ScreenBeam Pro Education Edition from Actiontec

As a professor of education, I am always looking at new technologies that can enliven my classroom and give me and my students tools to share ideas. When I purchased my Surface Pro 2 and Dell Venue 8, I learned about an Intel standard called Wi-Di (Wireless Display) which allows you to stream the contents of your tablet or computer to a HDMI  device without cables or wires. Many educator often refer to Wi-Di by using the term Miracast to describe a peer-to-peer wireless screencasting standard formed via Wi-Fi Direct connections in a manner similar to Bluetooth. Having access to Wi-Di would be great for the classroom because it would enable me to move about the classroom without the need to be tethered to the projector. Since I had half the solution in the Surface Pro 2 and Dell Venue 8 running Windows 8.1, all I needed was a Miracast receiver to enable me to use this technology. Researching which Miracast receiver would be best, I came across the ScreenBeam Pro Education Edition from Actiontec which got great reviews from many educators on the web. ScreenBeam Pro for Education sells for $99 dollars and comes complete with everything you need to get started and also includes a HDMI to VGA converter which is ideal since many classrooms still have older projectors without a HDMI port. 

The ScreenBeam Pro Education Edition from Actiontec is a small 2 inch square receiver that plugs into a HDMI device. In my case I plugged the VGA cable from my classroom computer into the HDMI to VGA converter and plugged it into the Screenbeam Pro. Since VGA does not support wireless audio out, I was able to plug it into the supplied RCA audio cable from my computer into the ScreenBeam Pro. Once I powered the ScreenBeam Pro Education Edition the instructional landing screen was displayed and prompted me to enter the PIN. Once I entered the PIN, I was able to swipe in from the Charms menu click on Devices and select Project and select Add a Wireless Display.  Within a second or two the Actiontec ScreenBeam Pro device comes up and I simply clicked on that and within seconds my Dell Venue 8 Pro screen was projected on the screen in my classroom. I now opened OneNote and began writing write notes which were automatically displayed in my classroom. It was that simple. 

One of the benefits of Miracast is that it does not require you to use the school's wireless network to set it up. Since ScreenBeam Pro Education Edition creates an ad hoc network it will not require IT support to get started. I was really excited with the out of the box experience and everything worked exactly as it should. If you have a Windows 8.1 tablet or computer that supports W-Di you really should take a look at ScreenBeam Pro for Education as a solution for giving you more flexibility when teaching in the classroom. I didn't have a chance to test it out but using the ScreenBeam Pro Education Edition in the classroom will enable students with Miracast supported devices to project the contents of their screen to the entire class. The ScreenBeam Pro Education Edition enables teachers to secure the device and give permission to students to project their screen to the class. 

If you are looking for an inexpensive way to cast your screen from your Windows 8.1 tablet or computer then you need to take a look at the ScreenBeam Pro for Education. ScreenBeam Pro Education Edition offers educators a great way to share the contents of the screen using Miracast technology. If you are trying to source the ScreenBeam Pro Education Edition or are looking to implement ScreenBeam Pro Education Edition in your classroom email me for the details. 

Unboxing the ScreenBeam Pro for Education

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IPEVO iZiggi HD Wireless Document Camera -Innovative New Product from IPEVO

Over the past year, I have been enamored with the number of unique products the IPEVO company has released and in the last two weeks they released the iZiggi HD Wireless Document Camera for IOS, Mac & PC which adds considerable value to their product line. The iZiggi HD Wireless Document Camera is the perfect marriage of the iZiggi HD Camera and the IPEVO Wireless Station which I had reviewed in the past

couple of months. Plugging the iZiggi HD Wireless Document Camera into the IPEVO Wireless Station created an ad-hoc WiFi network that would allow your iPad to connect through, which in turn would enable you to output the image under the document camera to your iPad without the need for a physical connection. Having  access to iZiggi HD Wireless Document Camera and the IPEVO Wireless Station opened up all kinds of possibilities in the classroom for having a truly portable device that could be moved about in the classroom. Teachers who have access to a projector and an Apple TV can walk around the classroom displaying student work and have it come up on the screen. Likewise, it is possible to push out what is on the iPad and share it with other devices that are connected to the ad-hoc network utilizing the IPEVO Whiteboard app on the iPad. This will enable students to interact and annotate the contents that is under the iZiggi HD Wireless Document Camera, which is ideal for small group work.

