November 2005 — Hardware
Print this article | Email this articleClick here to receive your FREE subscription to T.H.E. Journal
Is the Pen Mightier Than the Mouse?
The FLY joins more established pen-based technologies in the educational arena. For example, several K-12 schools have made innovative uses of PDAs. One popular use involves attaching a special probe or sensor to the PDA. Using the probes, students can collect data such as soil temperatures at various locations in the schoolyard. Back in the classroom, this data can be aggregated, analyzed, and discussed.
The FLY and PDA are pocket-sized; however, most other educational, pen-based devices come in slightly larger sizes.
You may already know that a tablet PC is a pen-enabled laptop computer; less familiar are the tablet PC’s cousins—the graphics tablet and the interactive pen display. A graphics tablet is typically the size of a mouse pad, and plugs into a desktop or laptop using a USB cable. The user draws on the surface of the graphics tablet with a special pen and watches the corresponding cursor movement by looking at the computer display. While graphics tablets are not as easy to use as tablet PCs, for smaller jobs that require a limited amount of inputting, they offer a very low-cost (often less than $100) option. Interactive pen displays are essentially LCD monitors with a pen-enabled twist. After an interactive pen display is attached to a standard desktop computer, the user is able to draw directly on the surface of the display. When mobility is not a concern, these units provide a penbased alternative to the tablet PC.
Several software tools have been developed to exploit the educational power of pentop machines. While several of these programs also run on standard desktop and laptop computers, the full benefits of the software are only realized on penbased devices. For example, DyKnow’s (http://www.dyknow.com) patent-pending software solutions allow teachers to interactively transmit material to students during class. Content is transmitted in real time as the teacher types, draws, or imports material from other applications. Each student can make private annotations by writing or typing additional notes on or near the teacher’s content as it is received. Student work can be shared with the teacher or with the entire class to promote discussion. After class, the content can be reviewed and replayed by students and teachers.
Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com) provides several free pen-based educational software applications that demonstrate the educational potential of tablet PCs. Physics Illustrator, one such program, allows students to sketch scenes involving objects such as springs and inclined planes. The system recognizes the objects in the scene and then animates them in order to illustrate the physics principles involved. Younger students can use Microsoft’s freely available Writing Practice Tool for Tablet PC to practice writing and spelling. With this program, students use a pen to write a given word, and then the student’s ink “flies” toward the bottom of the screen and assembles itself into a picture of the word.
