Development of educational software for whiteboard environment in a classroom. Hirokazu Bandoh, Hidemasa Nemoto, Shin-ichi Sawada, Bipin Indurkhya and Masaki Nakagawa Dept. of Computer Science, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology

Purpose Support for Classroom lessons. Features added by Information technology. Traditional blackboard environment.

The advantages of the traditional blackboard Environment. (1)The teacher is able to express his or her ideas naturally. (2)All the students can look at what the teacher is writing or drawing, and can focus their attention on it. (3)The teacher can see the students’ faces and expressions. The teacher can adjust the pace or the contents of the lesson according to feedback received from the students.

The problem of PC-based environment. (1)The students’ attention is focused on their individual screens. (2)Students’ faces are hidden behind the terminals, thereby preventing the teacher from getting visual feedback.

Electronic whiteboard. PC environment is not suitable for supporting traditional classroom teaching. We chose to develop educational software for an electronic whiteboard instead.

The advantages of Electronic whiteboard. (1)Preserves all the advantages of the traditional blackboard environment. (2)The contents of the whiteboard can be pointed to, selected, and operated directly using an electronic pen. (3)The contents of the whiteboard can be processed (using the attached computer), and the results can be visually displayed on the whiteboard. (4)The conventional mode of using the blackboard is naturally extended to include computerized operations.

(1)It should supply computer technology to process and display the content of the lessons, and offer various scenarios for presenting course material. (2)The control of how to present course material, and in what order, should remain with the teacher. Software design principles. CAI Electronic Whiteboard

Principles of the interface design. (1)It is important that the teacher be able to express his or her ideas on the whiteboard naturally, and not feel uncomfortable or uneasy with the whiteboard operations. (2)It is necessary to have an easy-to-use electronic pen interface for any educational software developed for the large display area of the whiteboard.

Mosaic Chinese character quiz tool(1) A mosaic can be detailed gradually.

Mosaic Chinese character quiz tool(2)

Geometry lesson tool(1) A display of an n-regular-polygon. n can be changed using the slider bar. Any diagram can be annotated.

Geometry lesson tool(2) The circle on the left is subdivided as shown, and each sector is moved and arranged as shown on the right.

Evaluation of Mosaic Chinese character quiz tool(1). Place : Koganei Municipal Dai-San Elementary School. Date : December 20,1999  Three sections of the first grade class.  T otal of 96 students.  Each section had a 45 minutes class, and their regular teacher led the class.

Evaluation of Mosaic Chinese character quiz tool(2). How much did you enjoy the quiz of this tool? How many Chinese characters that you had unknown could you learn by using this tool? After the class, the students were asked to fill out a questionnaire. How many Chinese characters that you had learned to mistake could you find by using this tool? Very much 74%much 25% Very many 68.8%many 14.6% Very many 55.2%many 16.7%

Teacher comments: Evaluation of Mosaic Chinese character quiz tool(3).  This system is much easier to use than a terminal environment because a student can write on the electronic whiteboard in front of everybody.  The children who usually do not show interest in the class also participated positively. Students comments:  It is very interesting and I want to use it more. It made studying feel like a game.

Evaluation of Geometry lesson tool(1). Place : Koganei Municipal Dai-Ichi Elementary School. Date : January 25, 2000  T otal of 25 students.  As this was a new experience, 10 teachers also observed the class.

Evaluation of Geometry lesson tool(2).  The system allowed the students’ attention to be focused.  During a class, the teacher has to repeatedly write and erase the same information. It is very helpful to have the support of the system for drawing figures.  It is nice to be able to repeat any operation any number of times. Teacher comments:

Conclusions Traditional Blackboard Environment. Information Technology. + Electronic whiteboard Environment. We verified by evaluation that many of the design goals were met in the implementation. In the future, we plan to do a more formal pedagogical evaluation of our environment.