Proprietary Board Software Vs Open Standards

[Paul McMahon]

Hi All,

Thanks for this great resource! I work in Hong Kong as an independent consultant for Educational Technology in School and, among many things, do a lot of workshops on Electronic Whiteboards for schools. (Some teachers here use them interactively but others just use them as EWBs).
I recently read the report about the Action Research carried out by an Irish consultant which John Pearce posted a link to and it struck a chord with me too. The war between the big well funded EWB companies has lead to a stand off and divisiveness akin to the Mac Vs Windows war. Only at least documents can be shared between the Mac and Windows platforms very easily (it was not always the case as old-timers like me remember!)
I had the great pleasure of taking a team to Nanjing China earlier this year to do some training on the boards and one member who is an excellent teacher and worked as a leader in the UK on EWBs was very embarrassed by the fact that the boards were the wrong brand. She did a fabulous job as all the teachers we worked with knew it was the pedagogy and not the software but, none the less, she felt bad about it.
I think I read recently that NSW was solving this by making ActivStudio available for free to all schools. There are no deals like that in the Asian region.
Am I the only one in the world living in hope that one day we will be able to convert an Interwrite file to a Smart notebook to an Activ Flipchart to an Easiteach file?
I know that all of the companies try to differentiate themselves on their software but I have to say that a lot of the great teachers I see using the boards rarely use the Scrapbook software on the board anyway. Many of them spend most of the time using online resources and find that the browser fills the board for the majority of class time. Some even use sketchcast.com or imagination cubed or skrbl.com or one of the many others online to share their notes out to a blog or shared space as they create them. (I wonder if there is any research on what percentage of time the board software as opposed to other applications is used in classrooms?)
I know that a lot of teachers reading this forum are part of a much more stable workforce of teachers than international schools who have higher staff turnovers but it really is a disincentive for teachers to develop loads of lessons in one of the EWB software formats when they may accept a position in a school with a different brand of boards.
What do you think?

[Chris Betcher]

Paul, in researching the book I found an Open Whiteboard project listed on Sourceforge. It's lead, a Swedish guy named Johan Kohlin, suggested the development of an open source IWB software tool that did most of what the major brands do. It's a great idea, although in conversations over Skype with Johan it appears that the project has stalled (as happens to so many open source projects). He did as much as he could himself, but never managed to raise the interest of the FOSS development community to build on his start.
I think an open source IWB software tool would be a fantastic idea... maybe it just needs a little push?
Also, FWIW, the new Activ Inspire Edition has an import function that can bring in files created in Smart Notebook. Haven't pushed it yet to see how effective it is, but it is there.
RM in the UK were also proposing a common file standard for IWB files which, if adopted, would mean that all IWB software could open files from any other brand of board. This is a nice idea, but I can't see why vendors would agree to it... many of them, like Easiteach, make their bread and butter from selling software so why would they want it to be able to be opened by other (much more dominant) vendors? It also seems odd to me that RM, who proposed this standard, are also the people who sell Easiteach.

[Paul McMahon]

Hi Chris,

Good to know you are still alive. I have made some comments on your blog posts but had not heard directly from you in a long while. Guess we are both busy!

Firstly, I am very interested in getting a copy of the book when it is released. If ever the international schools in Asia cotton on to the idea that teachers need professional development in ICT then I will strongly push the book. (Don't hold your breath!).

I think I had the first discussion with staff at Promethean and RM about an open Whiteboard project in 2005. It is very, very controversial. No matter how many statements Smart, Promethean, RM, Hitachi or anyone else makes about supporting teachers and schools, I can assure you it is all about money and market share. I guess you have seen the Decision Tree consulting report about IWB uptake in the next 5 years in developing countries? It might be a bit out of date now with the global financial meltdown but I can tell you from the positioning at BETT last month that the big players are still looking to maintain an edge and do not want to see a common platform used on the boards.

Whilst in London last month, I met with the project manager for the RM cross-platform solution you mention above. He assured me that the project is based on the fact that Smart still has the dominant share of the IWB market in the UK and Promethean, a UK company, realizes that there is a commercial interest in them being able to sell boards into schools that already have Smartboards. Just like the 100 pound deal for Active Primary on any board, the RM open-source project will not be legally allowed to be sold or distributed outside of the UK. Promethean would scream if this happened here as they are leading player in Hong Kong.

Sounds like a case of what is good for the goose to me :-)

Cheers

Paul