Whiteboard getting smarter today
While a digital projector may be an increasingly indispensable presentation tool, in a lot of places the old blackboard still serves as a great place to create lists, draw diagrams, test formulas and so on.
In rural schools, the blackboards remain black. In some areas, the blackboards are painted dark green, while blackboards have gradually been replaced with whiteboards in the cities.
Now, how do we store the writing on the blackboards or the whiteboards for future use? How do we create a record of what has been written on the board and agreed to by everyone so that no dispute will occur further down the track?
CleverBOARD Interactive Whiteboards can be connected to your PC's or notebook's serial or USB port. Just load Mimio software and you are set. Everything on the enamel surface will be captured and stored in the computer each time you press the copy button.
CleverBOARD is a U.K.-based company. Therefore, it may not be available here in Indonesia. An alternative that is available here is Panaboard from Panasonic. In fact, you can find one of these whiteboards in many meeting rooms. It has a scanner along its vertical pole as well as a printer. You write on a flexible surface and then press a button. A motor will move the flexible surface, which will pass under a scanner. The scanner scans all the writing and drawing on the surface, reduces the size of the image and then sends the data to the printer.
In the past, Panaboard came with a thermal printer, which used the same type of paper as our ordinary fax machines. Because thermal paper fades very quickly, people used to have to make Xerox copies of the printout. Today, with the advent of plain paper fax machines, these electronic whiteboards also feature a similar printer. The printer will print a to scale image of whatever the scanner sees on the surface. We can then erase the writing and continue with the discussion.
Plus Vision Corp., a leading maker of DLP (Digital Light Processor) projectors, has also been marketing meeting tools for the Indonesian market. One of their products is the M Series whiteboards. These are the first whiteboards with the capability to store all the captured notes in a removable memory card, a CompactFlash card. It is the same card you usually find in Canon digital cameras. If your notebook is already equipped with a card reader, all you have to do is insert the card into the slot and have the computer read the file. Once the file is accessed, it can be distributed by e-mail, printed or stored in your hard disk.
The M Series is also equipped with a color printer. If you want the hard copy, you can print the captured notes in four colors or in black and white.
Plus also has another smart electronic whiteboard that it calls the M-5. This whiteboard has a built-in memory and a slot for a CompactFlash card. You can store the captured image on the CompactFlash card or its built-in memory. Afterwards, you can connect the whiteboard to your notebook using a USB cable, and then you can copy the file directly to your hard disk.
So, until people come up with electronic paper and electronic ink, the whiteboards will still serve their main purpose -- to increase your team's productivity. The good thing is that its features are getting richer and richer. -- Zatni Arbi
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