BSU EDTECH Student Blog

Evaluation Planning for a Wii Remote Whiteboard

I have mixed feelings about my final evaluation project.  I was initially concerned about the risk of failure in evaluating the implementation and integration of a product I, and many students in  EdTech 505, was unfamiliar with.  The idea for my project came from Elizabeth Glomb’s initial post regarding a potential evaluation project.  Although I immediately became fascinated by Johnny Lee’s “Wii hacked whiteboard,” to my surprise, her post did not receive much feedback.  Nevertheless, upon my discussion post for the idea, I eventually received encouraging feedback from other students regarding the merit of evaluating a Wii remote powered whiteboard.  Essentially, specialized software allows a blue tooth enabled PC, a projector, a Wii remote, and an infrared pen to simulate many functions of a Smartboard.

I contacted my son’s middle school teacher and he expressed interest in participating in the evaluation of the system in his classroom. I cautioned him that the prospect of creating Smartboard functionality using his existing classroom equipment (PC and projector) and a few additional products costing less than $100 might be too good to be true.  He agreed to set aside time after school to meet with me to test the equipment.  I brought in my laptop with the shareware software (Smoothboard) installed, a Wii remote and an infrared pen I purchased for $7.95.  We attached my PC to a classroom projector, positioned the Wii remote at a 45 degree angle toward the projected image of my PC screen, and synchronized the Wii remote to my PC using the software.  To our surprise, the system worked as soon as we turned it on and calibrated the projected screen area.  I simply stood at an angle where the Wii remote could “see” where I pointed the laser pen.  Pointing and clicking the pen on the projected wall image had the same effect as using a mouse with my laptop.  I could also use drag and drop functionality to position windows in the projected image.

My son’s teacher was thrilled. He immediately called in a school administrator and asked him to come to his classroom. He was concerned that he would not be able to get someone else to believe what he was seeing.  The administrator was also excited and commented that every classroom should have this technology, considering the cost difference between a proprietary electronic Whiteboard and this low-cost alternative.

So, why the mixed feelings?  My concern is creating an evaluation design worthy of this relatively unknown low-cost solution to bringing electronic Whiteboard technology to budget strapped public schools.  Since beginning this course, I’ve learned a great deal about research methodology and know I must temper my illusions of writing a grand evaluation to the scope, time and budget constraint realities of the project.  I would like acquire lots of Wii remotes and infrared pens and recruit many teachers to participate in a quantitative, randomized control evaluation of the system.  Instead, I plan to design a simple qualitative case study using questionnaires, interviews and observations.  Reading and analyzing other evaluations this week will help me to narrow my evaluation focus.  The evaluation study of the Promethean Activboard selected by one of my discussion group members will be particularly helpful.  I’m looking forward to delving more deeply into this final evaluation project in the coming weeks.