displacing some textbook costs by moving to less expensive electronic texts

Getting The Environment And Personnel Prepared
The article shares a wealth of information about some of the keys to positioning an effort like this for success. First among these is the proper mindset for both leadership and faculty. “Visionary and nimble senior leadership”, and faculty who are “committed to teaching excellence and becoming active learners in emerging technologies”, are essential. It also calls for an innovative technology leader (“predicting what technology will be like three to five years in the future and which investments will pay off then, requires leadership willing to take risks”). To ensure that a wealth of resources were directed towards support of this project, Seton Hill developed a strong collaboration between academic leadership, teaching faculty, and students.

On the infrastructure front, knowing how critical network throughput would be, the university completely refreshed their network, providing 300 access points, and significantly increasing bandwidth on the campus Internet backbone (they went from a 25 mbps connection to their provider to a full gigabit connection!).

Additionally, a program of comprehensive and ongoing faculty development was put in place. This includes training in skills such as the use of the iPad as an instructional tool, working with multi user virtual environments (like Second Life), a variety of Web 2.0 applications, assistive technology tools, and the use of gaming in the instructional process.

How’s It Going So Far?
This effort is still in its early stages, but there has been a lot of encouraging feedback so far.

• Early assessment data show that  66% of faculty use the iPad in the classroom at least once a week.
• In the classroom, the iPad is being used for instructional reinforcement, “immediate and authentic information gathering”, interactive presentations, educational gaming, podcasts, and more.
• Faculty and students report that they appreciate the iPad for its convenience and portability, and that they use it for communication, information gathering, note taking, reading, interactive work, and “staying connected”.
• 52% percent of students reported believing that the iPad  has had a positive effect on their communication with faculty.

Seton Hill intends to leverage student and faculty focus groups, surveys, and evaluation components of the professional development program to further assess the effectiveness and impact of the “Griffin Technology Advantage” (as the iPad program has been formally titled by Seton Hill).

The article provides much more detail, so click through to learn more about this well planned project that appears positioned to enhance engagement, improve communication, increase information access, and provide useful feedback through robust assessment efforts.  

Next Steps (here on EmergingEdTech)
Among the comments on last week’s post was one particularly interesting one from first grade reading teacher Sara Getting, who explained the she and a colleague have recently completed a research project focused on 3o at-risk readers and how the iPad might help them. Sara has kindly agreed to share more about her work, and I look forward to publishing an article about this research here shortly.

In a couple weeks, I’ll be attending Campus Technology 2011, and there are a number of great looking workshops being offered that focus on the iPad, including one by the authors of the article above, which I am really looking for to! As always, I’ll be sharing much of what I learn here. (I’ll also be presenting a workshop at Campus Technology, “Using Popular Social Networking Tools In (and Out Of) The Classroom” on Thursday 6/28 at 9:45 AM. I hope you’ll stop by if your attending!)

In the meanwhile, if you have experiences with the iPad in educational uses, or questions or comments, don’t hesitate to join the conversation!

Related Posts (if the above topic is of interest, you might want to check these out):
iPads In Education – How’s It Going So Far?
10 Excellent iPad Applications for Teachers
Someday students will carry a tablet computer instead of books (it’s just a matter of time)

There are so many free productivity tools available on the Internet for today’s educators. I’m creating a resource page that list many of the most useful ones, and I’d love to have your input!

By “productivity” tools and resources, I am referring to tools that can help teachers get their jobs done more efficiently or effectively, at no cost (beyond the effort required to use the resources, of course). There are so many of these types of tools out on the Internet – sites providing free lesson materials, quiz and test banks, worksheets and flash cards, and much more.

READERS: CLICK HERE (or the tab in top menu) TO ACCESS THE “Free Productivity Resources For Educators” PAGE that this post resulted in

It would be nice to have a page here on EmergingEdTech where I would collect and organize links to good quality sites like this as I come across them, a page that educators could reference any time that they are looking for these types of resources. My goal with this series of posts is to lay a foundation for such a page – a list of free productivity resources intended specifically for educators, grouped into logical categories. I will limit the listing to better quality sites (those with more resources, better organization, easier use, etc.), and update it regularly.

