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Interactive board for Chromebooks

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.

Here is a quick video I made of Ziteboard: