INBOX:Many businesspeople today are familiar with the PowerPoint presentation. Indeed, so familiar are we that the phrase "Death by PowerPoint" has long since passed into the business lexicon as a way to describe the kind of presentation that you would gnaw your own leg off to get out of.
But getting across new information to an audience need not be quite the pain that it normally is, and there may be some hope in the relatively new world of interactive whiteboards - at least when used properly.
Some clues to this are coming in fast from the world of education. But what are we talking about here? An interactive whiteboard is a large display that connects to a computer and projector and typically costs around €1,000 and upwards. The projector displays the computer's desktop screen on to the board's surface (it may even just be a simple wall), and the computer is controlled using an infrared pen.
The person controlling the presentation can then write on the board and control the computer. Suddenly, instead of the teacher having to stand deathly-still by the projector, they can move about to create a more lively lesson.
Interactive whiteboards are taking classrooms across the world by storm. The large touch-sensitive displays can be used to integrate audio and video, graphics and text into lessons, and can improve learning by making things like Google Earth magically spin across the screen.
It is clear that the market for interactive whiteboards is about to explode. There are over 37 million classrooms in 66 major countries alone, meaning the global market for the technology is put at over $1 billion (€690 million), according to the Futuresource research house. The majority of this growth will come in the education market, with one in six classrooms worldwide forecast to be using the technology by 2012.
The technology is ideal for classrooms as the teacher no longer has to arrange large groups around a single computer screen, but the application could just as easily be applied to business environments.
Unfortunately, too few schools in the Republic have been able to benefit from this kind of new technology. The ill-fated IT 2000 programme, which was designed to update classroom technology, was allowed to peter out.
However, it doesn't have to cost the earth to create an interactive whiteboard. Just a little online research and a couple of hours with a screwdriver are required. And this was recently proved by an enterprising teacher in a high school in West Virginia, USA. After seeing a tutorial on YouTube (see http://url.ie/nnj), they mocked up their own "interactive whiteboard" by wiring up a remote control from a Wii gaming console (which can be bought separately) and a normal computer projector.
With some cheaper electronics parts they created the required infrared pen and downloaded some free software (from here http://url.ie/jfn).
The Wii remote then connected to the computer via bluetooth and tracked the infrared pen as the teacher moved it about on the board, just like a mouse. The price for this "hack" came in at around €50. Not bad, especially when a small amount of effort like this can mean students get more involved in lessons.
Perhaps makers of interactive whiteboards would not be quite so amused at this home-spun solution. But then perhaps the price for the technology deserves to come down - especially when it is relatively easy to create such a device.