I did a lot of searching around the ‘net for this sort of thing over the long holiday weekend, and developed a list of categories, with some example sites for each category. Defining these categories and organizing them in an informative way seems to me to be the biggest challenge here – once the categories are in place, it’s easy to find and add listings of sites. I realize there are many sites out there that offer similar listings, but most of them don’t seem to be very well organized. I am hopeful that you, the reader, will share your ideas and input, and help me expand and organize this listing to make it highly useful.

Here’s my first draft of some categories, with examples of each (if you know of better resources in these categories, please comment and let us know about them!):

Activity & Materials Creators

• Awards Certificates: www.educationworld.com/tools_templates/index.shtml#awardCertificates
• Bookmarks and Book Plates: www.educationworld.com/tools_templates/index.shtml#book
• Calendars & Classroom Organizers: www.educationworld.com/tools_templates/index.shtml#book
• Flash Cards – Create Your Own at StudyStack (have to register): www.studystack.com/CreateStack.jsp
• Flash Card Exchange (register for adv. functions): www.flashcardexchange.com
• Form filler (have to register): www.fillanypdf.com
• Holiday & Seasonal Worksheets: www.abcteach.com/directory/seasonal/
• Puzzle Maker (lots of types – word search, math squares, mazes, much more!): puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com
• Word Search Puzzles (lots of them): www.thepotters.com/puzzles.html
• Worksheets (lots of preformatted worksheets): www.superteacherworksheets.com

Communications Tools (Print & Electronic)

• EducationWorld Newsletters & Parent Communications:  www.educationworld.com/tools_templates/index.shtml#newsletters
• TeacherFiles: www.teacherfiles.com/resources_newsletters.htm

Course Management Systems & LMS alternatives
(You have to register to use these tools, so you can save your own personalized content. Note that these tools are generally more involved than many of the other resources on this page.)

• Blackboard’s “CourseSites”: coursesites.blackboard.com/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp
• rCampus: http://www.rcampus.com/help/about/course_and_learning_management_system.cfm
• Schoology: www.schoology.com

Clipart

• DiscoveryEducation: school.discoveryeducation.com/clipart
• School-Clipart: www.school-clipart.com
• TeacherFiles: www.teacherfiles.com/clip_art.htm

Interactives (for White Boards, or Powerpoint)

• ABCTeach: www.abcteach.com/directory/interactive
• Promethean Plant (have to register): www.prometheanplanet.com
• SMART Exchange: exchange.smarttech.com
• TopMarks: www.topmarks.co.uk/Interactive.aspx

Lesson Plans

• AtoZ Teacher Stuff: atozteacherstuff.com/Lesson_Plans/index.shtml
• Discovery Education: school.discoveryeducation.com/lessonplans
• LessonPlansPage: www.lessonplanspage.com
• Scholastic: www2.scholastic.com/browse/lessonplans.jsp
• Teacher.net: teachers.net/lessons

Open Educational Resources

• OER Consortium: oerconsortium.org
• OER Commons: www.oercommons.org

Quizzes & Tests
(These types of sites require sign up)

• Easy Test Maker: www.easytestmaker.com
• Quizstar: quizstar.4teachers.org/indexi.jsp

Rubrics

• 4TEachers: rubistar.4teachers.org
• Rubrics4Teachers: www.rubrics4teachers.com
• iRubrics: www.rcampus.com/indexrubric.cfm

Seeking Your Input!
Is there a category that you think I am missing (I struggled with certain types of free tools that can be useful, but are not intended specifically for educators, and decided for now to leave them off the list, to help keep it manageable). Do you have any favorite productivity tools that you think I should add to one of these categories? Are you aware of better resources than those I have listed? Have you used any of these tools and had a particularly good or bad experience? I need your informed input to help me refine these listings and make them all solid recommendations. Please comment and share your knowledge.

