SMART pulls the cloth off multitouch table for school kids

Determined to make us jealous that our kids' childhood experiences are more marvelous than ours, SMART Technologies will tomorrow unveil the SMART Table, a primary education "interactive learning center" (we'd rather call it Surface Jr.). It'll be available Spring of next year, and will work out of the box with learning applications that can be operated by any number of kids and all their fingers. Other classroom multitouch devices are on the horizon, but most of them are a little further from market than this Canadian contraption, which includes custom lesson plans, gesture support and a (touted but unspecified) wide viewing angle. At $8,000 we're not sure it's an option for public schools whose budgets only have room for essentials, but if you work at a school that's totally loaded with cash and think the kiddos would dig this, feel free to look at SMART's short promotional vid after the break.

[lowdef @ Oct 22nd 2008 10:14PM]

HUUUUUUUUUUUUGEEEEEE waste.

[who? @ Oct 22nd 2008 10:39PM]

Not if this evolves into a project that lets us control the kids with some kind of implant. Trust me, a brother of 4 little sisters, when I say THAT will be worth it.

[jupiterthunder @ Oct 23rd 2008 1:57PM]

NOTHING that enhances education is a waste. Maybe not the wisest use of funds, but if it is purchased and used correctly, it is not a waste.

[kyle allen @ Oct 22nd 2008 10:17PM]

Gah! why was i boarn in 89!!!! kids have robots and computers now!!! i had a wagon....

[Michael @ Oct 22nd 2008 10:23PM]

born*

[lowdef @ Oct 23rd 2008 9:10AM]

i think his spelling added emphasis. like spicing up "more" by replacing it with "moar". I applaud him.

[Ayman @ Oct 22nd 2008 10:38PM]

Wagon? what you were born in 1889?

[who? @ Oct 22nd 2008 10:40PM]

I had a little red wagon too. I still do, but now it's decked out with an iPod and sub woofer.

[Metkis @ Oct 22nd 2008 10:20PM]

I could've sworn the article's title was, "SMART pulls the clothes off school kids for multitouch table." I actually said "What"?! out loud when I read it.

...That is, until I re-read it because I was baffled why Engadget would write an article titled so.

[lorddshadow @ Oct 22nd 2008 10:36PM]

so did i...creepy.

[j @ Oct 22nd 2008 11:33PM]

Tags: clothes off, school kids, multitouch


nah, i'm just messin' with ya. ROFL

[Adam K @ Oct 22nd 2008 11:53PM]

Not gonna lie, I looked.

[Adam K @ Oct 22nd 2008 11:53PM]

At the tags, that is :)

[Benson @ Oct 22nd 2008 11:58PM]

Reminds me of... http://failblog.org/2008/10/03/school-billboard-fail/

[James @ Oct 23rd 2008 12:19AM]

Damnit now the FBI is going to start reading my emails for reading an article with this title.

Thanks Engadget

[Shinigami @ Oct 23rd 2008 12:38AM]

James... so naive... you think they didn't read your e-mails before? naive...

[vvtopkar @ Oct 22nd 2008 10:21PM]

Now wonder the USA is loosing to China academically, we keep spoiling our children with useless pieces of junk like this.

[Dave D @ Oct 23rd 2008 12:11AM]

or it could be because china only reports test scores on the top scoring children in their country, wheras schools here in the united states report *all* scores.


or it could be because we're "loosing" to China academically. you never know what might happen if we tightened up...

[Decoy @ Oct 23rd 2008 3:46AM]

'Loosing' in education? You make a brave call.

[jupiterthunder @ Oct 23rd 2008 2:03PM]

Applause. Your post is the equivalent of the "scared straight" program for education.

[Mr. T @ Oct 22nd 2008 10:24PM]

Neat hardware. Smart software is not so hot. stick with Edusim (Search Edusim on Google for the 411). virtual worlds for the interactive whiteboard/surface




=

[Sirocco @ Oct 22nd 2008 10:27PM]

Some of this new hi-tech seems silly. Might it be better to teach these girls how to cook?

[gad get @ Oct 23rd 2008 2:49AM]

Let me guess; Palin fan?

[absurdio @ Oct 22nd 2008 10:28PM]

Man. This thing's gonna get covered in popsicle goo and marker so heartbreakingly fast....

[Shyam D @ Oct 22nd 2008 10:36PM]

So what ever happened to going to school to learn? I swear the only reason I did well in school was because I went to an Indian School up to 1st grade. If I done that bit of schooling in the US, i doubt I would have made it Berkeley. Maybe we need to focus more on toughening up the lower grades and let that trickle up to the High School.

