Syllabus June 2004www.sy l labus.com 31

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Beyond PowerPoint:Building a New Classroom Presenter

“… in the winter of 1813 & ’14 ,

during my first College vacations,

I attended a mathematical school

kept in Boston by the Rev. Francis

Xavier Brosius . . . On entering his

room, we were struck at the

appearance of an ample Black

Board suspended on the wall,

with lumps of chalk on a

ledge below, and cloths

hanging at either side.

I had never heard of such

a thing before. There it was—

forty-two years ago—that I first

saw what now I trust is consid-

ered indispensable in every

school—the Black Board—

and there that I first witnessed

the process of analytical and

inductive teaching.” [May 1855]

By Richard Anderson

Presentation technology has long had an influence

on how we teach. In the wonderful quote above,

the abolitionist Samuel J. May described his

introduction to the blackboard and its impact on

teaching. The quote illustrates a couple of key

points: That technology has an important role in

supporting classroom instruction, and that technologies

perceived as beneficial to instruction will become widely

adopted. The blackboard is a very powerful tool for

instruction—it allows information to be displayed in a

persistent manner, and can give the audience a consistent

view of far more information than can be held in short-

term memory. The blackboard becomes a mediating arti-

fact that maintains a shared view between the instructor

and students to provide context for lecture and discussion.

Stepping forward almost two centuries from Samuel May’s

visit to Boston, projected electronic slides are becoming an

important presentation tool in the classroom. There are some

significant advantages to using electronic slides. Slides allow

advanced preparation of material, improving organization of

the presentation and giving a means of showing information-

rich content such as complex tables, formulas, programs, and

diagrams. Slides afford instantaneous display, avoiding the

inaccuracy and the time of copying material onto an overhead

projector or whiteboard. Electronicslides offer the further advantage of nothaving to print slides. Additional advan-tages of online materials include ease ofpreparation, sharing, and modification.

However, these advantages come at acost in the classroom. Both studentsand instructors complain about theimpact of using slides in lecture. Onecolleague expressed this directly as,“PowerPoint sucks the life out of aclass.” The basic issue is that electronicslides tend to script a lecture and donot provide mechanisms to adapt thepresentation to the audience. Animportant part of lecturing is adjustingmaterial in response to audience reac-tions and developing spontaneousexamples and explanations to clarify

and expand on topics. The weakness ofelectronic projection of slides is theabsence of a means to alter or augmentthe displayed material to do this.

Breathing Life into Classroom PresentationsAt the University of Washington, wedeveloped Classroom Presenter specifi-cally to address this problem, and toprovide flexibility while using slides.The idea behind Classroom Presenter,is simple: support writing on top ofslides by using the Tablet PC as theinstructor device.

When lecturing using ClassroomPresenter the instructor writes on top ofimages of the slides. These images caneither be projected directly from the

Tablet PC, or can be shown from asecond machine that is networked tothe first. An advantage of the latterconfiguration is that the instructor canbe untethered from the projector, andlecture while holding the Tablet PC.The networked version also lends itselfto use in distance courses. The singlemachine version has the advantage ofbeing easier to set up. Figure 1 showsthe instructor view, and Figure 2 showsthe view displayed on the dataprojector. (Our system is not unique incombining slides and digital ink usingthe Tablet PC; an increasing number ofother systems combine slides anddigital ink using the Tablet PC,including academic systems such asDyKnow, and commercial applicationssuch as PowerPoint and Journal.)

A key part of our system is the use ofthe Tablet PC as the instructor device.Tablet PCs enable integration of ink withslides, allowing annotation with naturalhandwriting. The high-quality ink of theTablet PC completely changes the writingexperience from earlier pen computersbased on different technologies.

In developing the application, wepaid attention to the display of ink onall devices, so that remote displays’ inkflows in sync with the instructor’s,communicating the direction andspeed of writing. A substantial amountof effort went into designing thesystem as a tablet application. Thismeant using controls optimized forpen manipulation in a mobile environ-ment. We also designed the systemwith navigation facilities such as thefilm strip and direct navigation to awhiteboard.

