ICT in my Classroom

Ignore the shapes on the background which I mistakenly added – this Addition Application activity is about answering the addition and subtraction sums appearing in the centre. Children need to add the correct number of fingers onto the table to answer the question.

Addition App – Set to multi-touch finger counts from Tom Barrett on Vimeo.

Watching my Year 5s using it I was surprised at how engaged they were, it is after all simple addition or subtraction. The unique nature of the “finger count” setting is it causes the children to rely on their peers to help them answer the question. If we don’t work together we don’t progress. The collaboration from even just 2 or 3 kids was great to watch.

This application is not new, I have seen and used it before on the Philips Entertaible. Which allowed any object placed on the surface to count as “1″. This was a good feature of that device as it allowed more flexibility to support early counting strategies etc. Not so with the SMART Table which needs a firm finger press.

The size of integers and answers increase as the number of learners set to use it does. (this is done in the admin screen) More finger presses are needed and higher numbers correspondng to the maximum of that group.

Another setting for the Addition application is to show answers using currency – which for British currency is frankly woeful, no colour, incorrect sizes of coins. Canadian and US seems to be in colour not surprising really. Counters or counting blocks can also be used and I will look into this next week.

I was most pleased with the level of engagement from the children and although on the surface this seems to be a simple application, it definitely requires a level of teamwork that you often do not get. 

It is intriguing watching the children’s first attempts and how they realise they need to work together. As the challenge is small scale, once they have been successful they begin to refine their approach, communicate better and so get to later answers quicker.

To support our work in Literacy I have created a simple set of images and video in the SMART Table Media application. This a basic lightbox app that is often demonstrated on multi-touch products. Although it does a basic job, the job this application does is always incredible to watch. Images can be freely moved, rotated and resized. Video has the same function and the twists, turns and magnification that goes on can be done as the video is playing without any interruption.

These are some short films I took today of four children working with this application. The images and video are from the Victorian period, primary and secondary sources of information. I asked them to explore the collection and make some notes about what they find out from the media. As a final discussion point they sorted the images and video into primary and secondary sources; real photos and video or not.

Media App, Manipulating Images and Video on the SMART Table (1) from Tom Barrett on Vimeo.

Media App, Manipulating Images and Video on the SMART Table (2) from Tom Barrett on Vimeo.

Media App, Manipulating Images and Video on the SMART Table (3) from Tom Barrett on Vimeo.

Media App, Manipulating Images and Video on the SMART Table (4) from Tom Barrett on Vimeo.

Media App, Manipulating Images and Video on the SMART Table (5) from Tom Barrett on Vimeo.

This activity ran for about 20 minutes and is the sort of depth that I have been looking for. I combined some pencil and paper note taking with the high tech access to the media, which worked for us. The children had room to work around the table and as I have said it is comfortable with four users.

Although there are many other applications to explore with multi-touch the Media application has my attention at the moment due the unique interaction with images and film that you experience when at the table. It is the blurring of that physical and digital space that I am intrigued with. The children passed each other video footage. If there is a way this can be done in other available computing environments then I don’t know about it. We certainly would not get the same level of intuitive connection with lots of media as you can when working in multi-touch.

It feels like this is an extremely unique and powerful feature of the multi-touch lightbox applications, whether on a SMART Table or not. One feature that provides children with amazing access to work with digital video in a unique way. The process just facilitates the learning intentions as it is so simple, hopefully you can see that from the footage. Film clips can be placed alongside each for comparisons; moved and sorted according to a custom background or even moved into a shared storyboard format. Furthermore a collection of images and video could be used in early years classrooms as a precursor to writing about an event or trip that took place.

It is the heightened sense of access and of sharing the digital imagery, combined with the fluid resize, rotate and placement controls you have that makes it a powerful learning tool.

Unfortunately we have had big problems with the first SMART Table unit we have used. Beyond waiting for keys the Table itself was faulty straight from the box.

Since the beginning of this week I have managed to get some groups of children around the Table involved with some of the activities. It has been good to speak to some of them and get their responses about using it. The children were very excited about using it and had lots of fun working together in some of the applications. Some of their first responses were:

• How much is it?
• Wow – cool, well it looks cool, I don’t know if it actually is cool yet.
• Where is it going to go?
• That thing makes an awful big racket! (The fans are very noisy)
• Headteacher: “Did you enjoy using the SMART Table?” Boy in my class: “It’s OK but it just kept crashing!”