[gad get @ Oct 23rd 2008 2:48AM]

Up to Grade 1? And that made that big of a difference?

[Kitty @ Oct 23rd 2008 4:13AM]

What shammy d here isn't saying is that he graduated from berkeley with a liberal arts degree. Brag when you leave with an engineering degree, Cal's programs outside of that aren't exactly the world's most spectacular, in fact, most of the other disciplines, I'd rather attend USC or Cal Poly.

[Laguano @ Oct 22nd 2008 10:41PM]

My school has SMARTboards. They are so useless. They are basically horrible, oversized tablets that you have to calibrate with your projector. Luckily, my maths teacher uses a Bluetooth graphire tablet and a projector.

[Kinger @ Oct 22nd 2008 10:48PM]

are they multi-touch like this though?

[fred @ Oct 22nd 2008 10:55PM]

My school had a chalkboard that used harden sticks of chalk that had to be applied to the mounted chalkboard surface in order to render graphics.


And no you couldn't play Crysis. Hangman on the other hand...

[Al @ Oct 22nd 2008 10:49PM]

Interesting. My school just removed most of their SMARTboards and got... ugh, can't remember the name, but a different company, same idea though. Some teachers really like using them (and indeed are good at using them as a teaching method rather than as just "another whiteboard"), while others are like "uhh I still use the overhead projector" and others further are like "I use blackboard"

All that said, this seems pointless.

[Agent42 @ Oct 22nd 2008 11:24PM]

while only 1 classroom in our school is decked out with a smartboard, it does work pretty well for what it needs to be.

Although the old fashioned overhead projector still does basically the same thing... and it works better for most teachers.

Math + Smartboards = FAIL. The only plus is you can use graphing programs, and advanced calculator programs on the screen... But thats what they make those clear TI-82's for...

[Bobby @ Oct 22nd 2008 11:51PM]

This may be a dumb thought, but does anyone else think that parents will complain about this as being a huge germ problem. Not thats a valid concern, but parents love to complain about anything. Can't tell your kid he's fat, can't tell your kid she's stupid, and your kids need to protect themselves from everything that might make them sick until they have no immune system and die from the common cold.

[huh @ Oct 22nd 2008 11:59PM]

Wouldn't it be great if this could be a google android type of announcement.. instead it's a $8000 undoubtedly proprietary (in every sense of the i/o) device.

[Erik @ Oct 23rd 2008 2:19PM]

Don't worry, the SDK will be publicly available for people to develop software for the table. FYI, the currenty input event stream is simplely XML over sockets - nothing proprietary about that.

[huh @ Oct 23rd 2008 2:26PM]

Well, they could show leadership and try to create a standard. Instead, they're using patents (I don't know if they're using patents in their API like blackboard). For an education based company they're clearly against any kind of commons.

[shibathedog @ Oct 23rd 2008 12:00AM]

Wow, if this is anything like the SMART Board, it will never work the way its supposed to, always break, and just be a major inconvenience/waste of class time.

My little brother's high school has them, they are terrible, and offer no real advantage to a chalk/white board anyway. (or maybe they are just using them wrong, it IS a pretty terrible school)

[Alex Padilla @ Oct 23rd 2008 12:24AM]

My high school was riddled with SMART Boards. I absolutely hated them. In fact, they were quite honestly the most useless piece of technology ever. Most teachers scrapped them and used the real whiteboards instead. They were a pain to set up and a pain to use. The only thing they were good at was getting potential students' parents to enroll their kids because they thought they'd get a superior education.

[Dave @ Oct 23rd 2008 12:48AM]

At $8000 each, you'll only see well dressed white children using these ... like in the picture.

[Ziggit @ Oct 23rd 2008 1:07AM]

I would say that at least 90% of the classrooms at my school are decked out with smartboards or interwrite boards, and most of my teachers, with a few exceptions, make fairly good use of them. I would say my math teachers have probably made the best use of them out of all my teachers with my AP-Physics teacher coming in at a close second. My math analysis teacher would always have copies of the day's notes available for any students who missed a day. My calculus teacher this year on the other hand seems to only benefit marginally from having a smart board, primarily using it as a giant touchscreen while using a ti-89 emulator so the whole class can see. Of course, she is incredibly tech savy and integrates tech into the curriculum in other ways: for example we have game show style wireless clickers at all our desks in which we can all respond to practice problems and then get graded daily based on our answers-- all without her having to do anything more than a couple clicks of the mouse (or rather smartboard in her case). She also collaborated with another teacher from our school to write a full online course system to suppliment their classes.
My physics teacher also makes good use of it even though he isn't very tech savvy. He uses it for things like going over tests quizzes and example problems where he is able to pull up the document and do things like draw force diagrams right on top of the problems-- somehting that would have been quite time consuming to prepare and do without the use of the interwrite board in his classroom.

