I feel very fortunate. It is a very rare opportunity to see an emergent technology that could have a huge impact on future teaching and learning.
On Monday I travelled to London to meet up with the Philips Entertaible team who I had met back in July of this year over in Eindhoven, Holland. It was great to see Maurice and Gerard again and to meet two more members of the Philips team. I was invited to take part in this workshop on education and help to draw out the possibilities of the Entertaible in my profession.
Facilitated by the company “What If?” we tried to get to grips with the possibilities. I must admit it was a great day! It was extremely different to the usual day I have and was quite intense – but being involved with such a raw technology at the very beginning of it’s life is inspiring.
It is very difficult to explain the technology other than what I said before.
From a teaching point of view though – imagine a simple counting or sorting activity on a normal table using counters and other physical resources.Then imagine the same learning activity produced on a IWB using digital versions of the counters or shapes plus the added multimedia benefits.
Now take those two ideas and combine them.
Not one nor the other but the best of both. Physical resources placed on a flat digital display that reacts to their location and presence!! The potential is staggeringly huge!
I left at 6:00am and got home at 10:45pm so it was a very long day but one that was a privilege to be involved with.
I saw a Promethean demo of a multi-user board at BETT
The kids had paint pots and could throw them to each other to share them – really cool. Exactly like in the movie reference you make.. which made me remember it,
They had lots of other things like image sorters and ways of stretching and morphing things with two pens
Apparently it is an upgrade to their boards – so no new board or technology needs to be installed. Now that sound like something that has a chance of really appearing in classrooms soon.
Have you seen The Island? There’s a scene in that in which the character played by Ewan McGregor goes into the boss’ office and there’s a giant desk. The boss ‘flings’ a piece of virtual paper which spins across the desk towards Ewan McGregor.
Is it a bit like that? 😀