Abstract:

Smart Boards, Smooth Boards, Mimio Teach, Ipad's, Nexus, Smart Phones, and Drawing Tablets, are some of the tools facing instructors and administrators as they try to establish the suitability and effectiveness of a variety of interactive media for improving student participation, attentiveness, engagement and activities. For example, Smart Boards are relatively expensive compared with other options and do they deliver a set of tools that will work for most instructors? This presentation will briefly examine the seven mentioned technologies and highlight their advantages and disadvantages and show how they might interact with such applications such as groupboard - a shared whiteboard for on-line tutoring. We will also provide a checklist that could be given to instructors to determine what their instructional goals are and how best to choose the technology or technologies to meet their requirements. Estimates on how much time should be set aside for basic learning of these tools will also be highlighted as well as the support requirements, which is extremely important as an institution determines how best to choose and support the options.

Keywords:

Interactive media, smartboards, nexus, ipad, smartphone, mimio teach, groupboard, bamboo, drawing tablets, smoothboard.