On the other hand, my more "old school" teachers have more difficulty using it as part of their curriculum either using it as an extra whiteboard on occation, or as is the case with my government teacher, leaving it and the projector covered in the protective plastic that they put over things during summer to protect them from dust. needless to say, after 2^5 years of teaching, this teacher's class is almost completely devoid of tech with the exception of his computer that he has to use for grades, and one that he uses to print out articles from the internet. This man refuses to use e-mail, resents the computer based grading system, protests getting a cellphone, and still uses a crt tv and vhs tapes he recorded off the air regularly-- in fact so regularly, any time I watch it, I shudder to think how much damage he does to the heads on the vcr and tape, he leaves that thing on pause for extended periods of time, rewinds during playback etc. the video quality really shows major signs of excessive wear on all the tapes and mechanisms.

Needless to say, I don't think its a matter of the technology being crappy or not useful, its more a matter of having teachers with open minds who are open to things that can aid in their teaching. No matter the amount of technical issues, I believe that a teacher who has learned how to use the smart boards or interwrite boards effectively will still save time in the long run or be able to provide things that they couldn't have without it.

On the other hand, these multitouch tables seem more like a gimmick that won't be very useful. Multi touch would be awesome on the big boards that go up in front of the class seeing that it would allow several people to write on the board at once, but on somehting that sits on the floor where only a few people can use it at a time: Hell No! that is a definite waste of money that will provide little benefit, and have a steep learning curve.

Oh damn! I just wrote an essay didn't I? One that is a response on Engadget... not the one due tomorrow in english... yea....... I should probably get started on that.

[Decoy @ Oct 23rd 2008 3:40AM]

Now say all that in one sentence please!

:)

[SKI @ Oct 23rd 2008 8:40AM]

SMARTBoards become really amazing when combined with Quizdom remotes.

[gad get @ Oct 23rd 2008 2:44AM]

@ vvtopkar

FAIL!

[gad get @ Oct 23rd 2008 2:45AM]

@ myself, for not hitting "Reply", FAIL!

[Emanuel Agius @ Oct 23rd 2008 2:49AM]

they seam to be sitting very uncomfortably around that huge box lolll

[curmudgeon @ Oct 23rd 2008 3:31AM]

Can schools really afford all of this high-fallutin' technology? Seems like they are addicted to spending money on stupid crap. Look at their history of wasteful spending over the last 40 years: First it was calculators. Total junk. What's wrong with long division by hand? Graph quadratic equations using graphing paper fer godssakes. That's why it's called graphic paper, right? Then it was educational videos on projectors. In my day, we drew the blood flow of the circulatory system frame by frame on papyrus and animated it ourselves using a candle in a darkened room. And just when you think it's all over, computers arrive. God knows them damn things are always breaking down - always have to be re-calibrated and updated. No one uses them in the real world anyway. And now this table. Can't see any good in getting kids to get a head start on using touch-based computing instead of the tried-and-true point-and-click. I mean, what's next? Teaching kids that the world is round?

Man, the 21st century is so scarrrrrrrrrry.....

[Benson @ Oct 23rd 2008 3:49AM]

Yeah, but what about your lawn?

[Decoy @ Oct 23rd 2008 3:44AM]

My God, we're living in the future.

I kind of assumed crayons, cardboard and pens and scissors would be around forever. Maybe not.

[curmudgeon @ Oct 23rd 2008 4:05AM]

Yes. It's the future. And the kids, they should get off my lawn. I'm busy printing off email and it's very difficult to get the googles to work properly if you're not paying attention. It's very scary this technology, what with all those internet tubes clogging up all the time.

And yeah, so expensive. I mean - pardon me while I consult my multiplication tables to do the math here - but $7000 as a one-time cost vs. $250/year/student X 30 students for books/other stuff that needs to be replaced. That's only $7500, right? Wait. Um. Nevermind.

[Kitty @ Oct 23rd 2008 4:30AM]

I'm sorry, but, get over yourself. Most of all electronics and software, including the best and most respected brands and technologies the world over, are 'proprietary.'

Your definition of proprietary, however, is stupid. 'OMG, don't make anything unless it's made from off the shelf components that anyone can get, oh, and make sure that it only costs 60 dollars total, or no one should want it.' Google isn't exactly the heart of 'open source.''