The Educated Kiwi
Wiimote whiteboard roundup
So we have had our first week of having the wiimote in a class at Katikati College. Next week we deploy to another eight classrooms across the cluster as well as three at Omokoroa No 1 School. So far we have built some of our own pens and brought some from penteractive.us who were very happy to send them out to us. I still prefer our own pens largely due to the button and slightly larger size of the pen. There are several other vendors for the pens out there and they can be found on the wiimote whiteboard page.
Also for schools interested in this the wiimote for schools how to is a good place to start. For the software to run the boards I have been using Uwe Schmidt‘s on the mac and Boonjin’s Smoothboard on PC. The smoothboard software is great for the extra functions as it makes the area outside the board useful for backspace return etc as well as a host of functions for google earth and sketchup. The next step for us will be an instructional video on how to make the pens. If you would like a demo and live close enough let us know and if you really don’t want to get you hands dirty we can organise a ready to install kit for you where the wiimote is mains powered and the button for syncing with bluetooth is extended to the front of the classroom.
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Wiimotes and Plasma Screens
about 1 year ago - 2 comments
It may not be pretty but this is the modified TEK irpen that we have used for making a plasma screen interactive. The reasoning behind this came from having to put a wiimote in a year one classroom and the projector giving an image that kids would be too short for. So with a slight
Stu’s Double Jeopardy, Great fun for basic facts.
about 1 year ago - 2 comments
As much as it pains me to have to boot into my windows virtual machine (feel the mac snob coming out in me there) Stu’s Double Jeopardy makes me do just that. While I have made up Jeopardy games before in Powerpoint and lately in Smart’s Notebook this is so easy and looks so good.
eChalk: Teaching resources for interactive whiteboards and data projectors
about 1 year ago - No comments
While the KKC and MMC Maths and Science classes have been indulging in echalk resources for some time now, they have recently released resources on History. With particular interest to me were the tudor and stuart resources for yr 13 History and as we already have a license I can get straight into it. So
Clasus Challenge IWB pricing
about 1 year ago - No comments
Clasus is a Portuguese company that sell Interactive Whiteboards that look like Promethean IWBs, act like Promethean IWBs and are Promethean IWBs under a different name (allegedly). Screenflex (no web site as yet) are the Irish company attempting to sell these boards for, in their words, “about a grand and a half less than Promethean.”
Making the TEK irpen for wiiboard
about 1 year ago - 1 comment
Here is a quick 3x speed video of Mark making an irpen. Feel free to comment and ask questions if you need any further help making your own. Or you can buy one by clicking on the link on this blog. If you need to see it in higher quality follow the link to you
wiimote, so easy
about 1 year ago - 2 comments
To further advertise the simplicity of using the wiimote pens this video shows my Two year old daugther using the wiimote irpens on the projector in the lounge. She now loves standing on the toy box and drwing on the wall. good one dad YouTube – wiimote, so easy. Share and Enjoy:
Wii Mote Pictures
about 1 year ago - 1 comment
Here are some shots of the mounts and the pens manufactured by Te Puke High School. Share and Enjoy:
YouTube – Wiimote Whiteboard vs. Commercial Electronic Boards
about 1 year ago - 5 comments
YouTube – Wiimote Whiteboard vs. Commercial Electronic Boards. I visited Tepuke High School today and was really impressed by the setup for their wiimote iwb’s I look forward to building my own this week. Will post some photos of the setup later, If only my n73 bluetooth would work with osx. Share and Enjoy:
about 1 year ago
Hi Richard
I have been hearing a lot about the Wiimotes and have a couple of questions
1. how are they going? Now you have been using a while are teachers happy with them? any hidden problems you have come up against?
2. Did you attach a power cable to the wiimote?
I am quite interested in these as you say huge cost saving
and existing interactive whiteboard software can be used with them also.
Thanks looking forward to hearing from you.
Keri
about 1 year ago
Hi Keri
to answer your questions.
They are going very well, some problems on older 3yr+ Toshiba’s bluetooth but remember we give these to every staff member who wants one not just the ones who are naturals with IT so there is a lot of PD with it (as there should be with any IWB)
Yes ours are mains powered and have a switch to initiate bluetooth syncing.
If you have any more questions feel free to drop me an email or give me a call.
Richard
about 10 months ago
Hey,
I would just like to ask have you tried the latest version of Smoothboard by Boonjin? What is your review on that?
Stephy
about 10 months ago
Once I find a windows machine I’ll do another review. We use Uwe Schmidt’s app as we and a lot of the schools we deal with have macs. But I have found the Bluetooth sync a pain on Toshiba’s so if this latest version fixes that it will be great.
about 10 months ago
Hi there Richard,
I’m headmaster in a high school in Greece. I’ve been using the wiimote whiteboard in my school for over one year. My question is how can I have the wiimote mains powered and add a switch to initiate bluetooth syncing
r3m
about 10 months ago
Hi r3m
To do this you have to pull the wiimote apart and do a little bit of soldering. I’ll dig out some photos to show you what to do. But essentially you get a 3 v adapter and a plug for this then solder on to the terminals. that makes it mains powered. then you need a tri wing scremdriver to open it up fully and you can then solder two wires on to the side of the sync button (the otherside of the red button) and then have a switch on the end.
about 9 months ago
Hi Richard,
Thanks for the answer. It’s still not quite obvious the way to achieve it. I need more details.
about 9 months ago
Hi Richard,
Thanks for your reviews!
about 9 months ago
Hi Richard,
I’m a Toshiba user as well..but I do not find any problem with the Bluetooth sync since I’m currently using Smoothboard. Maybe you can try this software in seeing whether it can help to resolve your problem.
about 9 months ago
Hi Stephanie
Yes things have improved a lot over the months since I wrote this original post and many of the issues are now easy fixes.
about 6 months ago
Hi Folks,
I am not trying to hijack this thread for commercial purposes but there are simple solutions to all the earlier wiimote whiteboard drawbacks. I am part of 3P Interact Ltd a small NZ company formed by myself and two other school principals to advance this tech. As an example, our main product – the classroom kit – means the user simply clicks on a desktop icon, pushes a remote synch switch (about to go wireless) and that is it. By all means check out our dedicated blog if you are interested http://3pinteract.blogspot.com/
We are always happy to help schools (whether or not we have sold them something!), so feel free to ask questions.
about 3 months ago
I want share a very beatiful software to be used
with a wiimote whiteboard
http://code.google.com/p/ardesia/
Ardesia enables you to make colored free-hand annotations on your computer screen, record it and share on the network.
This is especially useful when making presentations, to highlight things or point out things of interest.
The tool facilitates the online presentations and demos showing in real time your computer screen to anyone in the network.
Ardesia is XInput-Aware, so if you have a mouse, a graphic tablet, a touch screen, a wiimote whiteboard or a commercial whiteboard; you can draw lines with different strength, select color, erase things and draw arrows.
You can free-hand draw geometrical shapes using the shape recognizer, insert text with the keyboard and highlight screen areas. You can draw upon the desktop or select an image as background.
about 2 months ago
Ardesia 0.3 is out!
You can use the wiimote whiteboard with Ardesia
to annotate on the desktop
This is avaivable for Linux and Windows
http://code.google.com/p/ardesia/
You can see some screenshoot on
http://code.google.com/p/ardesia/wiki/Screenshot