Papershow Coming Real Soon!

First, I would like to thank Molly from Bell Pottinger USA for sending me a sample Papershow Kit. For some reason I have been attracted to digital pen technology for the past 6 years or so and have tried a lot of the solutions that are now available that take advantage of Anoto functionality. Just last week I was fortunate enough to be able to try Papershow which is a new digital pen solution from Canson a European paper company who will release this solution the end of the week. In the kit I received a digital pen, a Bluetooth USB key, and two pads of interactive paper. The current solution only runs on Windows at this time and when you plug in the Bluetooth USB key the setup software launches and downloads the latest version of the Papershow software application to the Bluetooth USB key which also serves as Flash drive. Once the installation was complete I was took the cap of the digital pen off and it paired with the Bluetooth receiver. Now I was ready to go. I took out a piece of the A4 interactive paper and started to write on it and instantaneously whatever I write came up on the computer screen. I have recently done several demonstrations in my graduate cl assess of this technology and all of my students whom are teachers themselves said they wanted one. On the right side panel of the A4 interactive paper you have controls to change the width of the pen stroke, change the colors and draw basic lines, arrows, circles and squares. You can also fill the circles and squares with a color and highlight text with the highlighting tool. You can even erase your writing and objects on the computer with the eraser tool. To add another page simply click on the add page icon and you are presented with a clean slate. Having the Papershow pen and interactive paper gives you the freedom to walk around the class with a very light weight interactive tool. I was able to move throughout my classroom without a hitch. The digital pen and Bluetooth USB key worked flawlessly-recording all of my pen strokes. My graduate students were very excited with what they saw and all wished they could have one in their class to engage their students and I had with mine.

I passed the interactive paper and pen to each of my students so that they could have a try at using some of the features. They all found the interface very easy to use and within seconds they were able to use all of the features. For one of their class projects they need to create a video tutorial of them teaching a user how to use a piece of software. I demonstrated how they might use Jing and Papershow to model how to a specific type of math problem which they could then post to a web site. Using Papershow the students were able to create a screencast demonstrating how to do a simple multiplication process. With the Papershow application on the screen we started up Jing and my student recorded the process of a simple multiplication problem. Working with digital pen makes doing this type of task very easy to do. You will see in the screencast just how easy it was for my student to create the screencast.


While I found and education use for this program I could see this tool being very effectively used in a business meeting to capture ideas and share them immediately after the meeting. The Papershow software allows one to save the session as well as Export to a PDF, which makes it very easy to share the session after the meeting has adjourned. I have not had a chance to try it just yet, but in the Papershow Kit you will find 8 1/2 x 11 interactive paper to print your PowerPoint slides on which can then be marked up and annotated with the digital pen. There are lots of creative ways to use this technology and I for one, will begin to explore more of these avenues in the future. As I shared with Molly, I think that there is a real place for this type of technology in K-12 and higher education. I especially think that integrating this technology into distance learning classes could be a real winning solution. So if you have the chance take a look at Papershow Kit which will be sold at Staples.com. The Showpaper Kit will be sold for $198.00 dollars and will give you everything you need to get started. Paper Pricing is as follows

o $19.98 for 200 sheets of printer paper

o $19.98 for large, conference-room sized brainstorming pad (size A3)

o $12.98 for small brainstorming pad (size A4)

Check it out you will be glad you did- Brian