An Improved Interactive Whiteboard System: A New Design and an Ergonomic Stylus Koray YUCEL, Nevzat ORHAN, Gizem MISIRLI, Gözde BAL, Yasar Guneri SAHIN* Faculty of Computer Science Izmir University of Economics Izmir, Turkey * corresponding author’s email:
[email protected]
Abstract— Interactive whiteboards (IWB) are very useful tools to ease the understanding of audience, and they have successfully been used for years in the field of education. However, due to the manufacturing expenses and some overheads of required environmental devices, many interactive whiteboard systems (IWBS) are too costly, and they, therefore, may not be feasible solutions. There is a good way to establish IWBS using already own equipments in order to utilize the benefits of IWBS with low cost, and to reduce their system requirements. The abilities of Nintendo Wii Remote Controller (NWRC), such as camera for tracking infrared lights and Bluetooth module for connection, makes it very convenient tool for developing an interactive whiteboard system. This system reduces the manufacturing costs, provides a wide-range use, and portability. NWRC has been used in education for many purposes for several years. This paper addresses the solutions of several problems caused by IWBS with NWRC such as ergonomics of IR pen, reflection problems, and interruption on drawing; thus it proposes very convenient, cheap, and useful interactive whiteboard system that can be used in education. Keywords- Interactive whiteboard; stylus design; ergonomic stylus; educational technology; nintendo wii remote controller
I.
INTRODUCTION
Interactive whiteboards (IWBs) are very useful tools, and they help to increase motivation of the learners and to lighten educators’ workloads. Combining the simplicity of a whiteboard with the power of a computer, interactive whiteboards assist to engage students and audiences in presentations or lectures. IWBs bring a whole new level of interactivity to any classroom or boardroom, and charts, images, presentations and even drawings can be shown to audience easily. In business situations, IWBs enable collaborative work session to increase productivity quality of any work [1]. An interactive whiteboard (IWB) is a special system that consists of a computer, a projector and/or a large display, a stylus, and a number of different types of sensors. Sensors make the surface of the whiteboard become a touch sensitive display which enables to gather user actions, and then they send the gathered data to computer using several type of connection style such as wired or Wireless or Bluetooth. Next, computer processes the data sent by sensors, and reflects the changes to whiteboard by means of projector [2]. The general structure and working style of whiteboards and their costs vary depending on the producers’ choices.
The simplest interactive whiteboard consists of a touch screen setup which enables instructor to use his/her finger or IR led pen as a computer mouse. This also permits touching the screen in order to select things, click menu items and/or drag objects on the screen [2, 3]. Although, there are many different characteristics of IWBS, many of schools, in their selection of IWBS, firstly consider the total cost of IWBS, because educational systems of many undeveloped and developing countries (and even a number of developed countries) have very limited funds and governmental support, and second consideration is comfort. Thus, to find cheapest and a comfortable solution to IWBS is crucial for these schools. In the light of this reality, this paper proposes very cheaper, more efficient and more comfortable IWBS and IWB with NWRC devices than previously used IWBS. II.
RELATED WORKS AND MOTIVATION
Although there are several studies which concern that the IWBs produce small improvements and insignificant gains in motivation of students (especially elementary students) and teaching, there are many other studies conducted, that show IWBs have provided rather positive effects in motivation because of the increasing the interaction between teacher and students. This study assumes the IWB usage provides remarkable improvements in interaction between students and teacher and this improvement can positively be used to increase motivation of the students. Torff & Tirotta (2009) conducted a research on students from 3rd, 4th and 5th grades (n = 773) and teachers (n = 32), half of them were not extensive user, for IWBs' effects on mathematics and the result is although extensive users reported at higher levels, the effects of IWBs are weak [4]. In addition, Michael Thomas (2009) criticized the researchbased book on the revolution of IWBs written by Betcher and Lee (2009) and stated that the book is not balanced, written only supporting the government policy in technological education reform. He also stated that the professional researches on IWBs showed that although the motivation is highly increased, learning gains are less significant. His final comment on book is importance of being realistic and using words such as “revolution” or “magical” doesn't prove that the tool is very beneficial [5]. The use of IWBs is dramatically increasing in education, and there are many positive findings that the IWB increases motivation, thus, education quality. Fang et al (2009) stated
