I won't rave on about this for too long as I accept that that SMART, Promethean and a few other players totally dominate the IWB market at the moment and are the products to have in your classroom. However last week 2 new products hit the market adopting technology that I have banging on about for a while now that could potentially remove the need for expensive interactive boards in classrooms.

Epson's Brightlink (Looks to be the more refined of the 2) and the Boxlight Projectowrite are 2 products that completely remove the need for a board. Obviously they need a surface to be projected upon but both work fine on a wall or best of all on a traditional white board at a fraction of the expense.

This cuts out the 2 biggest costs of an IWB being the Board itself and the installation expense. Both systems utilise infra red technology that was uncovered by the invention of the Wiimote. Essentially you require an infra red pen or pointer and the receptor is built in to the projector. Both units are multi touch which instantly puts them miles ahead of their competitors at less than half the price at under $2000 for both units.

Be warned however there is little to no software to support these units and they basically interact with your OS as a mouse and pen. I am a SMART board user and clearly the best thing about them is their interface and software to support learning.

Surely there are software companies in the wings creating multi platform IWB software that will turn this technology from a glorified mouse into a powerful teaching tool. Microsoft, Apple & Adobe are you onto this???

Anyhow here is more information on this topic and I have included a couple of videos below that highlight the POTENTIAL of these projectors. Remembering that POTENTIAL is a very big word.

Boxlight ProjectoWRITE Video - Gotta say it looks a little clunky thus far