Tablet PCs for Classroom Use: Technology and Application

    The Tablet PC offers most of the advantages of the notebook PCs commonly used in the classroom (nearly all of them, if used in conjunction with a keyboard and mouse) and also adds some new capabilities:

• The instructor can "draw" directly on the presentation using the stylus. While it is possible to draw with a mouse, drawing with a pen-like artifact is easier for most people.
• The Tablet can be used in either horizontal ("landscape") or vertical ("portrait") modes. This is convenient for displaying material that may have originally been in portrait format (e.g., most books are in portrait format). 
• Tablet PCs tend to be ultra-light and have long battery life. This is important if an instructor may be carrying the computer long distances or may be away from electrical outlets for long periods of time. Classes which use field work may especially benefit from this.
• Making the transition to the Tablet PC is reasonably easy. "Ink" versions of popular applications (such as the Microsoft Office suite) are available, making it possible to gain the benefits of the Tablet PC without lengthy training or adaptation.

There are also some drawbacks:

• Tablet PCs are expensive, more so than notebooks of the same processing power.
• Not all software is Tablet-aware. If the instructor uses specialized software in instruction, he or she may be forced to use a keyboard and mouse (and carrry them, if the Tablet is a slate model). 
• Tablet PCs can be difficult to read under some lighting conditions (some fluorescent lights or bright sunlight). This drawback is shared with many notebook computers.
• Though highly portable, battery powered, and equipped with wireless networking, Tablet PCs are still tethered to a projector for large group presentations (see Suggestions for Further Study, below, for a possible workaround for this problem).
  

    It's reasonable to assume that Tablet PCs will become lighter, more powerful, and less expensive as time goes on. It may be, however, that the real usability gains come through integration. The integrated features that are now available in cell phones (such as digital cameras) would seem to be ideal for adding into the Tablet PC, since they operate under similar constraints of size and power consumption.  Perhaps the cell phone itself could be integrated.  

    Though Tablet PCs are much more compact than a desktop machine, or even a laptop, the constraint of screen size would seem to pose a limit on miniaturization. However, several research groups (both academic and corporate)  are working on flexible, "roll-up" displays.  If these become available, the Tablet PC could become as convenient to carry as a paperback book.

    

    Professor Larry DeBrock at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign used a Tablet PC in his Microeconomic Principles class in the Spring 2002 semester. The information in this section is derived from personal communication and presentations made by Professor DeBrock.  The reader should note that Professor DeBrock has not yet reviewed this document. Any errors that may be in the following material are those of the current author (Hursh), not Professor DeBrock himself.

    Microeconomic Principles (ECON 102) is a large lecture format course normally taken by freshmen. There are two lecture sections with enrollments of 660 and 750 students. There are also quiz sections which are handled by teaching assistants.

    Professor DeBrock dislikes standard PowerPoint presentations, believing that this format often leads the instructor to move too quickly, and to put too much material on each slide.  He also found annotating and drawing on PowerPoint slides using a mouse unsatisfactory.

    His  teaching technique has evolved from overhead slides created with word processing software (which also made it possible for the lecturer to move too quickly) to the technique he's been using in recent semesters: blank or nearly-blank overhead slides which he filled in as the class progressed. Though the overheads allowed him to make annotations and draw, and the manual drawing process helped with pacing, they still suffered from several shortcomings. The overheads were ephemeral. The instructor disposed of them after each class, forcing the students to make their own drawings if they wanted to keep a copy (some instructors make copies of overheads available at local copy shops, but this has its own set of problems, discussed below).  

    DeBrock thought that the Tablet PC might allow him to work in his preferred style, while also allowing students to retain permanent access to the slides without the trouble of making their own hand copies.

    DeBrock first used the bundled Microsoft Journal Software. This worked well in the classroom itself, but proved to be less than  convenient for archiving.  Annotating the slides for web use produced an unesthetic result. Also, the software only allowed saving the slides in one of two proprietary formats, .JNL or .MHTML. The .JNL format would have required the students to download and install the Microsoft Journal Viewer Software (available only for Windows), while the .MHTML format was only viewable on Microsoft Internet Explorer. Neither was a satisfactory option for such a large and diverse student population.