Next
As the next few weeks roll by, I’ll be using reader input and further research to continue to update and organize this collection of resources.  Next Sunday I’ll put up the new page - I’ll rename the “Free Tools & Resources” tab to “Free Productivity Tools & Resources”, and build out an organized, formatted page of resources.

[Incidentally, I do realize that this is slightly off-topic from the site's main theme of "engaging students and enhancing learning outcomes", but it's still about leveraging technology for educator's needs, and I'm sure you'll forgive the "transgression"! - KW]

Related Posts (if the above topic is of interest, you might want to check these out):
Video blog entry for this post
30 Posts About Free Education Technology Tools & Resources
10 Free Educational Game Sites

In this week’s feature post, an instructor shares his initial experience with the Polyvision Eno Interactive White Board.

Guest Post By James Lines

Ed Note: This post is sort of a follow up to a series of posts I did here late last year in which I started learning about IWBs and discussed my experiences working with a team of fellow staffers at The College of Westchester to determine how this technology could benefit the instructional process in our institution of higher education (whiteboards have not been as ubiquitous in Higher Ed as they have been in many K-12 districts, for a variety of reasons). We ended up deciding to procure a Polyvision Eno board to trial in one of our Digital Media classrooms, as it seemed likely to be quite useful in the instructional process, and it appeared more efficient and cost effective than many of it’s competitors. In this guest post, CW instructors shares observations from his use of the system in the classroom. Thanks James!

Room 507 was chosen to test a technology new to the CW learning environment, the Eno Interactive WhiteBoard from Polyvision. When I first saw the new whiteboard,  I noticed it looked like the average whiteboard but just a little smaller.  No cords, gadgets, satellite dishes, or futuristic interfaces were apparent.

As class commenced, I pulled out my archaic “wet marker” and proceeded to scrawl all over the new board. I drew diagrams, sketches, curves and points with little bubbles of info to supplement my visuals. I was happy to find that the dry eraser worked just as well on this board as any of the other boards in the building.  However after working with the Interactive pen, things became much more interesting! 

The Eno board uses Bluetooth technology, so there are no cords, just a short calibration sequence and the board becomes ready for action. Your interactive pen essentially becomes your mouse. You can move effortlessly through your Operating System and any software opened.  Certain mouse operations are built into the pen nib. The experience is really intuitive once you get the hang of the pressure needed to properly track the cursor around.

I was able to navigate around familiar interfaces with little effort. The program also has a toolbox in which you can access a virtual keyboard and virtual markers in three colors to make notes on top of the display. It is even possible to save your session for playback.

The benefits of this technology in the classroom are immediately clear. Instead of being largely invisible behind a workstation, the instructor can move around in front of the room, interacting with this “live” board with broad, expressive strokes. Situational awareness is increased tenfold  because you are standing in front of your students, making eye contact and encouraging reciprocation simply by having a more visible presence, essentially all the good parts of a lecture presentation while still being able to demonstrate a software operation.

Student interaction with the board also increases awareness and interaction. The board makes coming up in front of class more fun and yields the same dynamic situation mentioned above. The pen itself is very fluid and the technology quickly becomes “invisible” so students are concentrating on the subject matter, not the board itself.

The only limitation I found has been using the board with complicated design software that require alot of keyboard shortcut combinations. Users who have keyboard shortcuts ingrained in their interface usage, may stumble a bit to find the “long hand” buttons usually accessed with shortcuts. However, the Eno does allow you to jump back and forth between your pen and the traditional human interface tools, so the instructor does not have to worry about getting “stuck.” Simply sit back at your keyboard to do your operation the old fashioned way, then return to the Interactive board seamlessly.

