I felt very honoured to be able to play around with this nice piece of pre-release technology which is due for release in December and will be priced around the HK$3000 mark. I took a few photos of it in the office so that you might get some idea of how big an image it might cast. I have shared these as a Picasa Web Album.

The guys wanted my thoughts on educational applications of these. I had to tell them that after my lack of success in trying to promote the Creative Vado Hand-Held Video Camera beyond the creative educators in Hong Kong schools like Clive Dawes of Kellett School and Dan Everest of Yew Chung Primary, I think that I am not going to get much response in fairly traditional old Hong Kong to how schools might use these to improve student outcomes.

Am I being too negative?

Go on! Prove me wrong.

Now that I am spending a lot more time in cross curricular classrooms, I can think of very few other tools that deliver the bang for the buck of such a powerful device. These things are very cheap or at least they are here, around US$500-$700 for a good quality one, and yet allow you to put anything that you like on the screen to show the room.

This recent post from Ewan McIntosh where he asks people to send in their usage ideas for the classroom has proved to be a great source of ideas for classroom application.

In my opinion, the very best post is from Jaye Richards who makes the following comment in part of her list:

Having examples of student written work in jotters being shown and then edited/marked LIVE is one regular thing we did. The students (who agreed to let their efforts go forward) loved it as they got feedback there and then, not only from the teacher but also the rest of the class. Thus the feedback is relevant, accurate and timely. And collaborative!

I couldn’t agree more! I used to make up fictitious examination papers with wrong answers, copy and distribute them all and we would discuss as a group. How much time would I have saved with the visualizer!

Ewan also references the Visualiser Forum, and Dave Smith these are both good references for the use of a visualizer in a classroom.

Enjoy!

Paul