the benefits of multimedia teaching over traditional teaching by using IWB and IWB specialized software. Students can review the solutions of problems by using hyper links, work on similar problems and analyze if their result is fine by using graphics on subjects such as fraction arithmetic [6]. More, Liu et al (2009) improved the usage of IWBs by twocolumn design. Teacher can easily integrate a video or image and supportive materials, such as text or annotations on same screen. Also image switching between these two columns prevents blocking the image while using the application on other side. This improved system increases the tendency of teaching and motivation of students [7]. In addition Holmes (2009) studied on pre-service secondary mathematics teachers (n = 13) and usage of IWBs on mathematics from the point of TPCK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge) and stated that student engagement is increased by using visual medium and manipulations such as coloring or reshaping, the tendency of using technology increased the pre-service teachers' motivation and a significant promotion on deeper understanding could be possible by using different representations of mathematical ideas [8]. Recently, there are many other IWB applications which have been successfully implemented, some examples can be found in [9-15]. The system proposed in this paper is based on the idea of using NWRC as action sensor, which was firstly introduced by Johnny C. Lee [16]. He showed that NWRC can be adapted to many different projects as IR or action sensor. Furthermore, after the study of Lee, NWRC was used as infrared camera in many different applications such as low cost IWB systems, healthcare and patient monitoring, etc. In an interesting study, NWRC is used as a wireless data subsystem for digital acquisition of analog physiologic data [17]. More, Silva et al presented a low cost IWB system titled by iiBoard using NWRC [18]. In addition, there are many studies in the literature related to NWRC usage in remote sensing [19-24]. NWRC used IWB systems have been used by many schools in education for several years, however, there is still a number of troubles with stylus and drawing. In this paper, in order to understand exact problems with stylus and drawing, a survey that the details of it can be found at the appendix was conducted. The survey is about the technology (especially interactive white board) usage in classrooms in several cities of Turkey. Table 1 shows demographic profile and descriptive statistics of surveyed teachers. Although this study is a moderate size survey, since the respondents were selected from different types of schools, fields, and cities and regions, the results can reflect the general opinion about the questionnaire subjects for whole country. The main purpose of the survey is to understand the current level of interactive board usage, and as a further study, using the outcomes of the survey, to increase current level of usage by means of a number of improving current systems, increasing comfort, and decreasing the costs and overheads. In this context, the motivation point is to decrease the total cost of the IWB system, and to supply more comfortable IWB environment with low cost.
TABLE I.
DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE AND DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS OF RESPONDENT TEACHERS
Item Total respondent teachers
Frequency 486
Percentage 100.00
Gender Male Female
219 267
45.06 54.94
Teaching Experience (year) 1-4 5-9 10-14 15-19 20-24 25 – more
120 116 93 73 39 45
24.69 23.87 19.14 15.02 8.02 9.26
City (Region in Turkey) Istanbul (Marmara Region) Izmir (Aegean Region) Malatya (East Anatolian) Mugla (Aegean Region) Siirt (South-East Anatolian Region)
57 264 18 112 35
11.73 54.32 3.70 23.05 7.20
Interactive Whiteboard usage Yes No
178 308
36.63 63.37
First of all, the survey results showed that the current usage of IWB is approximately 37% in Turkey, and 40.4% (72/178) and 36.5% (65/178) percentage of the IWB users complained that they had comfort (shape, pain, etc.) and durability problems respectively with stylus and the IR Pens. The general idea about the stylus is that it is very uncomfortable, and there is a strong pain in fingers after 1 hour of working with it. Furthermore 12,4% (22/178) percentage of the IWB users complained the interruptions and distortions on lines while drawing any figure or graph. This paper proposes a new technique to remove interruptions and distortions on the lines, and to reduce pain on fingers using a healthy and comfortable and durable stylus design. III.
OPERATIONAL DETAILS OF THE SYSTEM
A. Splint Stylus Current IWBS including Johnny Chung Lee’s, have several stylus or IR pen problems such as durability, ergonomic and price of them. More, IR led pens can not perceive the signals accurately from every distances, hence, because of this accuracy problem on drawings the effectiveness of the IWBS decreases. General problems of the stylus or IR pens are: • Reflection of IR signal • Many blind spots because of wrong placement of IR Cameras • Durability • Inconvenient button style for activating IR signals • Some sort of health problems (because of wrong design)
Figure 1 shows classical IR pen/Stylus design and details currently used for IWB with NWRC, and figure 2 shows Splint stylus which is proposed in this paper.