With the introduction of the iZiggi HD Wireless Document Camera, IPEVO has made it even easier to take advantage of the power of this document camera by designing the product so that the base of the document camera replaces the need for the IPEVO Wireless Station. The base of the iZiggi HD Wireless Document Camera contains the WiFi radio and Rechargeable battery and thus eliminates one more piece of hardware that teachers need to be concerned about. To use the iZiggi HD Wireless Document Camera simply plug the USB tail into the base of the camera, power it on and then connect your iPad to the iZiggi WiFi network. Launch the IPEVO Whiteboard app on your iPad and start viewing what is under the lens. The IPEVO Whiteboard app gives you a vast array of tools for annotating what you have captured and has a great interface for focusing and setting the exposure of the camera from the iPad screen. While ease of use should certainly be a big consideration when making a purchase, I for one am really impressed with the quality of the image that the iZiggi HD Wireless Document

Camera produces. The iZiggi HD Wireless Document Camera can produce resolutions up to 1600 x 1200 when in wireless mode. The iZiggi HD Wireless Document Camera can also be used in conjunction with the IPEVO Whiteboard app to capture audio and video on the iPad which is ideal for creating online video content. 

The iZiggi HD Wireless Document Camera comes with a USB cable extension so that it can be plugged into a Mac or PC and used with their Presenter software. The iZiggi HD Wireless Document Camera is a versatile and cost effective tool for the classroom which I know teachers will enjoy using. Having access to the iZiggi HD Wireless Document Camera will allow teachers to be more interactive in their instruction and provide teachers with better visuals that can support instruction and learning. At a cost of $159 dollars this is great value for a 5 megapixel camera. For more information about the iZiggi HD Wireless Document Camera click here.

 

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It Has Been a Busy Spring-Lots of Tech

It has been a very busy spring trying to catch up from the cold and snowy winter. March was a busy month chock full of presentations and workshops. It was really exciting to be one of the organizers of the EDCampAccessNJ which was held at the College of St. Elizabeth. The highlight for me was putting together the venue and having all my colleagues there to share their expertise. It was a great day an I am hoping that we can make this an annual event. We had great support of the college and from vendors who gave us great give away and really were there in spirit.

As much as I try to keep up the pace of technology is moving at lightning speed and while I try to do my best it has been a real challenge to keep up with all the new products but I am trying my best. In the last couple of weeks I have been testing out the following products which I will write more about in the upcoming weeks. These products include: Swivl- Robotic Camermate, Venier - Go Wireless Temp sensor, Livescribe 3 Smartpen, iZiggi Wireless HD Document Camera, and the Boogie Board Sync 97 eWriter. I'm sure I may have forgotten a few - just kidding! All the products have tremendous potential in the classroom for making learning more engaging for students and giving teachers more tools to make learning come alive. In this vein, Microsoft also announced and released a preview of Office Mix for PowerPoint which gives teachers the opportunity to enhance their PowerPoint presentations with multimedia. Add video, audio, screencasts, and quizzes and you have your Office Mix. Once you are dong creating your Mix you can publish it to the web and emial te link to your students to view. If you have added a quiz you can view the analytics and see how your students did. Very nice application and of course for the  price ($ Free) of admission this could be a real game changer.

Here is a taste of the Swivl for those of you who are interested in creating videos for the flipped classroom or for online learning environments.

Re-Introducing Swivl from Swivl on Vimeo.

If you need more information about the Swivl or are interested in purchasing one please get in touch with me.

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Tegware Bagel and Boogie Board Perfect Together!

I have been following the digital writing market for some time now and was intrigued when I learned about a new product from Tegware, called the Tegware Bagel, which marries an iPhone case with a small Boogie Board eWriter display, which was released at CES 2014. Having reviewed the original Boogie Board when it was released, I saw first-hand how liberating it was to use for jotting down notes and for doodling and have enjoyed using one ever since. In fact, I now keep a Boogie Board Jot 4.5  on my desk at work to write down reminders and telephone numbers instead of wasting paper. There is a certain beauty in the simplicity of technology when it is done right and in this regard, Tegware has found a sweet

spot for using Kent Display's eWriter technology to marry it to an iPhone case. At first glance one might say why would you need to have another display when you have a digital device

like an iPhone? That was my first reaction, but soon I realized that there are times when you just want to jot something down quickly when you are on the phone and having access to the Tegware Bagel is ideal for that.

