The End of Dry Erase Boards is Near


Gizmodo, a tech product website, previewed a product which revolutionizes research brainstorming sessions. In the past, concepts and ideas all ended up on a dry erase board-- new thoughts eventually erasing some of the old. Once you had the final concept, the process of discovery, some of those intermediate creative steps, were often lost.

Now Sharp's new LCD Blackboard takes this process several steps beyond those dry erase boards.

According to Gizmodo:

The PN-L601B, which will go on sale in Japan at the end of the month for $11,700, lets educators or businesspeople or whoever else write on top of scanned images with highly accurate handwriting recognition. All of the work done on the display, which can be erased at any time, is recorded on a PC via USB, so your classroom's painstaking diagramming and doodling will be preserved for posterity.

Here is a video that shows how this Blackboard works.

Blackboard image source: Gizmodo

Comments

RGCook's picture

This gadget certainly has the wow factor but I'm sticking with my whiteboard. I have one that spans the entire wall of my office. We often brainstorm and then take digital photos of the resultant masterpiece and email it around. Quite effective and cheap. I've tried the so-called mind-mapping software too but honestly, can anything beat the efficiency and versatility of a dry-erase and a wall. I mean, the puerile thrill in writing on the wall is worth the price of admission. Did I mention the pen fumes? oh, wait...

Keith's picture

We have had the use of a "Smart Board" in our office for at least 3 years. The technology allows the writing to be digitally stored on the computer. In addition, for webinars we can write on the screen and the remote attendees see the writing in real time. No need to mess around with digital cameras, and the files can be sent to others as an attachment.