The mini-whiteboard is here and it’s totally mobile. The InterWrite MeetingPad (RM’s version is called ClassPad) is a wireless digitising tablet that can be used with a projector connected to your PC or laptop in the same way as you’d use an interactive whiteboard - except that the projected image the students and teacher share is beamed to a much cheaper plain white board or even a white wall at the front of class. It effectively gives you whole-class interactivity from wherever you are in the room, working from the MeetingPad.

The teacher can introduce the lesson from the front and then work with the students anywhere in the classroom while showing the work on the big screen at the front. This makes it the most versatile ICT collaboration tool for schools to date. At pound;600, it’s relatively inexpensive and you can use up to seven in one classroom. So it raises the question: “Do you need that expensive interactive whiteboard fixed to your wall when this little device can give you the equivalent on any white surface?”

This pad is a little wider than A4 and will be familiar to anyone who has used a graphics tablet as they are virtually the same. The mouse pointer on the big screen jumps into life as soon as your pen touches the pad, taking up the exact analogous position. Place your pen on roughly the same point on the pad as the “Start” button in Windows and that is where the on-screen pointer will go.

The pen has one-tap operation (catering for both left and right handers), uses rechargeable batteries and has a resolution of 1,000 lines per inch. Install and register the software, plug in the radio transmitter, run the software and you’re in business. Unlike an interactive whiteboard, it never needs calibrating.

The pad comes with Lynx software (not from RM) which places an attractive virtual remote control on the projected image from which you can launch internet access, annotation tools, screen-capture modes and more. Any Windows application or document can be easily linked to one of nine vacant buttons for simple one-touch access. A slide-out library of essential education resources is also easily accessed from Lynx. At present, Promethean and Smartboard users enjoy additional features which are currently missing from Lynx. However, a range of Lynx tools is on its way.

At last I have discovered a whole-class interactive device which is both reliable and affordable and fits into my style of teaching.

Chris Drage

InterWrite Meeting Pad

Available from Accurate plc

Tel: 08700 750750

www.accurate.plc.ukeducation

Education price: pound;595 + VAT

(The ClassPad from RM costs pound;549, extra ones pound;499 each,10 per cent discount online www.rm.com

Tel: 08709 200200)