whiteboards

[Marielle Lange]

Agreed, Stephen.

At the show, I couldn't even find any information about mac  
compatibility. That's very weird. Many schools have invested in macs  
as they have the reputation to encourage more creative activities.  
But all whiteboard applications were run on PCs. As if they expect  
the teacher to be fluent with both platforms.

That's quite interesting. All stands with plenty of pupils around or  
taking parts in various activities like creating podcasts on the  
show, or on the stand with the two kids I spoke with, they were all  
filled with Macs.

Then all these whiteboard applications where that's about a student  
listening and sometimes pressing on the key of a multibutton keypad,  
they were running on PCs.

Sure, these whiteboard applications are a lot more interactive than  
before. Sure, they allow students to better visualise some problems  
(there was a nice mathematical problem of transporting 50 pupils from  
one point to another in a tractor who could only hold 4 at a time,  
where you could put pupils in the tractor, get the tractor moving,  
drop down the pupils at the end and start again).

But it is possible to do *a lot* better than this. The idea of chat  
is good. Pity the absence of way to easily input text is a bit of a  
hurdle. But there are other teaching situations that you can imagine  
where students would collaboratively solve a problem, by manipulating  
objects on the screen. Revolution would be such a nice software to  
develop such applications.

Then there is something else that should be done with revolution. But  
this thing, I was told that if I was to do it, I would become  
millionaire. Who wants to share a million? What is your guess?

Marielle


> <gripe>
>
> One thing that ticks me off about software merchants that often in
> their ignorance or arrogance, they NEVER mention WHAT PLATFORM their
> software will run on, as if Windoze was the only game in town. Then
> if one is possibly interested in the utility or app, one has to
> laboriously plow through the advertising, web sites and pdfs to find
> out.
>
> It turns out that both of these links lead to products that have some
> level of mac compatibility, but it took a bit of time to find out. At
> Promethean, the only clue was an icon for Mac OS 9 (smiling mac)
> which would indicate system 9. No MAC OS X logo was seen. For both
> there was absolutely no Macintosh version information. You see what I
> mean?
>
> For such companies that seem to do this, I tend to want to go  
> somewhere else.
>
> </gripe>

------------------------------------------------
Marielle Lange (PhD),  http://widged.com
Bite-size Applications for Education