Onionskin

It’s spring, and Ed Tech Directors across the country are looking at how to “spend down” those budgets.

I spent the afternoon with some of my favorite smart people, a spirited group of Technology Directors from the northwestern suburban school districts of Chicago. The collective knowledge in the room is overwhelming — not just on the “techie” level, but on the historical knowledge of where education has come from and where it should go to next in Illinois.

One colleague shared her board’s intense interest in SmartBoards^©, and quasi-linked it to a recent article in the local paper regarding a neighboring district’s enthusiasm for this product.

Other Tech Directors in the room nodded sympathetically. One questioned the use of this type of a tool as anything that increases student learning; it is all teacher-directed, and seems to be a fancier way to do what we’ve been doing (wrong) for so many years.

I referred to Will Richardson’s presentation a few weeks ago, in which he mentioned a much cheaper solution that was developed by Johnny Lee, a doctoral student at Carnegie-Mellon.

By some odd coincidence, my Twitter network tonight included an informal announcement from a colleague at the University of Delaware: “Built my Wiimote whiteboard pen and almost have it working!”As others added comments and followed other threads of discussions she continued updating every few minutes:

“I can barely solder and made a fair pen in about 1/2 hour.”

“Then you have to play with the software for awhile.”

“I’m doing it on Mac and trying Darwiin Remote and Wiimote Whiteboard.”

“It’s going to take a bit of practice.”

“Let me know how it works out for you. I’m still playing. Not as smooth as the videos ”

“$10 parts to make light pen, $50 Wii controller, free software almost creates a smartboard…”

It was exciting to know that what I had heard in theory could actually take form. I wondered if my colleagues in neighboring school districts had the resources, manpower and patience to experiment in this way. Yet, who can afford to ignore the potential savings if the Wii version — if indeed it delivers what the pricier out-of-the-box versions do?

Stay tuned… My University of Delaware friend and another university-level educator have been challenged by me to create video tutorials of their “amendments” to Johnny Lee’s original post.

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