My first impression of the board has been very positive. I can easily visualize different opportunities for using the board in CW classes. I still have not thrown out my wet markers but am looking forward to the day when I will no longer walk into the bathroom and find my face painted the same color as the marker I was using!

This week, I tried out an “Interactive Xi Bar” that the folks at Mimio loaned me. I really liked it.

A few months ago I learned about this unique approach to turning a regular white board into an Interactive White Board. The Mimio Bar is easy to use and highly portable - it clips on to a white board or attaches via suction cups, and after a quick calibration, it’s ready to go!

The Mimio can even be used to turn a plain blank wall into a white board. I did this at home by putting some scotch tape on the wall for the suction cups to adhere to, and my kids and I had a lot of fun using the Mimio and trying different functions.

I tried out a test unit that was graciously sent to me by Mimio’s promotion team, and it took me all of about 15 minutes to unpack the device, install the software, and walk through the simple set up explained in the nice little “getting started” pamphlet. It took me a little extra time to figure out how some of the menu items worked, but considering that I didn’t read anything, it was really quite easy to use.

One thing that I was impressed with was the ease and accuracy with which the stylus picked up my motions. I’ve tried other devices that seemed to get in their own way. It seems that the shadow cast by the hand and pen made it very difficult for those other systems to interpret where the user ‘clicked’ on the board. This didn’t happen with the Mimio bar.

Features & Functions
Some of the features of the Mimio board include the following:

• Far less expensive than full white boards (for example, the Mimio Xi Bar is currently selling for $549 on touchboards.com).
• Portable – The Mimio adheres to a whiteboard with suction cups, or can be attached longer term with snap-on plastic brackets.
• Ease of use (see above for more on that).
• Few (or no) wires – The only cable you need is the USB connector, but you actually don’t  even need that if you use the included wireless connector.
• Great, full featured software – the Mimio Studio software let you do the things I’ve seen other white board apps do including things like draw shapes, highlight in different colors, group what you’ve drawn so it can be moved or rotated, ‘reveal’ (hide part of the screen then reveal it when you’re ready), record your white board sessions for later playback, take snapshots, and so on (a handwriting recognition function would be a cool enhancement).
• A nice add-on pack that lets you use dry erase markers on a regular white board and have the whole session recorded in the applicable colors.

Of course, using this technology requires a computer and a projector, so it is assumed you have those if you intend to use a Mimio bar.

I’ve embedded a YouTube demonstration video below (the resolution isn’t great, but it’s more than adequate for providing a good sense of how to set it up and use it, and what it can do). 

Conclusions
Obviously, the portability of this device is outstanding. If you want your instructors to try out interactive white board technology without having to invest in expensive SMART Boards or even some of the less costly alternatives, this is the lowest cost IWB technology I’ve come across, and can very easily be moved from one room to another. In fact, if you have a department that manages resources like this, you may be able to get a lot of functionality by buying a few of these devices and sharing them as needed.

If you’re interested in interactive white board technology and don’t want to spend a lot for new white boards for the classroom, you can hardly go wrong with a Mimio bar.

Related Posts (if the above topic is of interest, you might want to check these out):
6 Free Online Interactive White Boards
Learning about Interactive Whiteboards for the Classroom
PolyVision ēno whiteboards: A great alternative to the SMART Board
9 insightful videos about using SMART Boards in the Classroom
Promethean’s Interactive Whiteboard and related instructional products

A lot of schools have over spent on, and under supported, interactive white boards and other education technologies.

I was fascinated by this article yesterday in the Washington Post. The article is a follow up on a prior piece in the Post that explained that “a view is emerging that the large amounts of money schools are spending on instructional gadgets are not necessarily improving student performance.”

The article also has good things to say about education technology and how it often engages students (even if only due to the “gee whiz” factor), and it cites the “thousands of teachers who have made excellent, creative use of whiteboards and other ‘gadgets’”, but it also discusses how “enormous sums of money are being spent on this (and other) technologies without correspondingly thorough and thoughtful professional development.”

