SMART adds "touch recognition" to SMART Boards
By Nilay Patel 
posted Feb 2nd 2009 6:33PM
posted Feb 2nd 2009 6:33PM
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I hate Comic Sans.
Yeah, I thought it was banned a few years ago.
Err... The above comment is actuality directed @Gregory Lee
@Mike
yes, possibly because i AM taking my first year's honor's chemistry in high school right now.
they have smart boards in almost all of the classrooms in my school.
My school also has them in the science and math classrooms. Sadly, half of the teachers don't utilize them very well...
Same here lol!
Some of the teachers have no idea how to use them though. Some use them all the time, others use them to watch movies on. Kind of nice, I'll have to tell my teachers about this new update.
Kehillah Jewish High School in Palo Alto, California has SMART Boards, and the teachers use them very effectively. One thing I'm confused about: is this a software update or a hardware update?
@GenBanks
This is both, firmware and drivers both need updating to enable this.
Every class in my school has them, and they were apparently quite expensive to get in.
No teacher uses them. None. At most, they show a projection of a powerpoint on the board, and then just use the mouse to control it anyway.
yeah me too...
and the diagram of an atom that person is drawing is INCORRECT!
whatever happened to the quantum numbers n, l, M(l), and s?
and who could forget the s, p, d, f orbitals?
yeah my teachers seem to successfully utilize them.
also many classes in my school have a whole cart of macbooks for the students.
those are not used efficiently because all the students go on facebook .....but i go on engadget.
@justanotherperson
Congratulations. You have just proven that you know a little more than the average person in the field of atomic structure/ electron configurations. However, your ignorance is showing, as the order is n, l, m(l), m(s).
This diagram is obviously for first year chemistry students, as it uses the particulate theory of atomic structure vs. the mathematically correct probability clouds.
It provides the information in an easy to understand format without all of the mathy stuff that second-year students can handle. Because, really, which is easier to understand: tennis balls that are floating around a nucleus, or the fact that we can't really tell both the location and speed of an electron at any given time due to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
The complicated stuff didn't go away, it just was simplified for the masses who have to take basic chemistry in high school.
Just to wax philosophical for a moment:
Saying "mathematically correct" probability clouds is being somewhat naive, imo. If you're insinuating that the Bohr model of the atom is mathematically incorrect, you're wrong. The math is fine, the model itself just does not fully describe all empirical features of the atom. If, instead, you mean to say that the quantum model of the atom is "correct", then you're misunderstanding the whole point behind a model.
I am a High school math teacher who invested a lot of time and effort learning about these interactive white boards. 5 years ago, I began by getting to know the SMART board, and was further exposed to the Numonics I Board - which is a far more durable, accurate and dependable -- my students and I love it - it has made me a better teacher in many ways. The problem is that "SMART" has cornered the market with their substandard product which Still Records in analog!! The numonics board has 5 times the resolution and records in digital. I can switch to other colors / eraser / shapes in a heart beat. I can pound on my board and get all crazy -- you could drive a truck over this board and I would put money on it still working!!
Now my school Tech guy - who does as little research on these things as possible, wants to buy the whole math department the "not - so 'SMART' boards" - The numonics board is made in America so it is a bit more pricey - but these SMART boards are not durable - I know all it takes is for someone to bang the front or poke the front and the system will be affected. I just know that as many of you have pointed out - the multiple software options that smart has will not be utilized to make those features really valuable. I guess I'd rather have a simpler software program with a Board that will last. I'm Pissed that so many people just go and buy the "not so smart board " b/c they have done no research to understand that is still is dinosaur Analog!!!
My school had Smart boards, although many of the teachers probably wouldn't know how to use such cool features.They should have donated one to me as a graduation present :(
Finally. I remember my teacher getting annoyed at having to place down the pen before she could pick up the eraser tool to use it.
My School has had SMART boards in every room since 2002...
Every room? Your school must be rich
But does this require a new BOARD or is it just a software update?
looks like a bit of both...
check out http://smarttech.com/touchrecognition/
my how times have changed, i only graduated highschool 11 years ago and I remember many classrooms still having chalk and still using overhead projectors, and there was maybe 1 computer at the teachers desk that they really only used for attendance durring class.
I graduated HS 10 years ago, we didn't really have chalk boards anymore, just marker boards. None of our teachers even had computers in the rooms, unless they brought their own laptop for some reason.
Man, kids these days have it so much cooler. :-\
The problem with SMART boards is that they're front projection. When you try to write on them, your hand (and arm, and/or body) create a shadow on the board, obscuring what you're writing or the object that you're pointing at.
Amen brother! and have you seen the newer of them, with that protruding projection arm? I won't even get into what everyone is calling them, but what if you have a tall presenter? they are going to have to duck or hit their head!
