[Year 12 IT Apps] RFC: Notebooks and IWBs

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

> From:Chris Betcher <chris at betcher.org> 
> To: Professional community for teachers
> Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:10:30 +1100 
> Subject: Re: [Oz-teachers] Notebooks and Projectors 
 
Hi Berkeley

Great question.  I don't agree that any modern laptop will do, in fact I 
think most modern laptops are a pain in the neck if your primary use for 
them is to drive an IWB... here's why... 

Early PCs ran a screen resolution of 640x480 (VGA), and then we moved to 
800x600 (SVGA), and then to 1024x768 (UVGA), then 1200x1024 (XGA), and so 
on as the specs on computer rose...  Many modern, late model laptops run 
much higher than that.  This is a problem, because many projectors will 
not run much higher than UVGA, so the higher resolution laptops have to 
downsample their output to run on the older (or cheaper) projectors.  You 
can buy high res projectors but they are typically quite expensive.  What 
you'll notice about all these screen resolutions though is that their size 
is 4 units wide by 3 units high, often referred to as a 4:3 format.  This 
works well because IWB screen are also 4:3 fomat.  So if you get a 4:3 
format computer, and a 4:3 format board, and a projector that matches the 
screen res of your computer's output, it all looks fantastic.

But here's the other big problem you'll face...  Most current laptops run 
a widecreen WS-XGA screen...  meaning they are not only a very high 
resolution, but they are also not a 4:3 format... they are a widescreen 
format that does not match the 4:3 format of the IWB.  Problem here, 
because either the projector will have to project a wide image (and many 
won't) and you'll lose a strip at the top and bottom of the board, or your 
screen will resize itself to a lower, more stretched mode and while the 
IWB image will look great, the computer screen looks crappy.  If you are 
like my school, where teachers are connected to the IWB all day, this 
makes working on the computer (for checking mail, typing documents, etc) a 
real pain.  The computer screen looks awful.

We just upgraded some laptops from ones that had a 1024x768, 4:3 ratio 
screen, to new tablet PCs with a widescreen, high res display, and most 
teachers will tell you that while it's nice to have a new computer, the 
new machines are not as good for using the IWBs as the old ones.

Also, developing teaching resources using ActivStudio on the widescreen 
models often means that it looks quite different when projected on the IWB.

Not sure what the answer is...  the newer computers are nice to work on 
when not connected to an IWB, but are not as good when you do.

just something to think about.

Chris

> On 19/03/2008, Berkeley Fitzhardinge <edgecb at gmail.com> wrote:

Hi everyone,

I have been asked to buy 6 notebooks for use with IWBs in a Kimberley 
Aboriginal school.

I remember a few years ago hearing that a school was having trouble 
getting a notebook to display via their Projector.  At that time I was 
buying a couple of notebooks for use with IWBs.

At the time advice was I should purchase a notebook with say an Invidia or 
AYI graphics adapter rather than say the Intel one.This meant purchasing a 
more expensive notebook - but there were no problems.

The school's budget is around $1400 per notebook for the 6 new ones.  The 
requested operating system is Windows XP.

What's your experience and advice?

Berkeley

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Chris Betcher
www.betchablog.com
Sydney Australia  

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Cheers people
Stephen Loosley
Victoria, Australia