Having the SMARTnotebook software on the laptop hasbeen great – it allows me to type agendas OUT of the room (as I share a classroom) and work on lesson plans from home.

A great link to check out if you have access to the SMARTboard and software: http://exchange.smarttech.com/. Teachers have shared lesson plans there – sorted by category and grade level. I’ve found a few fun things, including a fun way to take attendance:

It’s silly, but each student has a balloon – and as the student comes into class, he pops his balloon.  Other templates have each balloon or item linked to a question, say, for a test review – students can throw bean bags at the board and that’s how questions are selected.  I’m not at the point where I am excited for such projectiles in class, but I could see something “random” like that being useful for going through debriefing/processing questions as a group after an activity.

There are tons of SMARTnotebook files on the sharing site that walk you through some of the cool things the board can do.  Many of those tricks are like a fancier PowerPoint – hiding the answer to a question behind a box, dragging and dropping information into the appropriate categories, etc.  As I continue to play around with the notebook software, I’ll post more!

1) Interactive whiteboard are WAY TOO MUCH FUN.

2) Once you get the system down of pairing the remote, placing it in a secure location, and running the software, the whole process takes about 5 minutes and you only need to do it once per day.

3) Where you place the wiimote is important. The best place seems to be straight in front of the board, on the ceiling.

4) The boonjin SmoothBoard software works very well. I’ve played around with some of the deeper settings and so far it’s worked beautifully.

5) I tried pairing two wiimotes on different sides of the board (front-left and right). The advantage to this system is that if one wiimote’s view is blocked, the other can take over. This worked fine with the laptop with built in bluetooth, but there was a lag with the laptop where we were using an external USB blutetooth adapter.

6) The penteractive IR pens work like a charm. I think the batteries in a few of them were a little low upon delivery which resulted in poor performance — mainly jagged lines due to a dim bulb. Once I swapped in new batteries (each pen comes with an extra set), everything behaved properly.

7) The four main programs I’ve played around with so far are: Microsoft OneNote, Google Earth, Google Sketchup, and M2Screen Annotator. OneNote is the program I use with my tablet (IBM x61) every day in class. The program works well, but you have to write larger letters. The wiimote tracking reolution isn’t quite smooth enough for small letters. Google Earth is a BLAST to use with an interactive board. I love dragging terrain around and swinging the globe around while standing in front of class. I have only started using Google Sketchup and my immediate reaction has been — why the heck didn’t I start using this program sooner. It’s perfect for so many of the things teachers at STJA have been wanting to do. Being able to interact with the program with an interactive board is wicked. M2Screen annotator is a free program that lets you write on any screen. You can save what you’ve sketched or blank the screen with a single click. I’ve had fun with this program an Google Earth. I load a part of the town and then pretend I’m giving a lesson on possible changes to campus. This pretend lesson has meshed well with potential ways to use Sketchup: We could build downtown St. Johnsbury ;)

8) An IR pen with a pressure sensitive on/off switch that also has a button to turn on would be ideal. When you’re writing it takes a little while to get used to NOT pressing the button when you’re “picking up” the pen — i.e. not writing. Kinda annoying at first but not that bad once you get used to it. If there was a way to include actual pressure sensitivity (the harder you press, the brighter the signal?)… now THAT would be neat. (Example:pressing harder = thicker lines)

9) The Gorillapod tripods have worked out REALLY well. I put the stick on mounting bracket on the top of the wiimotes over the little speaker holes. That way I can take them off the tripods and they still fit into the Nyko charging station.

10) Everything seems to work fine if not better on my MacBook using the Wiimote Whiteboard software. I haven’t played around with it too much but the blue tooth pairing was smoother and everything worked fine.

11) In order to pair the wiimote to the computer, the wiimote needs to be in discovery mode, which is accomplished by pressing the 1 and 2 buttons at the same time. This needs to be done every time you turn on your computer which means you need physical access to where you are placing the wiimote. (You also need physical access if you’re using s charging station.) So…. this means that every morning I stand on a table to place the remote on my ceiling once it’s been paired.