The Tegware Bagel uses the pressure sensitive Boogie Board eWriter technology which gives you the smooth feel of writing on paper. The Tegware Bagel iPhone case is lightweight with a magnetic closure, has a good feel, and is made of high quality synthetic leather and is suited for the iPhone 5/5s and comes in a variety of colors to match your personal needs. The folio case comes with a stylus but in a pinch you could always use your finger. Once you jot something down you can quickly erase it by clicking on the erase button, which quickly refreshes the screen. The Tegware Bagel is powered by a non-replaceable built-in coin battery and has been rated for up to 50,000 erasures. If you have used the original Boogie Board then you will feel right at home using the Tegware Bagel. Writing or jotting down things feels really natural on the Tegware Bagel and is a really handy compliment to your iPhone. Short of being able to take the Tegaware Bagel out of the case to use in other venues, the product delivers a high quality writing experience for jotting things down when you are in a pinch. Now if Tegware can build the Boogie Board Sync into the Tegware Bagel it would take this product into a whole new realm!

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Boogie Board Sync 9.7 Compliments IOS Devices

Last week was certainly an exciting week as all the new gadgets and gizmos were announced at CES 2014 in Las Vegas, NV. One of the gadgets I had my eyes on all last year was the Boogie Board Sync 9.7 from Improv Electronics which had given us a taste for the product at last Year's CES. Well it finally arrived at my home last week and I have been putting it though its paces. If you have used any of the other Boogie Boards they are simple and easy to use eWriters for doodling or drawing, but one of the features that many of us asked for was a way to save our drawings and notes which is now possible with the Boogie Board Sync. Weighing in less than a pound and powered by a rechargeable battery which should last all week this device complete with stylus is an easy tool to capture notes and ideas without the need for pen and paper. The Boogie Board Sync utilizes a 9.7 inch diagonal LCD display to write on. While some of the early reviews have complained about the light contrast when writing on the device, I have found the contrast to be good and the writing quite legible. The stylus tip is quite thin and makes it easy to make finer detailed drawings or written notes compared to some of the previous stylus that were used with other Boogie Board models.  One of the really nice features of the Boogie Board Sync is the natural feel of the stylus on the LCD display-it has a smooth and silky feel when writing

and allows you to rest your palm on the screen without having to worry about making contact with it. The only strokes that are recorded by the Boogie Board Sync are the ones that are made with the stylus. The Boogie Board Sync has three buttons on the device, one to power up the device and two other buttons to save your notes and one to erase your notes. There are two LED indicators on the lower left hand side of the Boogie Board Sync to give you the status of the device's state and a blue indicator to indicate the status of the Bluetooth. While the Boogie Board Sync can be used with a micro USB cable plugged into a computer the real power is using this device with an IOS device (ie. iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch). You see you can pair your Boogie Board Sync to your iPad via Bluetooth and with the dedicated Sync app send your drawings directly to your device. You will find the free iPad app in the Apple Store which is a synch to learn. I have found the Bluetooth pairing to by quite quick and straight forward and have been able to pair my computer, iPad, and iPhone without a hitch. Once the Boogie Board Sync was paired to my iPad Mini I could access my

notes and drawings that were on the device and send them to Evernote, Twitter, or Facebook with an intuitive interface. The Sync app on my iPad Mini allowed me to organize my notes into Folders and automatically send them to Evernote for storage. If you have used your Boogie Board Sync to write some notes and have not paired it to your IOS device the next time you open the Sync app the Boogie Board Sync will automatically download all the files to your iPad.

