WriteOn – A Tool for Effective Classroom Presentations

This thesis provides an introduction to an advance in technology-aided instruction. Most of the research in this area has focused on PowerPoint ® based applications or white board-centered electronic ink applications with the capability of broadcasting slides, ink annotations and so forth, used for presentation or classroom lectures. But these tools lack the capability of annotating on any kind of applications with active content playing (a movie or a simulation, for instance) in the background. Additional useful, but currently unavailable functionality would include the capability of broadcasting the presentation information, which can further consist of lecture slides, ink annotations, video of the desktop screen activity, or any other application program that might be used to demonstrate a concept or illuminate an idea. Therefore, the current research attempts to provide these facilities with a new tool, WriteOn. WriteOn improves both the presentation of information and the interactivity in classroom instruction, because it gives the instructor the ability to ink annotate on any application by using a virtual transparency surface, called electronic vellum or simply eVellum, which in effec