12) It takes a bit of practice to point the wiimote directly at the center of the board, especially if you’re placing it on your ceiling. You can easily get it to cover the whole board by placing the wiimote far back from the board… and everything will work if you do that…. but the closer you are the better the tracking resolution. The closer you are, though, the harder it is to place the wiimote. With practice it does get easier.

13) To make the wiimote placement permanent you’d need to overcome to issues: pairing and power. It is possible to rewire the remote and add a plug adapater. You could then run the plug to an outlet. You’d then have to figure out a way to pair the remote remotely, which entails pressing the 1 and 2 buttons. I’d imagine there has got to be a good way to do this remotely. A page was online right here detailing how a school was wiring their own power and I think their own remote pairing system, but the page is down and I can’t find a cache of it anywhere.

14) As far as I can tell the only way to turn off a wiimote without a Wii system is to take out the battery and put it back in again. There’s probably a better way, but I haven’t found it yet.

K, that’s all for now. More soon.

Also, if you haven’t seen them already, I recommend checking out the video responses to his original YouTube post.

2 Wii Remotes: These items are rather key. ($39.98 each from antonline.com)

Nyko Wii Remote Charing Station: We’re going to be using these pretty much all day every day, so a quick and easy recharging method seemed useful. ($26.53 from antonline.com)

AZiO BTD603-132 USB 2.0 Bluetooth Adapter: The Wii remotes will be connected to each computer via bluetooth and not every school computer has built in bluetooth. ($14.99 each from NewEgg.com)

4 Penteractive IR LED pens: Yes, it certainly would have been possible to construct our own IR LED pens. There is certainly enough information out there on how to do it. After watching a bunch of videos and reading through several how-to’s, it because clear that constructing the pen can be a pain and the casing isn’t always too sexy. So, I searched around and found someone making exactly what we need for $8 each. Nice. Sometime down the road we may construct our own IR LED pens (maybe when we need LOTS of them), but for now these should be perfect. ($8.00 each from penteractive.us)

2 Gorillapod Original Tripods: We need an easy way to stabilize each Wii remote. It would also be helpful if the stand could be used on uneven surfaces or be attached to a pole or cieling mounts. I’ve used these stands for my cameras for the past couple years and they work really, really well. I also picked up an extra attachment pack that we can use to attach to the Wii remotes without needing screws ($24.95 each from Joby.com)

After all shipping and taxes the total price came to $254.67 for two complete setups.

That means each setup cost $127.34. Now that’s what I call an inexpensive multi-touch whiteboard :)

I also did some poking around for software options. I know Johnny Lee has his own package, but it seemed logical that there would be others out there. It turns out that I was right and that a cross-platform amped-up program has been written.

All of the parts should arrive by early next week. I can’t wait to get everything assembled.

The assembly party has ben set for Tuesday, 12/2 from 3:30 to 4:30 in SV21. Anyone is welcome to drop by and help out.

In the future we should be able to put together everything we need for under $75 by making our own IR LED pens, building out own Wii remote mounts, and not having to buy another Wii remote charging station (The Wii remotes should need recharging so infrequently that we should need no more than one recharging station per 25(?) Wii remotes.) We’d also get to dodge the $14.99 USB bluetooth receivers if we made sure every classroom computer we buy has built in bluetooth.

The point is that we can certainly shave down the cost of each setup. And that’s from starting at the low, low price of $127.34 per setup. Sweet.

Check out the video posted right here.

The phenomenal Johnny Chung posted all the software he wrote along with detailed instructions on how he built his “Low-Cost Multi-Touch Interactive Whiteboard” right here. How awesome is that? He also posted information and videos on his two other Wii projects: head and finger tracking.

The SJA Math Department has committed to building two Wii smartboard system. Five students are currently researching exactly what they’ll need to order in order to put the units together. The goal is to have two of these boards setup by the end of next week.

His ideas are wonderful. The way he went about sharing his work is even better. Make sure you check out this NYTimes article.