Smart Boards Replacing Chalk Boards
While we lawyers have been slow to adopt smart boards, smart boards have been replacing chalk boards in the classroom:
Wired News reports on the rapid growth of interactive, computer-driven whiteboards in classrooms…smart boards are being used in more than 150,000 classrooms in the U.S, with even more being put to use in 75 other countries. The boards let teachers and students share assignments, surf the web and even edit video using their fingers as pens. And, by all indications, the market for the devices is booming, with more than a dozen manufacturers in the field, although one company, Smart Technologies, has a 60-percent market share.
It looks like we need to start catching up to the schools. I’ve had been using a projector and multi-media for 5 years, but don’t have a smart board yet. It looks like that just jumped up my tech priority.
As much as I like the wow factor of a smartboard, I have never seen an attorney use one effectively before a jury. It seems like there is always some awkwardness... blocking the projector, forgetting to put the pen down, sloppy writing, etc.
I guess if you have time to practice before using one in the courtroom its a great tool. The Sympodium by smart technologies is a good alternative as well.
One warning, most smartboards have compatibility issues with some trial presentation programs such as trialdirector and sanction. This is due to the "layers" the programs use to render annotations on top of images.
Wow, this blog is a great information resource! I am researching my local municipalities pertaining to litigation design aid for my company as I type. We are moving into the legal graphic/multimedia design market and I want to make sure it's a wise move. Would you be willing to provide statistics on roughly how many cases you use multimedia/digital design aid in the court room per month?