As an advocate of Education Technology, some readers might be surprised to hear me agree with some of the thoughts expressed in this article, but frankly, when money is used poorly in the name of education technology, it’s a step backwards for everyone, not an improvement.

Obviously I agree with the idea that education technology can make a difference in education, but I also agree that technology is by no means a solution in and of itself. I worked for over 20 years implementing, supporting, and managing Information Technology in businesses in the manufacturing, sales, and distribution sectors before moving to education. Successful technology expenditures in well run businesses are commonly measured by their Return On Investment. Why is this same type of measure so often not applied in education? Of course, in education, the “return” should be measured first by improved learning outcomes, as opposed to financial gains, but the underlying concept is sound and it is essential to managing education expenditures well.

In the private education sector, there seems to be a higher tendency to apply best practices from the business world to management fundamentals such as those involving investments and expenditures, but it seems that in the public education sector, proven techniques from the business world are often overlooked or discarded. While we can all agree that it is important that education never take a back seat to profits, surely that doesn’t mean that educational institutions can’t leverage successful, sound management concepts.

Investments in technologies such as interactive white boards, student response systems, and lecture capture systems should be managed using commonly accepted practices known to help facilitate such efforts through to successful implementation and impactful results. These investments must be vetted, stakeholders must be bought in to the process, goals need to be clearly defined and communicated, training and support allocated for and provided, and so on.

Without these fundamentals in place, we’re throwing away tax dollars (or private school tuition fees), misdirecting teacher’s efforts, and wasting opportunities to position students for success. Enough already.

Related Posts (if the above topic is of interest, you might want to check these out):
Education Technology – Don’t Lean On It, Leverage It!
8 Engaging Videos Advocating Better Integration of Technology in Education
5 Reasons Why Educators Need To Embrace Internet Technologies

An update to last April’s post about free web-based IWBs.

Last April, I wrote a post about a few Online Interactive Whiteboards that I had checked out. That post remains one of my most popular posts, so obviously this is a topic of interest to a lot of people. 

I figured it was time for an update, to check out new tools, and to see if there have been any changes with the apps I reviewed last year. Below I have listed 6 web-based Interactive White Board applications, and provided a little info about each. This is followed by a comparative table of some desirable functions.

	Scribblar appears to have evolved a bit since my review last year. This time I was able to get it to work. This is a nice tool for collaborating. You can easily invite others to participate, and there are plenty of useful tools for drawing and editing. You can also chat or use voice to communicate with each other. You can save images (use the Snapshot icon, which will save images to the Assets pane, where they can be downloaded from). Scribblar is definitely worth trying out!
I loved Dabbleboard last year when I took it for a test run, and have continued to use it from time to time since. It’s a useful, easy to use white board tool, with some solid functionality. I recommend giving it a try if you are interested in using a free online collaborative whiteboard.
	ImaginationCubed.com, from GE, was another tool I instantly took to in my review last year. This a simple, straightforward tool. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of some of the other tools, but simple and dependable are good qualities. [Ed Note: As of July 2011, it appears that this tool has been taken off line! - KW]
I didn’t come across Scriblink last year when I reviewed sites. I really like what I see, but … try as I might I couldn’t successfully interact with another user. It was easy to invite someone to collaborate, but they did not end up on my board. I could also save and send a board, but again, there was no interaction taking place. I found no FAQ, no Help, nothing to explain how to make this work. [If anyone has successfully collaborated with Scriblink, please comment and let us know the steps you followed.]
	Writeboard is a text-only collaboration tool, not a drawing based tool. At first, I found this to be a turn-off, but after using the other tools, I realized that this is a good idea. If your goal is to collaborate with others on the development of a text document, the other tools here are really not functional for that. I gave Writeboard a quick test, and it was easy to use, but honestly I came away feeling that Google Docs does a better job of this.
Skrbl is still in beta and there’s a note right on their front page (as of this writing) stating, “skrbl is back up but some services may still be affected we’ll be testing and updating ASAP”. It looks like Skrbl is still a “try at your own risk” situation.

