While leading a college IT team at a private college in Wisconsin I painfully learned Smartboards are just plain dumb. Our Provost was interested to explore funding Smartboards in eight classrooms. In securing a full “kick-the-tires” evaluation over two weeks from Smart Technologies’ regional reseller — our college took a full, no-holes barred test drive. The reseller delivered the smartboards right to our doorstep.
Smart Technologies a Canadian company manufactures a series of interactive whiteboards targeted for the education and healthcare markets. They have a large marketshare in K12 school districts yet a very small share in Higher Education.
SMART Technologies has a simple marketing message: SMART Boards represent the latest advanced in high-tech classrooms. And by the looks of sales in K12 they believe they get access to state-of-the-art technology to teach more effectively. Students “feel” more engaged with high-tech gadgets. Parents believe their children are recieving a better, quality education because their school has expensive smart boards installed.
Their products like other manufacturers permit anyone (holding a custom pen with touch recognition) to control/interact with an application’s software menus and windows. This will enable some level of handwriting recognition. Depending upon the type of camera configured, projection can be front or rear facing. The important feature is the ability to capture digital ink — or handwriting recognition. It’s the “smart” part of their product — as their trademark would imply. But for the prices that range from ($3,000 to $12,000) you should be getting 110% of your school’s investment. Right?
I have witnessed shifts towards “smartclassrooms” in K12 and Higher Education around the Midwest for almost 20 years. If you have not personally configured and kicked the tires of a SMART Board PLEASE make sure someone on your IT Staff has this experience. The results should fundamentally change your view of smartboards and ’emerging’ technologies in the classroom.
Just one very important observation before jumping into my experience: In today’s branded world of smartphones, smartcars and even smart appliances, SMART Technologies holds the trademark to the word “Smart” and believe me …. there is marketing power when holding this trademark when selling technology products.
Okay….call them whatever you want: smartboard, digital whiteboards or even toss in the term “interactive” into the mix. What should shock you is the degree of software compatibility for the price schools pay for these boards.
My goal was simple: obtain a solid understanding of this technology to justify our Provost’s initiative. I kept a close eye on the purchase, installation, design and (most importantly) delivering empowering training to faculty and staff. In order for me to meet these objectives the following three tasks were outlined for the Provost:
1. Tour a successful university installation with a team from our college
2. Confirm reseller demo on campus in-front of key decision makers
3. Successfully test drive all campus site licensed software
I was fortunate to secure a tour of Marquette University’s SmartClassrooms with their Associate Vice President for Educational Technology. Joining me was our Director of Instructional Technology, Dean of Continuing Education and two members of my IT support team.
Several installations around Marquette’s campus successfully demonstrate a range interactive smart boards. Marquette’s total costs for installing a “smartclassroom” cost about $40,000 per classroom. The highlight of our visit was a behind the scenes tour of their smartclassroom in the new Raynor Library.
However SMART Technologies was not well liked by staff responsible for maintaing classroom technology. As a result our group walked away realizing Smart’s products were not the right solution. Their reputation was poor, the total cost of ownership and training were much higher than anticipated and most importantly their product did not work as advertised.
In order to fully utilize a SMART board’s touch pen you must install or program custom code for ALL applications to be used on their SMART boards. Yes, your school needs special code-modified versions of EVERY software application installed on every machine that will be connect to their SMART board. Our college provides faculty with laptops and have laptops on mobile carts. Our existing fresh out-of-the-box site licensed software from Adobe, Apple, Microsoft and every other vendor on the planet DOES NOT recognize SMART’s pen! That’s a big problem.
Didn’t see that coming did you?
I’m pretty convinced every university wants to provide faculty a simple, workable SMART board solution (fully interactive teaching experience integrated with each computer’s installed software). But its just not that easy. Smart Technologies MUST provide a custom Windows OS to be installed on each computer otherwise some menus may not respond to their touch pen. Many K12 and University HelpDesk teams cringe at these suggestions due to ghosting images for deployments.
SMART also ships an application-metatool called Notebook that takes full advantage of their digital ink technology. Its the software they feature on all their website videos. But there is a harsh reality check: K12 Districts and Universities run hundreds of software applications that are not supported as advertised. That’s a problem.
What does a faculty member do when they want Photoshop or InDesign to be “interactive” on a SMART board? They can certainly launch the software — but with no support for digital ink recognition (again) menus will not be fully functional by the SMART pen. This forces Faculty to walk back to their computer and “drive the software” with their mouse. At this point your just running a really, really expensive overhead projector.
Another important task was securing an on campus reseller demo in-front of our institution’s faculty, senior administrators and full IT staff which occurred in our new Teaching and Learning Center. Sadly the demo is where the train came off the tracks.