The Boogie Board Sync has tremendous potential for students that want to move to a paperless system. This could be an ideal solution for students who want to digitize their notes and transfer them their JOS device or to Evernote. Having your notes stored in a digital format makes it easy to store and archive and search. Students will also enjoy the Boogie Board Sync portfolio case to house and protect their Boogie Board Sync. The possibilities are endless with the Boogie Board Sync and for an entry price of $99 dollars it is certainly worth entertaining as part of a note taking strategy and solution for students. All and all, waiting for the Boogie Board Sync to arrive was certainly worth waiting for and one that I will carry with me, to move away from writing notes on paper.

The number of gadgets that will surface in 2014 will be too numerous to follow-but one of the trends we will see are relatively inexpensive devices that complement the tablets and smartphones we carry and use. From this perspective the Boogie Board Sync adds tremendous value to our IOS devices and makes taking digital notes a reality with the natural feel of pen and paper.

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Adobe Presenter 9- Using the Drag & Drop Feature

With the release of Adobe Presenter 9 comes the Drag and Drop feature which gives developers a way to create interactive drag and drop questions to a quiz. The Drag and Drop feature is intuitive and allows you to create a number of different types of questions that can include both text and pictures. In the Halloween example, I created a simple Drag and Drop quiz called the Candy Challenge that allows the user to match a picture of the candy bar with the name of the candy. In the screencast below you will see just how easy it is to create a Drag and Drop question in Adobe Presenter 9.

To actually try the Candy Challenge click on the link.

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IPEVO Interactive Whiteboard System- Simply Affordable!

Let's face it, as wonderful as interactive whiteboards are in the classroom, with shrinking school budgets it is getting harder and harder to install these tools in each and every classroom. But with the range of students in classrooms with various learning styles having access to an interactive whiteboard to craft lessons can be advantageous to teachers trying to meet the needs of all students. With this in mind, I was really excited to try out the recently released solution from IPEVO, the IPEVO Interactive Whiteboard System. The IPEVO Interactive Whiteboard System is a cost effective way to turn any whiteboard or flat surface into and interactive whiteboard. The IPEVO Interactive Whiteboard System works with both Windows and Macintosh computers and the system is comprised of a small camera, stylus and supplied Annotator software. Teacher will need to

 IPEVO Interactive Whiteboard System

also have access to a LCD projector for the classroom to use this solution. Setting up my computer to use the IPEVO Interactive Whiteboard System was straight forward and easy to accomplish. First, I installed the Annotator software and drivers from the CD, then plugged in the camera to my computer and calibrated the system with the stylus and in less then 5 minutes I was up and running. While I had a chance to use it on a whiteboard which was fantastic, I recently used it in another classroom at the college which only had a traditional blackboard which worked just as well. In any case you are going to want to use this solution on a surface that is flat and smooth for best results. 

The Annotator software gives teachers the ability to use the stylus as a mouse to control any computer application on the computer with complete control to mark up the computer screen using a number of different annotation tools. Teachers can select from lines, squares, and circles to mark up the screen. I found the software to be intuitive to use and changing color of the ink and the width of the stroke was straight forward.

Annotator App

The IPEVO Interactive Whiteboard System was very responsive to the stylus and worked as a mouse even when the targets were small. The Annotator software also integrates with any of the IPEVO document cameras, adding more functionality to the system and giving teachers a way to bring in images to your computer that can be marked up. The folks at IPEVO do understand classrooms and realize that in some instances small children will have a hard time using the smaller stylus and includes an extension that attaches to the stylus giving students the opportunity to use the interactive system. Teachers can also access the Web and use the in-screen keyboard for inputting text as well as using the Screen clipping tool to add screen captures to the IPEVO notebook. As if this wasn't enough, the IPEVO Interactive Whiteboard System lets teachers bring up a virtual notebook that they can write on and bring in graphics from captured screen clippings or from your hard drive. Teachers can create multiple pages in the notebook and go back and forth within the notebook to review the material. I can only imagine where IPEVO will take this product as it continues to add enhancements to the Annotator software. 

The IPEVO Interactive Whiteboard System works as advertised and gives teachers an inexpensive solution to utilize their computers and projectors as an interactive whiteboard in the classroom. If you are looking to create more interactive lessons and you are on a tight budget then you have to take a look at the IPEVO Interactive Whiteboard System. If you are using the IPEVO Interactive Whiteboard System I welcome your comments.

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