Classroom Presenter has been usedin a wide range of Computer Sciencecourses at UW and other universities.Courses have included introductoryprogramming, data structures, softwareengineering, and computer architec-ture. Both instructors and studentshave been very positive about thesystem. Typical instructor commentsinclude: “It didn’t take any adaptation.I just talked/discussed and when Ineeded an example, I wrote. As easy as

Syllabus June 2004 www.sy l labus.com32

BEYOND POWERPOINT

Presentation Views

Figure 1. Instructor view with navigation and pen controls. The slide size has been reduced to provide the instructor with extra annotation area.

Figure 2. Projector view showing only the slide. The Projector view is synchronized with Figure 1’s instructor view.

Syllabus June 2004www.sy l labus.com 33

using the board,” and “Being able todiagram and spontaneously workexamples instead of having to use apre-scripted PowerPoint slide deck—felt like teaching a real class.”

Connecting with Student DevicesAs one would expect, instructors havemade varied use of the system. Someinstructors have made extensive use ofink on slides, while others have retaineda slide-based style with only occasionalmarking. In presentation, ink is usedboth to convey information directlywith text and diagrams, and to linkspeech to slides through attentionalmarkings. Figures 3 and 4 show exam-ples of usage from actual classes. Inboth of these examples the meaning of

the writing was dependent on thespoken context and is not conveyed inthe static image. Digital ink has allowedinstructors to conduct many activitiesnot supported by electronic slidesalone, such as a “collective brain-storming,” where answers that studentsspeak out are written down and“process simulation,” where ink is usedon top of a diagram to show a dynamicprocess. It has been observed that ink isoften used when responding to studentquestions. This supports the view thatthe value of ink is in supporting spon-taneous acts by the instructor. Oneinteresting pattern of use of ink that hasbeen observed across instructors isfrequent underlining and circling whentalking about mathematical formulae orprogram code, as in Figure 3. This is

done to give a persistent tie betweenspeech and slide content. Anotherimportant use of ink is to repurposeslide content, such as changing anexample on a slide to make it cover adifferent situation.

Classroom Presenter is just the firststep in using electronic materials in theclassroom. The current work on Class-room Presenter is to expand its interac-tion with student devices. One naturaldirection is note-taking, where the inkand slides are broadcast to note-takingapplications such as Brown University’sRemarkable Texts, Microsoft’s OneNote,or the Classroom Presenter so that thestudent can take notes on top of theinstructor’s ink and slides. Anotherdirection is to provide mechanisms forthe instructor to direct student activi-ties. One example that ClassroomPresenter supports is student contribu-tion of slides. In this case, students writeon slides on personal devices and sendthem back to the instructor. Theinstructor then chooses student submis-sions to display for class discussion. Thisactivity has a number of benefits. First,it engages the students by giving theman activity to perform in class, instead ofjust listening to the instructor. Second, itsupports “going to the whiteboard” sothat everyone can contribute. Finally, itallows the instructor the opportunity toscreen submissions before displayingthem to choose ones that illustratedifferent approaches.

Richard Anderson (anderson@cs. wash-ington.edu) is a professor in the Depart-ment of Computer Science and Engineeringat the University of Washington.

[Editor’s note: The development ofClassroom Presenter began when theauthor was on sabbatical at MicrosoftResearch working with the ConferenceXPProject (www.conferencexp.net). Thework is now being conducted at Univer-sity of Washington, with collaborators atUniversity of Virginia and University ofSan Diego. The software is available fornon-commercial use from www.cs.wash-ington.edu/education/dl/presenter/.]

BEYOND POWERPOINT

Presentation Views

Figure 3. Example of writing from classroom use showing how an instructor works with formulasduring presentation.

Figure 4. Example showing multiple diagrams on slides used in explanation of the formula.