Uber-blogger Will Richards notes that Johnny Chung Lee has devised a nifty hack to take an ordinary Wiimote and turn it into a Smart Board replication device, all for about a hundred bucks.
Although the links to Lee’s pages over at Carnegie Mellon were not working last I looked, the YouTube video where he shows how to do the trick is still up and working on Richards’ site. Some of Richards’ commenters discuss other ways to leverage inexpensive laser technology this way.
In the video, Lee connects the Wiimote to the computer that is being projected, then uses a laser pen to create an instant interactive white board. Besides walls, he demonstrates on a table and a common LCD screen.
Richards attests that educators watching the video get very excited about the possibilities for creating cheap interactive whiteboards on the fly. We’ve seen this appropriation of common videogame hardware for ulterior purposes before, mainly with the military using Xbox controllers to guide robots. These days, gaming hardware is off the shelf compatible with regular computers and software, using standards like USB, and can be repurposed for other things. It will be nice to see more educational uses in the future.
January 4, 2008 at 10:50 pm |
You may be interested in the Edusim project as well – http://edusim3d.com — It is an virtual world for the interactive whiteboard – this wii-whiteboard & Edusim would be a fantastic combination for the classroom !
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January 5, 2008 at 8:29 am |
[...] Richard Sandford: [...]
January 5, 2008 at 12:29 pm |
Deonna, thanks! That sounds very interesting.
JR
January 8, 2008 at 4:39 am |
[...] (Via Educational Games Research) [...]
March 11, 2008 at 2:27 pm |
[...] Wiimote is a cheap alternative to more expensive three dimensional input devices. Most famously, Johnny Chung Lee showed us how to create a cheap interactive whiteboard using the Wiimote. With this new study, Dale [...]
April 3, 2009 at 2:46 am |
[...] whiteboards are one of the next big things for classroom gaming. We’ve seen efforts at creating them on the cheap using simple laser pointers and the Wiimote. A commenter to that post pointed out a new classroom [...]
October 5, 2009 at 4:58 pm |
Ok I have never used it and was wondering what everyones thought was on it?
Do you always get what you pay for?
December 1, 2009 at 4:37 pm |
i would just like to have an smartboard.but they are to much money.but i need to teach my kids.what do i need to do?