Development of educational software for whiteboard environment in a classroom

We describe a whiteboard-based environment that extends the functionality of the blackboard in a traditional classroom without losing any of its natural advantages, namely, ease of expression for the teacher, focusing of students' attention and visual feedback of students' facial expressions. The computer-based whiteboard environment offers additional features such as direct pointing and manipulation of contents by an electronic marker, and processing of contents by computer. We articulate design principles for developing educational software for this environment. Two examples of such software developed in our laboratory, are presented. We also describe experimental use of the system in actual classrooms at two elementary schools. In the experiments, the teachers and the students both responded positively, to this new environment. We also verified that many of the design goals were met in the implementation.