The local SMART reseller crashed their demo three times within a 1 hour presentation. Bluescreen of death in all its glory. Two demo crashes and you lose the support of any respectable tech team — and as a rule IT teams accept computer crashes on a daily basis. Our Dean of Liberal Arts was actually laughing after the second crash. That was a problem too. Holding out all hope I gave up after the third. That train wreck convinced me to refer to their products as Dumbboards. Seriously if you repeatedly crash your own demo….
Adding inslut to injury — SMART ships a custom software clip art library with their smartboard dumbboard which looks like it was designed by a 2nd grader with the attention span of Boo Radley playing KidPix. The vendor announced this clip art as a “key feature” of the product — infront of professional faculty who are artists. And when you demo Microsoft Excel, Word and PowerPoint don’t expect a roomful of artists to have a “light-bulb moment” when you execute an Excel macro on a smartboard dumbboard.
The fine print
So why are schools holding extra fund raising events to install these units? The vendor’s demo crashes, our internal evaluation proved their product simply does not work as advertised. Think about any school’s total cost of ownership. Again, investing in multiple smartboard dumbboard is like buying a space shuttle to drive to the grocery store for a gallon of milk. This metaphor was not lost on my follow-up meetings with the Provost.
Adobe is one of the world’s largest software companies yet the only Adobe product tweaked by SMART —get ready for this one— is Adobe Acrobat Reader. That’s right – Acrobat Reader. No support for Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign or even Acrobat Pro. SMART’s own website (embedded above) includes an Acrobat Reader icon in their advertising. Why on earth did Smart Technologies modify Acrobat?
The last time I looked nobody is interested in a midrange $6,000 interactive whiteboard to teach kids how to fill out a form. Are we using technology to show students to actually fill out a form — or are we empowering students to discover new tools, solutions and technologies to make the world a better place to live? Filling out forms in Acrobat…..seriously….why am I not laughing.
One other issue: can you name a school that has the budget to hire ex-Adobe software engineers to modify EVERY application in their Creative Suite? Marquette’s staff was quick to point this issue and demonstrated how to actually lose pen functionality within Photoshop on their smartboard dumbboard.
What was I missing?
Okay – please take a step back and re-evaluate. Why are SMART boards the hot thing in K-12? What must all those school IT Directors and faculty be thinking if our experience was so bad with the software used at our college and the input from Marquette? Read the fine print from SMART’s website:
Which computer applications can I use?
Any application that you use on your computer will work on a SMART Board interactive whiteboard. Some commonly used applications, such as Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel and Word, and AutoCAD are especially well integrated for use with SMART Board interactive whiteboards. Depending on the application, you can save files with notes, convert handwriting to text or activate tools when you pick up a pen from the SMART Pen Tray.While any software will work on a SMART Board interactive whiteboard, some applications are designed specifically for use on interactive whiteboards. These applications may feature large buttons and scroll bars for easy manipulation and low toolbars for easy access by children or seated users.
This statement cemented it for me — my institution was basically shit out-of-luck when it came to our institution’s site licensed software. I was sure about one thing: there was not a bat’s chance-in-hell any faculty member would let me tell them what software they must use when teaching — let alone even get the complete sentence out-of-my-mouth. To keep technology as simple as possible the last thing I want to explain to any faculty member is the software issue regarding what fully works as advertised infront of the SMART board and which applications they need to stay by their mouse. To me it was an all or nothing position — why confuse the faculty? Clear example where SMART’s technology failed.
S E X sells — even in K12 Ed Tech
Purchase a smartboard dumbboard, install it on a classroom wall, plug in a VGA cable from any computer and ta-da! — a fully interactive smartboard dumbboard for your viewing pleasure?
Are K12 Ed Tech leaders hooked by the sex appeal of SMART Board? Not so state-of-the-art technology MINUS effective learning? All while overlooking the product’s glaring limitations. It left an impression on me that SMART’s products are like Paris Hilton….selling cheeseburgers. And K12 school districts continue to hold special fundraising events for this bullshit? Kinda wish I was on a school board right now…
Allow me to show how this has been taken a step further in the wrong direction: K12 school districts have chosen to alter their curriculum in order to bring smartboard dumbboards into their classrooms.
— Score one for integrity. And they say the lottery is a tax for people who are bad at math.
Regrettably I also know at least one K12 school district in Wisconsin that chose to invest heavily in SMART boards while leaving their entire district bandwidth at a paltry 3 megabit connection. Yep, life in the slow lane…all day long. Imagine the frustration of their faculty and school staff.
Finally a workable solution for less than $340.00?
SMART’s painful demo and software incompatibility was proof enough for me to advised my Provost to forgo funding smartboard dumbboards and recommended Dell projectors instead.
Surprised? EVERY projector plugs into EVERY computer and works in EVERY classroom at our college. Best feature of Dell’s sub-$350 projector — it displays High-Definition video. At this point should you be surprised SMART products do not support HD video.
The excitement over smartboard dumbboards should wear off in less than one hour. Otherwise your just hooked on Paris Hilton.