Nowadays, teachers prefer that students can learn by listening, thinking, interacting, rather than taking notes in the classroom. What is the most efficient way to digitize chalkboard writing, and share to different platforms? This is an urgent issue to be addressed for the smart classroom.
Optical Touch Bar is a technological innovation for educational purposes. It’s designed to address shortcomings of the existing interactive technology.
The Optical Touch Bar (OTB) has several advantages compared to Infrared touch frame (IRTF) blackboard.
1.By design, IRTF require frequent cleaning by the user. Chalk dust becomes easily trapped in the edges of the frame which prevents the infrared sensors from functioning normally. Unlike the IRTF, OTB requires minimal maintenance, and is designed to be insusceptible to chalk dust.
2.The OTB’s waterproof design allows easy cleaning without risk of damage from liquid cleaning agents, whereas the IRTF’s design with bottom mounted infrared sensors does not.
3.OTB’s dual high resolution cameras allow real time capturing of handwriting at extremely high precision, replicating chirography and irregular shapes and objects down to the smallest detail. On the other hand, the IRTF’s grid based infrared sensors suffer from low precision, especially when dealing with small texts such as superscripts in an equation.
4.OTB is also able to distinguish between pointing motions from a finger, versus handwriting using chalk, the latter which it will immediately begin to capture in real time. However, IRTF is unable to differentiate between any opaque objects, and will attempt to capture all as chalk writing.
5.Due to the inherent design of the IRTF’s infrared sensor’s 2-3mm minimum touch height, it’s unable to easily recognize breaks between letters and words, which results in erroneously capturing separate strokes as one continuous stroke. OTB’s optical camera system doesn’t suffer from touch height issues when tracking chalk movement.
6.OTB’s bar shaped design allows easy installation on top of the chalkboard. The design also allows easy removal for maintenance. IRTF’s design results in a much more complex installation process. Due to the lack of modularity, damage to any part of the frame will require the replacement of the entire frame.
7.Double tapping the surface of board to open software for using