It would be unfair to read too much into the children’s reaction to the Table at the moment as we have had a faulty unit, it has not been behaving as it should. But interesting nonetheless.

The major issue we have had is that as soon as I switched it on, the Table was registering two phantom touches in the centre of the table. This caused the menu windows to be almost inoperable and if I was able to get to an application, it disrupted the movement of objects within that activity. As you can imagine causing huge frustration.

SMART Table Phantom Touches from Tom Barrett on Vimeo.

From the (rough) film you can see the blotches or blobs that appear even when not touching the table, they clearly shouldn’t be there. Safari is selected and you can see a small blob on the selection that won’t go away – that is the phantom touch.

Steljes/SMART reacted to our problems really quickly and, even though it is clearly in their interest to give me a working device, they have worked quickly to rectify it. I was visited yesterday by James Loder, Louise Perrier and a SMART Technician called Steve. They looked at the two mirrors inside, the projector and eventually narrowed the problem to the USB camera that was tracking the touches. Cleaning it did not solve the problems and it was decided that it needed further investigation.

James and Louise said they have a brand new Table in the office, that they have tried and that works perfectly – and that we could have that. So we boxed back up the SMART Table and I am waiting for it to be collected and the other to arrive on Friday morning.

From SMART Table

I was a little surprised and disappointed to find out that the Table was not a conference unit and was in fact brand new, completely fresh from Canada. The quality of the finish of the projected image and flawed touch capability was amazing considering it was new – I was under the impression it had been in the UK and taken a bit of a hammering at BETT or other trade shows. 

A couple of things that I have learned already:

• There is a long way to go in terms of the toolkit and software development
• The table is very robust.
• There is a place in the primary classroom for this type of technology, it feels natural to have this style of technology in my classroom.
• My instincts tell me their is a future in this style of work for kids.
• Multi-touch and the behind the scenes technology that is needed to operate it, can be very temperamental.
• Children take to the medium very easily and naturally.
• They can be networked.
• 3rd party software can run on them but you would lose the 40 touch capability.
• For 9 and 10 year olds (upper junior) the optimum number for using the Table is 4. Any more and it gets a little congested, limiting the screen real estate that you can use. This is crucial, you might be able to get 6 Year 5s around it but they will not get significant enough access to the surface and so the learning activity.

Despite these teething problems I am still eager to get started properly with SMART Table in the classroom, and as it is long term project we can afford a few days ironing out the bumps. When we have a working unit we will have children working in groups on it every morning as part of the range of morning activities and I will be further exploring the use of the Table Activity Toolkit (full write up soon) that allows you to customise your own resources. 

By the end of next week we will have installed a SMART Table in my classroom. We are part of a small scale (3 school) seedling pilot here in England. As you can imagine, I am excited to further explore what such a device might offer within the primary classroom, and to do so over a longer period.

In my experience there was a muted reaction to the SMART Table (and other interactive multi-touch technologies) at the recent BETT show in London. Clearly the first reactions are hugely positive, I remember using the Philips Entertaible for the first time back in July 2006 – big iPhones! However there were very important, lingering questions that soon simmered to the surface when I talked with Christian Lortz, the product manager for the SMART Table.

My approach to the IWB has been the same since we began using them in 2002, it is not about the device but about the application – it is what you do with it that counts. The IWB is a big control device for your computer. The SMART Table is much the same with the added feature of multiple users. When you work with 9 and 10 year olds you realise that such novelty very quickly wears thin.

These are some fo the ideas and questions I have in mind in the run up to working with the SMART Table.

Depth

I am looking forward to exploring the types of software that can be written that takes full advantage of multiple users. At the moment the brief applications offer little in depth learning activities. With my own year group I suppose I want children to be able to engage with an activity independently or collaboratively for between 15-20 minutes. Not all the time of course, but in my experience children will work through things quicker then anticipated. 

I hope our work with the SMART Table will help define software and applications of greater learning depth then what I have seen in the past. Beyond the initial novelty, leading to richer enhanced learning opportunities.

User Profile

How do you track what individuals contribute to an activity? This is an important question for the adolescent multi-touch table. As a child approaches the table, I want their individual contribution to be tracked and monitored as an activity progresses. Who contributes most when working in a group? Who sits back?

Enhance or dilute?

The jury is out. A ready device is on it’s way to my classroom and I hope that in time the learning activities that can be provided for my class will enhance what we already do. Let’s hope that path is swift and the quality of what already is taking place in my classroom is not diluted by the novelty of multi-touch.

Can you stack them?

