Which is the best Interactive Whiteboard?

[Jimminy]

I have never used a whiteboard, but am thinking of persuading the university I work at to purchase some for the language rooms. If the feedback is good, then perhaps the university as a whole could install them.

 

What are the main advantages of an electronic whiteboard vs a traditional whiteboard accompanied with laptop, projector, speakers, etc? Do the added benefits outweigh the cost? Is it really worth investing in an electronic interactive whiteboard?

[dhicks]

What are the main advantages of an electronic whiteboard vs a traditional whiteboard accompanied with laptop, projector, speakers, etc?

 

In a university context? I'm not sure that a touch-screen at the front of the lecture hall is going to be much use - university students don't generally come down to the front to move interactive widgets around the screen. I don't know what style of teaching you're aiming to support here - my guess would be that traditional lectures with 200 students taking notes while someone at the front trundles through a presentation are likly to move to video, with university classrooms supporting group tutoring instead. For our new year 8 classrooms, we've gone for interactive projectors (Hitachi ones, short throw) with the plan that we'll have people mirroring their iPad screens to the front-of-class display. We're still having those interactive projectors properly installed, of course, and each classroom will have a fixed PC connected to the projector as well as convinient ports for laptops to be plugged in, plus a decent set of decent wall-mounted speakers.

[VeryPC_Andy]

@iainjd , In terms of board the Smart , Promeathean and Hitachi are all decent boards. Where the Smart stands out as many have commented is that Smartnotebook is really at the cutting edge of interactive software bundles and goes beyond a basic inking tool.

 

Having said that it's worth considering and engaging with teachers on ;

- What are the teachers actually using the Inking software to do ? Advanced maths or glorified powerpoint ?

- Which software/inking package are they used to using? Are they happy / will accept a change?

- Are you licensed for existing on new/different vendor hardware?

 

I will Pm you my details if you want to discuss further - Happy to help and give you some options if needed.

 

Cheers

[VeryPC_Andy]

@iainjd, Genee are a software company with offices in India and UK (Wolverhampton) They do a large amount of hardware in India and Africa, in the UK they were amongst the first LED touch flat screen manufacturers and have been a competitor to clevertouch product by Sahara.

 

Genee import and re-brand their kit from Asia, this is something not to be afraid of as Ctouch, Clevertouch and many of the other vendors do this.

 

Where Genee stand out vs Sahara (Clevertouch/Cleverboard) is they are a software company and their bundled software ,SPARK, is a cut above the Lynx and Wordwall bundled with Clevertouch/Cleverboard product.

 

Again with all the AV solutions out there the crux questions that will define which solution to go with are ;

 

What do features/ size/touchpoints do users want out of the hardware?

 

What do users want out of the Software?

 

What software are users used to , will they change packages and what are you licenced for?

 

What is the budget and how important is saving it compared to the needs above.