With classical IR pen, many different reflection signals are sent to IR receiver, and then receiver accepts all or any of them, because the IR LED located on top of pen and the LED is towards whiteboard. However proposed splint stylus LED is placed to the opposite side, and it always send IR to the receiver directly without ant reflection. In addition, activation button is placed the edge of the classical IR pen, and this means very inconvenient and uncomfortable usage for the users, because users always should press the button when they want to use it. On the other hand, splint stylus activates the IR LED when the user touches the whiteboard, hence, no other finger required to use while using it. Thus, very comfortable environment is created by the splint stylus especially for long time usages.
Figure 1. Classical IR pen desing and details.
Figure 2. Splint stylus design.
Proposed stylus is a kind of special finger splint which covers the index finger. Finger splints are generally used in health area in order to treat some problems on fingers such as problem of mallet finger, and they protect finger tips and nails bed against injuries. In addition, finger splints are made up of durable, perforated and translucent clear plastic, and they include ventilation holes which prevents skin damage. These characteristics, therefore, make splints very suitable to be used as a stylus. Many different sizes of them are available, hence, splints that fit index fingers with different thicknesses can be found easily. Reflection problem which annoys the users is very important problem, because it causes to distort the lines while drawing. In drawing mode, NWRC gather location data from IR pen continuously, and different coordinate data can be obtained even for the same location because of reflection. Design of splint stylus is also very proper to solve IR reflection problems, since the IR LED is placed the top side of the splint. Figure 3 demonstrates the reflection problem with classical IR pen and the solution of this problem with splint stylus.
Figure 3. Classical IR Pen reflection problem and its solution by splint stylus.
The proposed splint stylus and classical IR pen were tested separately by 46 teachers during 102 hours, and almost no durability problem and discomfort situation with splint stylus was informed. In fact, 98% of the participants agreed that splint stylus is more comfortable than classical IR pen. B. Uninterrupted Drawing with Twin NWRC Another important feature of our proposal is that the system enables a very suitable working environment without any interruption of communication and distortion of line while using system. Current systems have several interruptions and distortions problem with drawings. Since only one NWRC is used as a receiver, user may have a position between the NWRC and the whiteboard surface, this situation, therefore, can lead to interrupts on drawings or wrong drawn shapes. This paper also proposes a system which solves the drawing interruption problem using twin NWRC. The system illustration is in Figure 4.
indispensable part of education. As a future study, for manual calibration problem of IWBS with NWRC, an automatic calibration system can be considered. V.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This study is a part of graduation project supervised by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Yasar Guneri SAHIN. The authors would like to thank teachers who were the respondents of survey, pre and post tests, and thank principals and other employees of schools in Istanbul, Izmir, Malatya, Mugla, Siirt for their precious helps. REFERENCES [1]
Figure 4. Proposed system structure for uninterrupted drawing.
One NWRC is enough to detect the IR light on the surface, however, user may block the NWRC when drawing a circle, writing a sentence or in the middle of very important issue. This leads a loss of attention and urge on the user. In order to prevent these problems, multiple sensors should be used; if one sensor fails to detect, other sensors attempt to detect the IR light. Hence, interrupts never occur on the drawings unless the user does not hide the activity from the sensors. The system proposed in this paper presents double NWRC usage for IWB system. The projection device shows the desktop of the computer on the surface. Primary and Secondary NWRCs are connected to the computer and installed on certain positions that each NWRC should detect the entire image on the surface. When the user touches on the surface, IR-enabled Stylus emits IR light, and both of the NWRC detect the IR light and send the positioning information to the computer. The driver software converts the position information into the coordinates (x, y) and invokes the mouse interrupt by using these coordinates. Normally, primary NWRC data is accepted as master data. If computer does not receive any positioning data from primary, secondary NWRC data automatically is used, and it is accepted that secondary NWRC data as master data anymore until secondary is unavailable to send data. IV.
CONCLUSION
In this paper, an IWC system with a new splint stylus and uninterrupted drawing design is presented. Actual requirement for this kind of system came from teachers who currently use the IWB system, and then we propose very convenient and effective design to that requirement. In addition, in this study a post test was conducted, and the results showed that almost all of the teachers (98% - 45/46) who were the respondent of the test were satisfied about new stylus and uninterrupted drawing system. Although, several studies showed that IWB systems have small effects on motivation of the students, in connection with the increasing interaction between students and teachers, IWBS opened new frontiers in education, and they have been an
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