{"id":1917,"date":"2017-05-18T10:27:07","date_gmt":"2017-05-18T10:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/learning-technology\/?p=1917"},"modified":"2022-04-13T15:46:54","modified_gmt":"2022-04-13T15:46:54","slug":"smartmarkers-panopto-and-whiteboard-capture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/smartmarkers-panopto-and-whiteboard-capture\/","title":{"rendered":"Smartmarkers, Panopto and Whiteboard Capture"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Karl Luke<\/p>\n<p>The whiteboard is commonplace within numerous learning spaces across Cardiff University and many academics use whiteboards for instruction. This presents a significant challenge for the Learn Plus service; how can whiteboard interactions be captured with sufficient quality?<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">This is a bit of a \u201cHoly Grail\u201d for event capture and a question many institutions continue to grapple with. Outside of Cardiff University some institutions are currently investigating innovative camera solutions, such as the <a href=\"http:\/\/getpanacast.com\/\"><span class=\"s2\">Panacast<\/span><\/a> to capture whiteboard content.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Introducing the e-Beam SmartMarker<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"1918\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/smartmarkers-panopto-and-whiteboard-capture\/smarker\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/286\/2017\/05\/smarker.png\" data-orig-size=\"407,538\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"smarker\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/286\/2017\/05\/smarker.png\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1918 alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/learning-technology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/286\/2017\/05\/smarker-227x300.png\" alt=\"Smart Marker \" width=\"227\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/286\/2017\/05\/smarker-227x300.png 227w, https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/286\/2017\/05\/smarker.png 407w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 227px) 100vw, 227px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In collaboration with the <a href=\"https:\/\/intranet.cardiff.ac.uk\/staff\/the-way-forward\/sub-strategies\/education\/learning-environment\/physical-learning-spaces-project\">Physical Learning Spaces project team<\/a>, we have been conducting a small pilot of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.e-beam.com\/smartmarker\">e-beam SmartMarker<\/a>. This technology adds digital-capture capabilities to nearly any whiteboard. Pen interactions are captured via a special portable sensor which attaches to any whiteboard surface, up to 16ft x 5ft (5m x 1.5m). The SmartMarker consists of two components: a sensor that attaches to a surface and a cover that houses a standard dry-erase marker. Together, they allow you to scribble the way you normally would, but the sensor captures every interaction and can even recognise different colours.<\/p>\n<p>We have been trailing the SmartMarker with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cardiff.ac.uk\/people\/view\/38547-morley-christopher\">Professor Christopher Morley<\/a> (Director of Undergraduate Studies, CHEMY) and an example of how this technology has been captured with Panopto can be seen in the video below:<\/p>\n\n<!-- iframe plugin v.6.0 wordpress.org\/plugins\/iframe\/ -->\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/cardiff.cloud.panopto.eu\/Panopto\/Pages\/Embed.aspx?id=6876b36f-c82c-40d0-80d5-e7267572f346&#038;v=1\" width=\"720\" height=\"405\" style=\"padding: 0px; border: 1px solid #464646;\" frameborder=\"0\" 0=\"allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;\/iframe\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\"><\/iframe>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cardiff.cloud.panopto.eu\/Panopto\/Pages\/Viewer.aspx?id=6876b36f-c82c-40d0-80d5-e7267572f346\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Direct link.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>The academic perspective <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Early results from this small-scale trial are promising and Chris is particularly complimentary of the technology:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><em>\u201cI\u00a0plan to use them in all my modules in 2017\/18, and would definitely recommend them.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><em>\u00a0<\/em><em>The system was very easy to set up, once the software had been installed on the lectern PC.\u00a0 The &#8220;hub&#8221; is magnetically attached to the whiteboard via a small metal plate which is stuck there permanently.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve had no complaints that this plate&#8217;s presence interferes with the normal use of the board.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><em>\u00a0<\/em><em>The students loved the use of the SmartMarker.\u00a0 We have some comments from the evaluation of this module, and it was also mentioned in the Student-Staff Panel.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u00a0<\/em>However, there are some minor technical issues to resolve, such as how to get the best experience with the dedicated eraser:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><em>&#8220;It took me a while to get out of the habit of trying to correct mistakes by rubbing them out\u00a0with my fingers.\u00a0 The erasers on the ends of the pens worked fine for small corrections, but the larger bluetooth eraser sometimes didn&#8217;t work very well, and the reasons for this intermittent behaviour are still not clear to me.\u00a0\u00a0I realised after a couple of lectures that it is actually better not to use the bluetooth eraser to clean the board.\u00a0 You can use the software to store each drawing separately, and once it&#8217;s been saved, of course the board can be cleaned using the normal eraser.\u00a0 This also has the advantage that you can return to a previous drawing if required, which was particularly useful for reminding students of a previous lecture at the start of the next.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Increased accessibility<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As well as providing great quality whiteboard capture, the technology has the potential to improve the accessibility of whiteboard instruction to a live audience. Using this technology, real-time pen strokes can be projected or displayed on screens within a learning space, increasing the visibility of the instruction.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Next steps<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>At the moment we are in a very early process of evaluating and assessing this technology, along with other whiteboard capture solutions, therefore a rollout of an enterprise solution is not on the immediate horizon. However, if you have a specific requirement to trial this technology please get in touch with University IT via the requirements request form: <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/requirements-request\/\">https:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/requirements-request\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by Karl Luke The whiteboard is commonplace within numerous learning spaces across Cardiff University and many academics use whiteboards for instruction. This presents a significant challenge for the Learn Plus [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":386,"featured_media":1924,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[371],"tags":[55,206,201,118,281,282],"custom_author":[],"class_list":["post-1917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digital-education","tag-accessibility-2","tag-event-capture","tag-lecture-capture","tag-panopto","tag-smartmarker","tag-whiteboard-capture"],"lang":"en","translations":{"en":1917},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4KqgK-uV","meta_box":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/286\/2017\/05\/smarker.jpg","pll_sync_post":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/386"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1917"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2626,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1917\/revisions\/2626"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1917"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=1917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}