Not completely true... They offer rear-projection as well as overlays for TVs now. But I will agree that at times it can be very hard to write because of the shadow. All I can suggest is to re-align daily so your writing on screen will be as close to your actual writing as it can be.
It measures three different sizes of pressure change. That's not terribly intelligent. I'd have expected that sort of thing to be in from the beginning.
We have one of these in the majority of classrooms at my school, and I can honestly say that they are invariably slower, more cumbersome and less useful than the traditional whiteboards they replace. They offer very little extra functionality over what they replace, in the vast majority of cases they are used for annotation, which is just as easily achieved by projecting the image onto a matte finish whiteboard.
Does anyone know of uses of these outside of education in which they are actually tangibly useful (this is a genuine question, not sarcasm)?
i would say it really depends on the teacher. its quite useful if they write a bunch of notes up there and give them to a student who was absent or otherwise. example problems are great too: i had a teacher who would export them to pdf's and put them on his website.
some people know how to use technology better than others, nothing new :)
Word oldmankdude
I have a chem teacher (that believes in nanobots none the less) that does the same thing with the PDFs.
I find it helps a lot with Computer Programming allowing the teacher to show us the code and actually make the forms in front of the class. Same with Chem, Math and English
English helps a ton ( I am Dyslexic) so seeing the teacher writing out the words helps a lot with the Vocab and such
Another million dollar idea: When is somebody going to work this into a Pico projector? Then any wall could be our touchscreen. I guess this kind of technology wouldn't do it, it looks like the board itself is doing the tracking. But what if the Pico projector had a camera and tracked your hand/finger optically? It would need some measure of depth perception, to tell when you're finger/hand actually was touching the projection surface, something it could also use for auto-focus. Focus is a problem Pico projectors need dealt with anyways, so one solution could fix two problems.
Anybody else here want to turn any wall into a touch screen? Post a "yes" reply, maybe somebody will pay attention!
I hate smart boards. They are better than blackboards, but they suck and the never work. Hopefully this will make them less annoying.
thes are not so Smart boards - they record in anolog and that is why they are so inaccurate!!! I agree that they suck! there are far better products out there - they just got the buzz word name - so everyone keeps buying them b/c they don't do the research!!
I use my digital I board 100% all the time every day in my math class!! IT ROCKS!! MY STUDENTS LOVE IT!! 100% dependable --
I have a math teacher who has a smart board.
He's a horrible teacher and messes up with it every minutes. -_-
i wana animate with this
I'm a 7-9th grade English teacher and I am trying to find more ways to use my SMART Board, but I have to say that it isn't actually the most user friendly piece of technology. I end up using my iPod touch as a wireless trackpad for better results for most applications, and neither my students nor I can actually write on the board to any degree of legibility.
Disappointments aside, I wish I could talk my administrators into purchasing the SC9 upgrade for our boards (but we're in a bit of a financial crisis like the rest of the nation, so it will have to wait).
I'm assuming you've re-aligned the board to no positive effect. My school has a SMART Board in ever classroom and they're used pretty well I'd say (I work ("intern") in the IT dept. and we're always looking at ways to further the use of these in classrooms). But I will say that some teachers have a terrible time writing on them. Just be sure to align them every morning and it should help.
And a quick shortcut for anyone who doesn't know: hold down both the right click and other button next to the pens for a few seconds and the alignment screen will come up.
Yes, I do re-align mine every time I use it (and as the projector is on a movable cart that students can bump around I do this EVERY time not just every day). No one ever seem to be able to right on it in a way that can be clearly read (unless they write huge). As much of a gadget geek as I am, I just haven't found enough ways that it beats out a dry erase marker and a white board (I don't use enough "interactive software" in my classroom to warrant a difference).
"No one ever seem to be able to right on"
... Said the English teacher.
I'm a teacher that uses a Promethean Activboard. I've found that the Promethean software is much more user friendly/geared towards educational use. Now if only they were able to incorporate this technology into the Activboard.
gota be honest with you, it sounds like a problem with the user not the board, do you think they would sell loads if no body could write on them? lol
Yes but can it blend... Mmm, sorry I mean it save your hand writing data as text?
I
Shame SMART don't have a way of deploying this update over a network. Upgrading 120 of these isn't going to be pretty :(
All the classrooms in my school have these Smart Boards, although I highly doubt they will even bother/know about the update.
I used to work at SMART here in Ottawa and it's a neat company but poorly managed. SMART boards are pretty neat but watching them build them and seeing that the lags that was sooo bad I not sure that how in 2003 they made $200 million, that was the last time they told us how much they made. And last year was there best in sales with shipping there 1,000,000th board. So what kind of money is Nancy and David making?
This is a very necessary update. I have played with SMART boards before, and it can be very frustrating because to use your hand you have to put the pen back in its area, then you can move things around. It sounds like its not that bad, but can really be frustrating.