The Hindu Business Line : Blackboards to make way for whiteboards

Classroom learning is not going to be the same again. Blackboards, the traditional boards that dotted the classrooms all over the world, could soon make way for whiteboards – or the electronic boards that connect to PCs and Internet.

“The way students learn and write exams is going to change forever. Holding a mobile-phone sized device, students have started answering questions, while teachers gather the answers in real-time using a slightly bigger instrument and come out with results next moment,” Mr Peter Romero, the Vice-President (Eastern Europe and Central Asia) of Promethean Limited, said.

The London-based company displayed a few interactive whiteboards at a recent expo here. Interactive whiteboards generally have a rugged surface. They emanate no radiation. They allow teachers and students to import diagrams, images, films and videos on to the whiteboard from a variety of digital sources.

They are priced in the range of Rs 50,000 – Rs 1.5 lakh, depending on the technology, company and board size. The beauty of these boards is that one can save the entire interactive sessions automatically.

Global players

Considering the fact that there are 1.2 million schools in the country, the whiteboard manufacturers said that there was a huge opportunity in India.

The private sector, which has huge cash streams, is estimated to have 1.6 million class rooms. “Even if a quarter of these rooms have these boards that means a huge opportunity,” Mr Nadia Ho of the Taiwanese company Disk King Technology, pointed out.

Smart Technologies, a Canadian company that claims to have a 64 per cent market-share in whiteboard sales in the US, too set its eyes on the Indian market.

“Good teachers across the globe do not want pre-fixed content. We have developed 10,000 lesson activities in 10 languages. This electronic content would give the students a better understanding of things,” Mr Terry Wason, the Business Development manager (Strategy and Alliances) of Smart, said.

Smart developed an Adobe-like technology called Smart Notebook Reader to let students and teachers access the content.

Related Stories:
RCom launches educational portal