Digital (Activboard) Vs Analogue (Touchboard)

Overview:
 
While most Interactive Whiteboards do share some basic features and generic benefits – the detailed design and underlying technology impact greatly on both effectiveness in educational contexts and the longer term return on investment (ROI) you should be able to expect from your purchase. 
 
As well as carefully evaluating the software features, professional development and implementation experience differences between manufacturers, a critical choice that you may be required to make when choosing an interactive whiteboard, is choosing between a touch or finger based system (analogue resistive) and a Pen or Stylus based system (digital electromagnetic). 
 
Promethean’s interactive whiteboard is called ‘Activboard’ and it is the world’s market leading digital-electromagnetic Whiteboard. The Activboard is operated by a battery free stylus called an Activpen. Makes of touch or finger based systems include, Interactive Technologies Ltd, Polyvision, Sahara, Presentation Systems, SMART technologies & Teamboard. Interactive Whiteboard products fromthere manufacturers are either operated by the touch of a finger or in some cases ‘token pens’. 
 
Some manufacturers also create touch based overlays or retro fit kits for plasma and LCD displays as another option intended to offer an Interactive Whiteboard solution. These products generally have the same features and limitations as touch boards. Manufacturers of such systems include, Teamboard and U-Touch. 
 
How do the two systems compare technically?  
 
1. Finger based system - Analogue-resistive: Older Technology: 
Analogue-resistive (or Touch screen) technology dates back a long time - well before the advent of sophisticated modern computer and multimedia interfaces. Various touch technologies exist but the one most likely to be encountered in an interactive whiteboard context is Analogue-resistive. An analogue-resistive touch screen is usually made of two layers. A stiff rear layer and a flexible membrane stretched in front of it. Both layers have electrically conductive elements that are separated by a small gap. 
 
When a finger (or a token pen) is pressed on the surface the membrane deforms and electrical contact is made between it and the rear layer. The resistance change in the short circuited layers allows the electronics in the board to establish the X and Y location of the touch point and transmit it to the computer. 
 
Because of the simple switch-like nature of the technology it means it is impossible for this type of board to ‘know’ if a finger or other physical object is near the board and it is therefore only capable of a basic ‘on-off’ click action. This technology cannot discriminate between an intended touch (e.g. pressing a finger on an icon) and an incidental touch (e.g. clothing swinging and touching the board).Furthermore, accidentally touching two or more points at the same on many touch boards will often make them malfunction, causing problems when writing while resting the wrist on the surface or if a child touches or points something out on the board while using writing or manipulating something. 
 
A touch board cannot naturally replicate the normal ‘hover’ feature of a mouse where the pointer follows your hand movements or reveals pop-ups as you move your mouse pointer over icons or menus before clicking them. A user is often obliged to ‘drag’ the pointer around – a mechanism that is both unnatural and not usually accommodated in software engineering. While some touchboard systems offer a switch between hover and click modes, a user is obliged to ‘know’ when this is required and additionally ‘manage’ this feature. ‘Knowing’ that these additional steps are necessary invariably involves the user having to deal with a functionality failure they encounter in use – something that teachers or presenters like to avoid when in the middle of a lesson or presentation! 
 
Right click functions are also unsupported on an analogue-resistive touch board since the sensing technology cannot differentiate between the equivalents of a right or left mouse button click.Users must therefore adopt non-standard right click methods that usually involve physical button sequences or pressing on the screen for periods of time – in all cases the user is faced with additional, unfamiliar actions that are displaced in both time and space - breaking any natural teaching or presentation flow.  
 
The functionality of a touchboard:
 
  
2. Activboard - Digital-Electromagnetic: Latest Technology:  
 
Promethean Activboards use the well understood effects of electromagnetic resonance to function. This is the same, intuitive and reliable technical approach as employed in the ‘graphics tablets’ used by countless computer professionals every day as well as in the interactive screen displays on high performance Tablet PCs. A fine antenna grid is safely embedded beneath the virtually indestructible, melamine writing surface of the Activboard. The grid creates a very, very small and localized electromagnetic field that induces resonance in the Activpen coil and capacitor circuitry as the pen is brought into proximity of the board surface. A second grid acts as a receiver and can instantly detect the Activpen presence, X, Y position and any press & right click button states by monitoring changes in the resonant response from the pen. The nature of the system is such that it can perform and indeed exceed all the functions of a modern computer mouse - hover, left and right click, pixel accuracy, etc. as well as critically enabling a range of future Promethean innovations through simple updates, such as responding to pressure or detecting simultaneous, identifiable inputs from multiple pens. The use of two antennae grids, one for powering the stylus and one for receiving information from the pen, means that the Promethean system is extremely fast and responsive in comparison with other electromagnetic boards that use a single antennae grid to both transmit and receive pen power and information. This factor is very significant when the system must support the use of multiple pens or pressure on the same surface and the additional pen data that they generate. 
 
The Promethean system is designed not just to perform perfectly with the full range of modern software and multimedia used by teachers today - it is also designed to expand and enable the additional benefits of the multi-user and collaborative interactions of tomorrow’s Promethean Activclassroom.  
 
The functionality of a Promethean Activboard:  
 
 
 
The Promethean customer experience:  
 
Promethean’s mission is to makes the best technology for supporting teaching and learning. We listen very closely to our customers and always strive to create rich, involving and above all easy to use products that make a real difference in the lives of learners and their teachers. 
 
Promethean users find the Activboard and Activpen technology ‘transparent’. A pen or stylus has been society’s tool for making marks and communicating ideas through pictures and writing since the beginnings of recorded history. When you learn to write on paper with a pen you do not expect or ever need to learn to avoid touching the paper at the same time – why then should you need to learn to do this when writing on your interactive whiteboard?The elegant design of the Activboard means that users do not need to think about not touching the board at other points at the same time, remembering to put pens into trays or holders between clicking and drawing actions or to remember to use non-standard methods of activate right click actions. It simply behaves as expected. 
 
It is this elegant simplicity and functional robustness in use that helps makes Promethean users confident and proactive in involving their student in truly interactive and collaborative activity at the board. They can be confident that students working together will not cause technical problems and most importantly it is from that level of confidence and reliability that true transformation of teaching practices can evolve. 
   
 
Promethean Activboards do not require any special techniques to use. Unlike touchboards, resting or leaning on the Activboard surface whilst working does not cause malfunction!
 
Feature checklist:
 
 
Practical tests to carry out in an evaluation: