Our school like many have some aging SMART boards that need to be replaced soon. We are also a 1:1 Chromebook school so I wanted to find something that was compatible with them. I found 2 setups that I really like, the Epson BrightLink Interactive projectors, and the Infocus jTouch boards. Both Interacitve devices worked instantly when connected to a Chromebook.
I only got to use the Epson for a short time, but it was certainly a great tool. Being a projector it was able to cover a very large surface area. It uses a standard whiteboard, and the newer versions can be used without any special pens.
The Infocus jTouch board is a different approach. It is basically a 65" touchscreen. It is very reliable, and being a TV the images are very crisp and clear. However it is only 65" which is quite small for many classrooms. I also looked at the SMART TV, and the Promethean versions. The SMART TV did not work with a Chromebooks and cost over $4000, while the Promethean was a very nice alternative, and one I certainly would consider, however it's cost was in the $3000-$4000 range. The jTouch starts just under $2000 which makes it very appealing interactive board. To Promethean's defense they are a 70" 4K TV where the jTouch is only a 65" 1080p screen, so the extra cost is justified.
Here is a video I made of me using he jTouch board with a chromebook:
When moving away from SMART, it also meant moving away form SMART Notebook. This actually has proven to be the harder task. While I can get the SMART Notebook separately now, and they will work with both interactive setups above, it doesn't work with a Chromebook. So in my research I have come up with 2 tools that I thought were very well built and were necessarily to show teachers when introducing them to the new interactive hardware.
The first one is Web Paint. This is a chrome extension that will allow the user to annotate over any webpage. It works with touch and is quite intuitive.
The next one took me a little longer to find, and that was an actual whiteboard. There are a lot of them out there, but none that really stood out. https://app.ziteboard.com/ was the first one that I felt was clean, collaborative and ready to use out of the box.
