High tech

[ffutures]

Just glanced into one of the labs to see one of the science teachers using an interactive whiteboard (cost £800), AV projector (about £1100), installation (£500-ish), sound system (£150-ish) and computer (£400-ish) to simulate... a blackboard. Black background, white scrawled text, etc.

OK, yes, I know you can use it for other things, but it seemed very silly somehow.

Comments

[madbaz.livejournal.com]

It's like the thousands America spent in developing a pen that could write in zero g, while the Russians just used a pencil.

Mind you, at Uni I would ocasionally have killed for the chance to download what the lecturer had just scribbled on the blackboard before he wiped it out to make room for more. The words "If you've all finished with this..." still haunt me.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

The pen thing is an urban myth. Most ball pens do work in zero gravity, it's pressure differences that cause problems, and that's what the money was spent on - for use by fighter pilots etc. rather than astronauts. It was also largely funded by industry on the basis that they'd be able to sell them to the USAF and gullible civilians as well as NASA, which is a ridiculously small market.

[madbaz.livejournal.com]

I stand corrected. Thank you. But useless gadgetry is the very life and soul of commerce, where would we be without our steam-driven, triple action reciprocating portable walrus polishers?

[kalieris.livejournal.com]

We would have very dull walruses.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Goo-goo-ga-joob...

[armb.livejournal.com]

More at http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp, which says they were developed for astronauts, industry paid, and both Americans and Russians changed from using pencils to using the pressurized pens (which, unlike pencils, can't cause electrical shorts when small pieces of broken graphite lead float around).

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I'm the one that stands corrected then.

I'd imagine that another benefit of using pens was that people stopped accidentally inhaling teeny bits of wood, which must have been very annoying.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

For comparison, how much does a decent blackboard cost (including installation in the classroom)?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

They aren't actually in the catalogues I have, but assuming a big roller blackboard costs the same as a big roller whiteboard, about £320 for the board and £36.00 for installation. Not sure about the rigid type but I'd guess about 40-50 pounds per panel plus the fame and installation.

Did either of you ever come across the whiteboard that Ricoh (I think) used to make which incorporated a low-resolution scanner? You pushed a button and the surface rolled past a scanning surface and was printed out on fax paper. The whiteboard had a roll of white material that was four "boards" wide, and you could have one, two, or all four surfaces scanned to each sheet of paper. They never built them with a computer interface as far as I know. When I was selling 2nd hand computers we had a dozen or so as "end of line" manufacturer's stock which sold around the £800 mark, I think they originally cost about three grand.

[armb.livejournal.com]

The ones we have at work are only two "boards" wide. Hang on. Panasonic KX-B530.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

That looks a lot nicer than the ones I remember, but those were definitely four boards wide. I suspect that the Panasonic ones actually work properly, not sure that was true of the ones we were selling.

[ckd]

Yeah, I've seen one of those scanner/whiteboards. No idea how long it's been installed, though, or what it cost when they got it.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

I think it was the boss of the mobile phone company Orange that demonstrated the new WAP functionality of their latest mobile phone by saying you could use it to look up the local italian restaurant and see if there was a table free for this evening at 8pm and then reserve a table ... and after several minutes of browsing and waiting for pages to load and keying in stuff, someone asked if it wouldn't just be easier using the phone to phone the restaurant and talk to someone?

[mr-wombat.livejournal.com]

I've seen software worth more than 30,000 euro being used as a doorstop a few times. Still in the box, cellophane and all, just sitting there. I wouldn't mind only it never actually got used in the end.