Mightier than the words
A new digital smartpen and paper that records lectures
in a classroom and works with touch to give tactile
feedback could go a long way in improving education,
especially for visually impaired students
Subjects like physics, calculus and biology are
challenging for most students. But imagine tackling
these topics without being able to see the graphs and
figures used to teach them, and you will know the
plight of blind students.
Now, scientists in the US have developed a new
smartpen and paper technology that works with touch
and records classroom audio, aiming to bring these
subjects
to life for the visually impaired.
Mainstream approaches to teaching STEM (science,
technology, engineering and math) courses all rely
strongly on diagrams, graphs, charts and other
figures,
putting students with visual disabilities at a
significant disadvantage, said Andy Van Schaack, a
lecturer in Vanderbilt Universitys Peabody College
of education and human development.
Our goal is to enable students and teachers to
produce and explore diagrams and figures through touch
and sound by using a smartpen and paper technology
that is low-cost, portable and easy to use.
Van Schaack worked with Joshua Miele, a blind
researcher at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research
Institute. Together, they applied the new technology,
created
by technology firm Livescribe, to this effort. Van
Schaack is Livescribes senior science adviser.
My area of expertise is instructional technology. I
spend a lot of my time trying to figure out how to use
technology to make teaching and learning more
effective, efficient and accessible, Van Schaack
said.
A new world of possibilities has opened for the
creation of portable, low-cost, high-quality
accessible graphics enhanced with audio, he said.
For example,
a visually impaired psychology student could learn
neuroanatomy by exploring a diagram of the brain, with
each lobe, gyrus and sulcuss name spoken as
the smartpen touches it.
The smartpen recognises handwritten marks through a
camera inside its tip that focuses on a minute pattern
of dots printed on paper. It captures over 100
hours of audio through a built-in microphone and plays
back audio through a built-in speaker or 3-D recording
headset.
The pen also has a USB connection, allowing for
recorded files to be uploaded to a students computer
for future use.
One of the key aspects of this gadget is that it will
be much more affordable and portable than previous
products used for this purpose. Students can simply
put it in their backpacks with the rest of their books
and notebooks.
The researchers will be using a prototype of the
Livescribe smartpen with a Sewell Raised Line Drawing
Kit a Mylar-like film that is deformed when a
student writes on it with a pen, creating raised
drawings. The students will thus be able to touch a
hand-drawn figure with their smartpen to hear audio
explanations of its features.
As for other uses of the smartpen, Van Schaack
believes the possibilities are endless.
It really is a new computer platform.
It has most of the technology found in a laptop, but
gets its information from handwriting rather than a
keyboard, he said.
One of its most immediate uses that I see will be for
college students. It will allow them to spend more
time listening in class while taking more of
an outline form of notes and revise them later, giving
them the opportunity to annotate for accuracy and
additional detail.
The smartpen is expected to hit stores in 2008 at a
cost of less than $200 (Rs 7,900 approx). The
Livescribe interactive notebooks will cost about the
same as a good quality notebook, the researchers say.
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