On choosing an interactive whiteboard

I am currently in the process of selecting an interactive whiteboard for an upcoming research project. In my last few projects I have used both of the major interactive whiteboard brands (Smart and Mimio), each with a number of different configurations. There are several issues that may influence one’s purchasing decision such as cost, space or existing room configurations, projector availability, etc.  However, I have realized that my criteria for an interactive whiteboard are, out of necessity, quite different from those of a typical classroom teacher, so I figured I would mention some of them.

Wait, what is an interactive whiteboard and why are you using one?

An interactive whiteboard is essentially a whiteboard that you can control as if it were a computer. Typically, you hook an interactive board up to a computer so that a) the computer screen is projected onto the whiteboard, and b) you can control the computer projection by interacting directly with the board. One of the major interactive whiteboard brands lets you use your finger (or any other object) to control the board, while another requires a special stylus that looks like an electronic whiteboard marker.

Figure 1: A student labeling BeeSign on an interactive whiteboard. Click to enlarge.

My criteria

The way I use the interactive whiteboard is a bit different from most teachers, who either use it as an easy way to present information from the front of the classroom or as a way to let students come up to the board and make changes. However, here are some of the issues I encountered and the resulting criteria for a whiteboard and software.

• The stylus limits access: When you have a room full of 6-year-olds scrambling to make adjustments to your whiteboard, sometimes it behooves you to have a way of limiting their access so that they can’t just run up and start poking around (think conch shell!). Other times, that might be exactly what you want.
• The finger is easier, but maybe too easy: It is, particularly for 7-year-olds, considerably easier to use your finger to control an interactive whiteboard than it is to use a bulky stylus. The unfortunate corollary to this, though, is that anytime you touch some interactive whiteboards, things will start moving around. It is incredibly difficult to annotate a simulation if moving your marker across the board moves an object instead of labeling the object.
• Annotations are tricky: The interactive whiteboards I have seen ship with tools to let you label whatever screen is displayed. I’ve seen some teachers use this incredibly effectively to label different parts of a math problem while working through the solution. The problem with this, though, is that you have to “freeze” the screen to label it, which is not terribly useful if you want to see how your labeled prediction matches up to a simulation that is running. One solution is to build the annotation tool into your simulation. Another is to make sure you can still use normal whiteboard markers.
• Is the whiteboard fragile? One of the trade-offs that comes in having a whiteboard that is designed to be an interactive whiteboard vs. a normal whiteboard that is converted is how casually you can treat the whiteboard. In a recent study, for example, we were afraid to use normal whiteboard markers on our interactive whiteboard because they aren’t 100% removable and the teacher we were working with was afraid they would stain the board. On the other hand, cheaper boards that no one minds staining aren’t always as easy to control.
• Portability: Simply put, some interactive whiteboards are easier to move around the classroom or to a different classroom than others. The tradeoff is often that less-portable whiteboards are more stable and require fewer recalibrations, etc.
• Height: You may or may not have a lot of flexibility with how high some whiteboards stand. Working with kindergartners who can barely reach 1/2 way up a board, though, has made me very aware of how easily a whiteboard can be lowered and whether the software can be controlled on the bottom half of the screen. That’s why a number of key BeeSign elements are on the bottom.
• Control of your software: Interactive whiteboards tend to have ways of letting you use the right button on your mouse, or trigger the equivalent of a mouse rollover event. Similarly, they also have built-in virtual keyboards. However, these are a real hassle to use and are best avoided. Some software relies heavily on these, and other software does not. I also discovered that when developing in Flash (the tool I used to develop BeeSign, and the tool that was used to develop the SPASES client) a double-click does not work as well on an interactive whiteboard. You can’t always design your own software, but you can definitely test-run the main software you will use on an interactive whiteboard to confirm that it works properly. Some boards are better than others, and your needs will dictate the kind of control you need in your whiteboard.
• Shadows: Unless you are using a rear-projection interactive whiteboard (read: the most expensive ones) you will have some shadows on the screen from people standing between the projector and the whiteboard. While these shadows can be minimized by mounting the projector on the ceiling or buying an interactive whiteboard with a built-in projector arm, both alternatives are somewhat more expensive. My partial solution in designing my own software is to try and put as much functionality as possible on the sides of the screen, or on the bottom. This keeps people from having to stand directly in front of the projector. Again, though, we can’t always design our own software, so this, too, is something to keep in mind.

That’s it for now. If you have other suggestions, please let me know! Otherwise, as I run into opportunities or problems I’ll be sure to update this list.

Examples

To see which projects and publications involved interactive whiteboards, click on the the Interactive Whiteboard tag to the right.