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Comparative Grid
Here’s a table comparing some of the features and functions of these different tools.

Conclusions
Scribblar and Dabbleboard are both pretty solid tools and I recommend them both. ImaginationCubed is also a nice app, and it’s great for doing something simple and quick, but not as robust as Scribblar and Dabbleboard.      

If you’re interested in collaborating on a text document, Writeboard is worth trying, but Google Docs is probably a better way to go (although you do have to set up a Google Account, which is free, but a little more involved).      

Skrbl is just not ready for prime time, and Scriblink may not be quite there yet either (although it looks like it could be just as capable as Scribblar and Dabbleboard, if I could only figure out how to successfully collaborate with it!).      

Next?
At the end of last week’s post, I suggested that I would probably be writing about my experiences with screen capture tool Camtasia this week, but obviously I chose not to. Camtasia just recently released an upgrade to Version 7, and I was just learning Camtasia 6, so I’m working on transitioning to and learning Ver 7 and will be blogging about it soon.      

In the meanwhile, I’m heading down to Orlando this week to attend Campus Management’s CampusInsight Annual Conference (we use Campus Vue at the college where I work). Campus Management acquired Talisma last year, a major player in CRM in Higher Ed. I may take a bit of a tangent from my usual focus on instructional and classroom tech to discuss this exciting administrative/business app for Higher Ed.

Please be sure to stop back next week and see what we’re learning about!      

Related Posts (if the above topic is of interest, you might want to check these out):
Interactive (online) Whiteboards – Part 2 of 2
Mimio’s unique approach to Interactive White Board technology
Learning about Interactive Whiteboards for the Classroom
9 insightful videos about using SMART Boards in the Classroom

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An intriguing approach to delivering IWB functionality, in a smart, affordable, portable package.

Late last year I did a series on Interactive Whiteboards. I spent a good deal of time trolling the Internet, watching YouTube videos, and talking with vendors to learn about products, but I have to admit that this one just slipped under my radar.

The Mimio Interactive Bar is an approach to IWB that I really want to learn more about. Frankly, I think some institutions may have gone a bit overboard by placing SMART Boards or other IWB’s in all of their classrooms. This is an admirable investment in Ed Tech and our students, but I have to imagine that there are cases where a portable tool like this may be a better investment.

This video shows more about how this portable white board tool works:

Following our research into different IWB’s last year, we ended up procuring a PolyVision ēno board, which we are just starting to trial in a classroom. I’ll post an update about that once we feel we’ve given it a good workout.

In the meanwhile, I’m going to learn a little more about the Mimio bar, and consider giving one a try (I’ll share my experiences here if we do end up testing one). 

If you are reading this and you are familiar with the Mimio Interactive Bar, please drop a comment and share your observations! Thanks.

Related posts (if the above topic is of interest, you may want to check these out):
Learning about Interactive Whiteboards for the Classroom
9 insightful videos about using SMART Boards in the Classroom
Online Interactive Whiteboards

EXTRA! EXTRA! EmergingEdTech Facebook Fanpage breaks 100 Fans (after just over 2 months)!
Stop by for a visit. The EET Facebook Fan Page is a great place to learn about upcoming Free Ed Tech Web Events (blog posts are streamed there too, as well as the occasional Tweet). Come and take a look.

Using a Wii Board & ActiveInspire software to demonstrate IWB’s, at little cost.

In November I started working with a team of faculty members and technologists to learn about today’s Interactive White Board offerings, and I’ve been posting a series of articles about our efforts. This week we reviewed what we have learned so far, and discussed how to move the process forward. An important next step is to demonstrate how an IWB works for our Department Chairs in their next meeting and make sure everyone understands the technology under consideration.

