Livescribe Pulse Pen – A preamble

This (irregular) series of blog posts will describe my experiences with the smartpen from Livescribe, which I have bought to try out in teaching a Physics undergraduate module in 2010/11. The target is a module on Statistical Physics which I am taking over next year; the module has a fairly high mathematical content. This first post gives some of the background.

In recent years I have tended to use very carefully prepared PDF presentations in lectures (typeset using LaTeX, of course, Powerpoint is pretty much useless IMHO) supported by printed handouts; the handouts have spaces on them for the student to fill in the more important material during the lecture, as the relevant content is revealed on the screen. Examples appear in one of my other modules, Mathematical Methods for Physicists II. (Edit: now that material from last year has been replaced by this year’s pencasts). This has several advantages: the student notes end up being accurate and comprehensive, the mathematical formulae are very clear, the students don’t need to write frantically during the lecture, but they do write down something so the entire exercise is not reduced to reading through a handout. The slides are available online afterwards for them to check, or in case they miss a lecture. This approach gets, on average, good student feedback. But it does have disadvantages: the approach is rather sterile and artificial, almost robotic; the students can see that it is pre-planned down to the last comma. A small minority of students really dislike this, especially for mathematical material.

It’s a perfectly arguable that students like seeing mathematical derivations worked through in front of them, live (to say nothing of worked examples), and it’s no coincidence that the new Mathematics building (the Zeeman building) is amply provided with blackboards. In years gone by, I was quite happy to deliver entire courses on the blackboard, but this limits the options for the student to go over the material afterwards. Now, in many lecture theatres at Warwick, we have “visualisers” installed, which allow the lecturer to write with pen and paper, projecting the results on the screen for the students to copy. The sheets of paper can then be scanned and provided online afterwards. An alternative might be to use a tablet computer in a similar way, although I have to admit that I have never taken to those. But neither of these options give the accompanying audio: what the lecturer was saying at the time. For that, one would need a full-blown podcast recorded in the lecture.

This year I came across the Livescribe smartpen, which seemed to be worth trying in a teaching context to tackle all these points. In a nutshell, it records the writing of a real pen on real paper, simultaneously with the audio. It is possible to replay the audio through the pen from any desired point, by tapping at the appropriate place in the notes: clearly one target group would be students sitting in a lecture, it is an aid to note taking. Also the manufacturers hope that people would use it to record minutes of a meeting along with what was actually said. But an additional feature is that these recordings can be transferred to a PC and uploaded as a “pencast”: a podcast containing just the essentials, namely what was written and what was spoken, without the distraction of seeing the lecturer walking aimlessly up and down at the front of the lecture theatre. Essentially this takes the form of a Flash animation, I believe, replaying both the writing and the audio, in real time, from any desired point. It can be converted to simple PDF without audio if desired. So, although the quality of the notes wouldn’t be as good as LaTeX/PDF, the option for students to revisit the material, or catch up on lectures that they had missed, would still be there. Of course, I would still prepare much neater material in handout form, and as presentation slides, as appropriate, concentrating on using the smartpen for mathematical derivations and the like.

I consulted with John Dale of ITS to see if this had been tried before at Warwick, or if he could see any drawbacks, and he seemed very positive. So I decided to go ahead, and the following entries will describe my experiences with this gadget as I practise with it over the summer, and then deliver in the autumn term of 2010. I can’t promise to update these entries very frequently, especially after this initial flurry, but I’ll try to let people know how things go; and of course, comments and questions are welcome.

Michael Allen : 04 Aug 2010 13:59 |  Tags: ITS Livescribe |  Comments (0) |  Trackbacks (1) |  Report a problem