a user’s perspective
Redefining Interactive Whiteboard Experience The heart of all Cybernetyx products is the pioneering Visual Touch (VT) technology, which is amongst the world’s most advanced 3-D optical tracking engines today. An inspired user of the product provides his views
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y brother’s son got a new iPad recently and he is crazy about the intuitive multitouch functionality and the amazing applications on it. He wishes that such kind of gadgets could be used in his classroom to teach all subjects in a fun filled way. I told him that there are Digital Interactive Whiteboards in a lot of good schools today and is growing every day. On this he expressed his discontent of not having seen such interactive system yet, neither in his school nor in his friends’ schools. I was wondering if such iPad can be designed which can be of the size of a whiteboard in the classroom. What if you get large multi-touch systems which will do much more like an iPad instead of the generic interactive board in a classroom? How will it be better than the normal interactive whiteboards available today where the teacher mostly write/draw and interact on the board using the same old mouse-clicks imitated by a pen/finger? I did some Google on my own and came across “CYBERNETYX Interaktiv UG”, a leading German firm which focuses on research and development of cutting-
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www.digitalLEARNING.in
edge multi-touch interactive solutions. To my delight, besides their global headquarters in Stadthagen, Germany, I found out that one of their experience centres is located in India, at Noida and fixed up a quick meeting with their team. This turned out to be an amazing experience to be in a comprehensive demonstration of a new generation of interactive technologies from Cybernetyx. The demonstration encompassed not just Cybernetyx’s flagship surface-independent, multi-touch, gesture-based interactive whiteboard series, EyeRIS, but also interactive projectors, surface computers, huge multi-touch interactive video walls which go up to a size of 10 X 3 meters, interactive floors, and various other futuristic human-computer interaction devices. Let me explain what I found very special and different about the IWB technology EyeRIS, from Cybernetyx: If there is no screen and your existing whiteboard in the classroom gets converted into not just an interactive whiteboard, but an iPad like intelligent display device, understanding all your gestures, and multiple inputs to the computer at the same time.
How about 3-4 students coming on the board and solving Mathematics puzzle simultaneously on the same board? Apart from this, the sheer awesomeness and cool points earned by making a Venn diagram activity look like a scene from the movie Minority Report using gestures to explain the various concepts. This also brings in the feeling of teamwork and partnership among the students in a classroom along with the competitive spirit which always brings in more from an individual. Incidentally, multi-touch, multi-user capability is one of the key features which will change the way we interact and collaborate as per a recent research. The other key fe tures were gesture re ognition, ease of deployment and usage of the interactive systems. This kind of collaboration has never been part of any classroom till now. A generic IWB system still lacks features like gesture recognition and multi-touch capabilities. EyeRIS provides the answer to all of this and is an ideal tool to mediate the relationship among teachers. If students in the classes’ plan the teacher chooses some episodes to use them like an effective interactive and participation enhancing tool.
Are you ready for it? One of the most crucial questions is that are we yet ready for such a product in our classrooms or our office boardrooms? You need to answer it yourself based on the advantages which we have discussed. The success of iPad and Smartphones has certainly proved the immense acceptability of such technology in the market space. However, cost plays a major role in such deployment over so many classrooms in a school. When we discussed this with Cybernetyx team, the product manager, Abhijit Potdar, advised that apart from being the most advanced system for interactive teaching and learning, the system comes at a very nominal price as compared to other interactive whiteboards in the market. In addition, 4-6 hours training schedule at your school for the teachers to get familiar with the product which is currently bundled along with the product pricing itself. Cybernetyx has multiple distributors and partners across India for promotion and distribution of their products in India, Nepal and Bangladesh. For more information, you can visit: www.cybernetyx.com \\