This was a question I put to the team at Durham University about the design of a suitable multi-touch table for the primary classroom. Mostly serious, I was keen to point out that I want furniture to be flexible so that I can clear room for a drama session or party. A stackable table-top device would be ideal. I am interested to see how the SMART Table integrates into our busy room and what the children make of it’s design. Will they be too big to sit around it comfortably?

Collaborate

We have explored the way that children can collaborate using Google Docs and their own laptop. This also includes the difficulties they often face. So I am keen to see how well they work in a more open, physical digital space. Will the manual style of collaboration change the way they work compared to working as a team in a Google Doc? Again I hope that software is developed that provides more in depth collaboration opportunities, perhaps over a longer period of time.

Of course I will be taking the opportunity to write about our experiences with the SMART Table in blog posts and via my Twitter and Flickr feed. I may even push the boat out and start a new Twitter account for our kids to document what they think.

I have been following the progression of multi-touch technology in primary education for about 4 years now and have been fortunate enough to see and use devices such as the Philips Entertaible in our school, and the early stages of the Durham University Synergy Net project. Looking back on some of the posts that I have written on the subject, there is a refrain about how long it will be before we see these devices in our classrooms.

Well they are here, ready to go. But once again the key thing is to quickly get beyond the novelty and develop applications that go beyond what can be conventionally done and seek out true learning enhancement.

What key issues do you think need to be addressed in regard to a multi-touch device? Does the SMART Table really have the potential to further enhance what we do in the primary classroom? If you have used one, what were your first impressions and what applications do you think have a future with such a device?

If you would like to contribute further to the concept of multi-touch desk development then please consider joining my Classroom 2.0 group.

For the first time in 2006 I saw a multi-touch device in action in the labs of Philips in Eindhoven. Just recently the wave of multi-touch devices has grown and this is especially clear in the use of mobile phones (also my iPod looks different). I suffered from iPhone envy when I was in Glasgow for the SLF as so many people had them, pinching and flicking their way through mobile content. A month or so after I returned from Eindhoven I wrote that perhaps the IWB had past it’s sell by date. What I am aware of now, that admittedly I wasn’t at the time of that post, is how much research and development needs to be done for multi-touch to be a strong enough technology for the average classroom.

Multi-touch technology in phones such as the iPhone, G1, Samsung Anycall SPH-M4650 and the new LG KF900 places it in the mainstream and can only accelerate the advancement of similar learning technologies.

The first consumer oriented multi-touch PC (ready for Windows 7) in the shape of the HP Touchsmart tx2 is available now and has a whole raft of gestures for the user to take advantage of:

SINGLE, DOUBLE TAP: Select objects by touching them once (single tap), or double tap to open objects/programs.

FLICK: Scroll or pan within an application either horizontally or vertically. For example, in MediaSmart Photo, flick your finger to the left on the display and the inertia from your flick will move the photos leftward, just as if you pushed a piece of paper to the left on a table.

PRESS & DRAG: Touch an object on the display and hold and drag it to the desired destination.

ARC: Allows you to move tracks to/from playlists without having to make a straight line.

PINCH: Touch an object on the display once to select the item then place 2 fingers on opposite corners of the object, then move them closer together to decrease the object’s size or to zoom out. Move fingers away from one another to enlarge the object or to zoom in.

ROTATE: Rotate photos by touching the object once to select the item then use 2 fingers on opposite corners of the image and rotate the image either clockwise or counter-clockwise.

LAUNCH MEDIASMART: Touch the screen with two fingers together and write the letter m on the display to launch the MediaSmart Smart Menu.

My involvement with Durham University has made me realise that multi-touch is still a fledgling in terms of mainstream classroom technology. They are at the very beginning of four years of research into what multi-touch means for the classroom, so I was surprised to see the SMART Table being released.

On one hand you have an expensive device available for the classroom now and on the other academics still trying to find the answers questions about multiple touch interactivity and how this impacts on collaborative learning and pedagogy. I hope that soon I will be able to see the SMART Table in action and perhaps sound out Steljes, the SMART distributor here in the UK, about the future of multi-touch and what they foresee,

I have had a SMARTBoard in my classroom for five years and I think that multi-touch devices will become a standard for mobile technology, more and more PCs will take advantage of it, to the benefit of future classroom technology. But what is beyond that? Will mainstream multi-touch devices just remain in the hands of our students and be brought into our schools? Will it take so long for all schools to actually be able to afford multi-touch devices that the next development for user/learner information interaction is already becoming a reality?

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.