As a professor lectures, students spend too much time copying what he writes on the blackboard, and not enough time focusing on what he is saying. Such was the concern that inspired a new invention by Dave Berque, associate professor of computer science at DePauw University, in Greencastle, Indiana, and his undergraduate students. Berque's team developed software that automatically transfers his writing to networked PCs at student desks. As Berque writes on it with a metallic stylus, a laser tracks his movements and the software projects the data.
Students can similarly annotate the resulting image on their computers.
At the end of class, students can save the session on disk. In addition to recording handwriting images, the system can display typed material and simple animations. Berque has copyrighted the software, which includes a server version installed on the whiteboard and a client version installed on each PC in the local area network. All rights reserved.