    The professor then hit on a novel solution: use PowerPoint, but start with blank slides. The stylus made it easy to "draw" on the blank PowerPoint slides, just as he'd always done with overheads, and PowerPoint made it possible to save the slides in a format (HTML) that was viewable by most students.

    DeBrock's current procedure is this:

1. Teach the first lecture of the day, creating each slide in real time.
2. Save the slides on the Tablet PC and return to his office.
3. Use the wireless network feature to move the slides onto his desktop PC for printing.
4. Print a copy of the slides on his color printer to use in the second lecture (he recreates the slides in real time for the second lecture, but having the first lecture as a reference helps maintain consistency).
5. Teach the second lecture.
   
6. In his office (or elsewhere), review the slides, add additional annotations as  needed, save the slides as HTML, and post them on the Web.

    DeBrock has identified the following major attractions of using the Tablet PC:

• Drawing in color in real-time.  Few new technology skills are needed when switching from overheads to the Tablet.
• Paging back and forth. It's easy to revisit earlier material (unlike a blackboard that may have been erased, or trying to find an earlier overhead slide in a dimly-lit room)
• Efficient posting of the lecture slides to the Web.

    He also identified some shortcomings:

• Unlike a mouse, the Tablet PC stylus doesn't leave an arrow on the screen when you're not holding it. This makes it difficult to point at specific material without actually drawing something. This can be done with a pen or finger on a traditional overhead, of course. 
• The stylus cursor sometimes bencomes unstable at the extreme edges of the screen. 
• The Tablet PC can be hard to read under some fluorescent lights.
• DeBrock found the handwriting recognition good for standard vocabulary words, but less useful for  technical terms from his discipline.
  

        While DeBrock has not traditionally made his overhead slides available to students, some instructors do. This usually involves taking the slides to a copy shop, which duplicates them  and sells them to the students. This is less than ideal for a number of reasons. First, it is expensive. Second, many instructors use color for emphasis, and this is lost in the duplication process. The author has seen beautifully-drawn color overheads reduced to illegibility by being printed in black and white (this is especially bad when the instructor uses overlay slides). Third, there is a necessary delay involved in the printing process. If the student is going  to get maximum benefit from the slides, it would seem that having them available while the lecture was still fresh in the student's mind would be the best policy. It would be interesting to see how an instructor who currently uses the copy shop route would make use of a Tablet.

    A colleague, Hee Jun Choi, has suggested that Tablet PCs might find applications in the fine arts or architecture. The accuracy of the Tablet PC's stylus, while not perfect, is much better than in previous stylus input computing devices. It might prove fruitful to see if the resolution is high enough to satisfy an artist.
   
    Another colleague, Doe-Hyung Kim, has suggested using the Tablet PC as a "pass-around" device for active learning. Its light weight and freedom from wired connections might make it useful for active learning activities.

    The Tablet PC could be used for remote data collection for later classroom presentation. This might be especially valuable for courses that are based on data from fieldwork.  Though Tablet PCs don't (yet) have digital cameras built-in, a small camera  could easily be connected to the Tablet through one of the USB or Firewire ports. This could produce a powerful data collection and annotation tool for disciplines such as architecture or the field-based biological sciences. Similarly, a USB microphone could be attached for collecting audio data. Recording directly to the Tablet's hard drive would eliminate a time-consuming data transfer step.
   
    Though the Tablet has wireless networking, and runs on batteries, it's still tethered to the video projector when one needs to give a presentation to a large group. Use of Virtual Network Computing software (VNC), a technology that allows remote display and control of computers over the network, could make the Tablet even more portable, allowing the instructor to roam the classroom (or even a remote location) at will, while still presenting the material to the students in  real time (this would require a good wireless network connection, but these are beginning to become widely available).

    Recent developments in ad hoc networking (such as the Zeroconf project, one implemention of which is Apple's Rendezvous) could make it possible to create Tablet-based formal or informal collaborative groups in a classroom or laboratory setting, in the field, or even between geographically separated individuals. By minimizing the effort needed to create a private network, Zeroconf/Rendezvous, in conjunction with Tablet PCs, could allow creation of work groups on the fly.