SMART Boards get SMARTer with Touch Recognition
SMART Boards get SMARTer with Touch Recognition
Posted 02/03/2009 at 10:35am
| by Paul Lilly
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If John Madden ever gets his hands on a new touch recognition SMART Board, we're throwing in the towel and never watching another football game again. It's bad enough watching Madden draw swirlies on the screen as he explains that the team who scores more points by the end of the game will be the winner, but can you imagine the added dimension of moving players and objects around? *shudder*
Despite the potential risks involved, fans of SMART Boards will be stoked to learn that touch recognition has found its way onto the interactive whiteboard. According to Smarttech, the touch recognition feature makes it possible for compatible Boards to discern between writing with a pen and attempting to move objects with your fingers and will switch modes automatically.
"For teachers new to the SMART Board, this feature helps them become proficient more quickly," Smarttech writes on its product page. "That’s because the intuitive flow of writing and erasing on the board is similar to how traditional chalkboards and whiteboards are used. And the sooner teachers become comfortable with the technology, the sooner they can start engaging students with interactive lessons."
You can view a clip of the new SMART Board in action on YouTube here, which demonstrates some nifty functionality such as moving newly written words around.
Touch recognition-capable SMART Boards are expected to available in early February, so any day now.
Image Credit: Smarttech
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ghot
February 05, 2009 at 3:30pm
....a GREAT idea!!
Take efficiency, and edit out all the intelligence and what you have left is a post-XP Microsoft operating system :)
knexkid
February 03, 2009 at 3:39pm
We have smartboards at our school too and they are a complete waste of money in my oppinion. There isn't really anything you can do with a smart board that you can do with a white board or a projector. Whenever our teachers use the smartboard it is either to just write notes, which can be done on a white/chalk board. Or they use it to show something, which is really not using the smartboard, just the projector. But then again, it is fun to waste $1000 to play flash games on a big ass touch screen!
whelderwheels613
February 03, 2009 at 2:39pm
All of the classrooms at my school use smartboards, and I gotta say, they are pretty darn cool. This update can really convince some of the teacher at my school to evn use them. It looks pretty awesome.
Hamerlock
February 03, 2009 at 12:54pm
The SMART boards that I work on use a set of cameras to triangulate the position of your finger, or whatever you are pointing at the screen to give you control of the mouse cursor. It seems to me that these same cameras should be able to recognize a size change of the pointing object by noticing a uniform change of distance from the pointing object in all three cameras. If that is the case, then current SMART boards could be changed to take advantage of this new touch recognition with a software update.
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