Over the summer I learned about this inexpensive “Wii board” technique for creating an interactive projection system that has some of the essential functionality of an IWB system, for very little cost. By coupling this with the free Personal version of ActiveInspire IWB software (from Promethean), we can demonstrate some of what these systems can do, for little upfront cost. It is also possible that this sort of inexpensive, portable tool may be perfectly adequate for some purposes (I would certainly consider using this for presentations from time to time if it works reasonably well).

Let’s review of some important considerations that have come out of our work thus far:

Enhancing understanding and addressing misperceptions: Until they see the systems in use, it is likely that some teachers and administrators may be functioning under misperceptions about what an IWB can and cannot do, how they work, and options available in today’s product offerings. So getting a good look at them was step one, and we got a great start on that with the sales presentations that we experienced and the research we did online. Demonstrating the functionality to our Department Chairs will incorporate them in the dialogue and decision making process.

If we build it, will they come? Once we all get up to speed on the functionality today’s IWB’s can offer, the fundamental question becomes, “How can instructors use these in meaningful ways in the classrooom, and will they?” These systems are not some sort of self-contained panacea of interactive learning. Instructors must be trained in their use. Getting the most out of these systems can require creating interactive lessons, which entails a further investment of time. What academic disciplines in our Higher Ed institution can gain the most from this, and which ones will not find it worth the effort?

Lesson Software: One of the most attractive features of these systems is the ability to create lessons in a software package designed for use with the system. This is time consuming – especially the initial learning curve. To ease the process, many of these software packages include templates and tools, and there is a growing body of shared lessons available for some of them via the Internet. Unfortunately, the heavy bias towards K-12 means that the offerings are slim for Higher Ed.

IWB’s in Higher Ed vs. K-12: Why are these systems much more predominant in K-12 then in Higher Ed? One reason may be that IWB’s are intended to increase interactivity and engagement, which has long been recognized as essential in K-12, but has not been as important in Higher Ed (although this has been changing in recent years). Another factor might be market based – public school districts provide a larger potential customer base than individual higher education institutions, so more effort has been focused there. If any readers have any other thoughts or information about this disparity, please comment and share!

“Mixing & Matching” tools: One of the more interesting things I’ve learned over these last few weeks is that it is possible to mix and match some of these products. You may be able to use one manufacturer’s software with another’s White Board, and use a third vendor’s Response Devices, creating a “best of breed” solution (or just saving some $$ while providing desired functionality).

The Wii Board
As mentioned above, we are giving this a try, since it seems to be an easy, low cost way to learn more about this kind of tool in a hands-on fashion. Who knows, it may very well be a pretty handy little system – it certainly seems very portable. While this may not be as functional as a true IWB system, it takes so little to try it out. We picked up a Wii Remote, and we were setting this system up with a bluetooth-enabled notebook PC, but the cheap IR pen we were using broke almost immediately. We’ve ordered a better one, and I look forward to sharing our results here soon.

ActiveInspire
I recently downloaded this software, which works in a limited “Personal Version” mode if you don’t actually own an ActiveBoard from Promethean (see this post to learn more about the Promothean product line). I’ve started working with it, and I’m quite interested in understanding just how much functionality this slimmed down version offers and it’s potential utility independant of the ActiveBoard that it was originally designed to work with.

Next Week
We will not be conducting this demonstration until January, so I’m going to divert from this topic for a few weeks, and sink my teeth into something else. I’m thinking about either Lesson Capture or online tutoring options as a topic to research and blog about for a few weeks, until I get back to our progress with the IWB effort. I always welcome reader input, so please drop a comment if anyone has any ideas or questions about either of these topics. Thanks!

Hello Readers! I will be presenting a Webinar with Campus Technology this coming Tuesday, December 8th at 2PM EST. We’ll be discussing “Portal, LMS, & Alert Solutions: Best of Breed or Single Source“. Listen in and learn how we lowered costs while enhancing the delivery of these applications. Click here to register!