Wii Whiteboard: Update #1

• December
• 9

All the parts are in and I’ve had a little over a week to play with the system. I’m working on a detailed write up and video of everything I have learned so far, but it’s going to take me a while to polish the document and video. Until both are ready I thought I would share some of my initial impressions:

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.

January In Service: Two Training Session Tasks

• December
• 9

I sent this email out to the STJA faculty yesterday:

*****************************

In order to make the best use of our time during the in service
training, I’m going to need everyone to complete a few simple tasks. It
would be very helpful if you could make sure you’ve completed these two
tasks by this Friday, 12/12. If you run into any problems, please let me
know.

1) Make sure you can login to the Faculty Portal. You can get to the
login screen by going to http://www.stjacademy.org and clicking on
“Portal Login” in the middle of the screen.

2) Please take a look at the sign up list for the January In Service
training sessions right here: http://tinyurl.com/inservicesignup
If you are not on the list, please sign up using the form located right
here: http://tinyurl.com/inservicesurvey

I will be sending out a couple more small tasks in the coming week. The
time you spend completing these tasks is hugely appreciated.

*****************************

Google Docs Formatting

• December
• 9

Google Documents does not always preserve exact formatting when you upload a document. So, if you’re working on a document that exists outside of Google Docs that requires careful formatting, DO NOT import it to Google Documents and expect the formatting to hold.

January In Service: Training Session Signup

• December
• 4

I sent this email out to the STJA faculty yesterday:

Hello everyone,

The morning session of the upcoming January In Service will be devoted to technology integration. I will be giving a presentation on 21st century learners and then the entire faculty will be sent off to ten different locations for Academics Manager and Google Documents training.

Two different training levels will be offered:

Level A: Computer novices to proficient beginners.

Level B: User who have general computer proficiency to advanced
skills.

Please fill out the following form by Monday, December 8th to sign up for your preferred training level.

The form is located right here:
http://tinyurl.com/inservicesurvey

Thank you,

- Josh

Late Night Reading

• November
• 27

Yah, I should be sleeping, but instead I’m reading about:

http://flatclassroomproject2008.wikispaces.com/

http://horizonproject2008.wikispaces.com/

http://digiteen2008.wikispaces.com/

http://www.nmc.org/publications/2008-horizon-report

I’m too tired to fully summarize what I have been reading beyond these simple words: Way. Too. Cool.

Johnny Lee & TED + Video Responses

• November
• 26

Off course he gave a talk ;)

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

The Best of the Free

• November
• 26

I just ran across these two sites and thought they were worth sharing:

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2008

Web 2.0 in Education Software Directory

Comparative Media Studies

• November
• 25

I just came across this blog post talking about Comparative Media Studies at MIT.

From the blog post:

The video list these skills as part of the New Media Literacies student will need to learn: Judgment, Negotiation, Appropriation, Play, Transmedia Navigation, Simulation, Collective Intelligence, Performance, Distributed Cognition, Visualization, Mulitaksing

From their New Media Literacies Page:

Project New Media Literacies (NML), a research initiative based within MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program, explores how we might best equip young people with the social skills and cultural competencies required to become full participants in an emergent media landscape and raise public understanding about what it means to be literate in a globally interconnected, multicultural world.

This is some pretty fantastic stuff!

Reordering Questions In Google Forms

• November
• 25

One issue that I have run into when using Google Forms is that reordering questions doesn’t always work as planned. I’ll be editing a form and I’ll add a new question. The question will be added to the end of the form but I want it to be higher up in the question order. So, I drag the question up several spaces and hit save. What I have sometimes found when I go to the live form is that the question I moved isn’t always being displayed in the place I put it. Other times the question has been moved, but the question whose place it took has been bounced down to the end. The form works just fine, but the ordering is a little odd: The questions are in one order on the edit screen, and in another on the live form page.

I’ve done some digging and found that other people have run into this problem. I have also had this problem come up while using IE, Firefox, and Safari, so it seems to be browser agnostic.

After a bunch of tinkering this morning, I think I have found a solution:

If you’re going to move a question, do it one line at a time and hit save after every line moved. This can certainly be an annoyance if you have to move a question a bunch of spaces, but it’s certainly much more annoying to have to undo some crazy ordering mess.

If you have a question that is in one place on your edit screen and in another on your live form, move the question around one space at a time (hitting save after every move) until its placement on your edit screen matches it’s placement on your live form. Once the placements match, make sure you only move the question one space at a time and that you hit save between every move.

I recommend refreshing your live form every time you move a question a single space. As far as I can tell the ordering should stay exactly how it is on your edit screen, but it can’t hurt to be sure. This will help you avoid haveing to untangle a question ordering mess if you make a mistake and drag a question’s position more than one space.

Wii Remote Multi-Touch Whiteboard: Parts Ordered

• November
• 23

After a bit of my own research and reading over some great info supplied by the five STJA students working on the project, I went head and ordered enough equipment to construct two Wii remote multi-touch whiteboards. Yay.

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.