Friday, November 25, 2011

Sharp 70" Interactive Touchscreen Winnipeg Demo Days

Grant's Perspective on ... The Sharp 70" interactive touchscreen demonstrations in Winnipeg.

Staff from Sharp Electronics of Canada were in our Winnipeg office for a couple of days this week demonstrating the PNL702B 70" interactive touchscreen monitor.  It would take quite awhile to go through all the features so I will touch on a few points today.

Computer and Monitor Control - The included infrared "pen" works like a PC mouse with right and left click buttons and as an annotation pen. You can also use your fingers instead of the pen. You can drag and tap your finger on the screen to open folders and documents, move them around the screen and even use two fingers to size documents. I feel like I'm in an episode of CSI when using the 70" touchscreen!

You can open up a keyboard graphic and type into any program that you have on your computer.

 In the photo below, Nick Hoxha, Sharp Digital Presentation and Signage Group has opened an excel spread sheet and updated some of the fields numbers. He has then highlighted his changes in two ways: yellow highlighter and circled in red.


The next photo has Nick playing arm-chair quarterback as he analyzes and annotates a football video posted on YouTube.



 BTW - You can see a copier in the foreground of the photos. Nick also demonstrated how the monitor can both send and receive information from the Sharp copier. 

I'm sure to be posting more on this product in the coming weeks.

Grant

Friday, November 18, 2011

Speak Directly Into the Microphone

Grant's Perspective on ... Holiday Concerts and microphone use.

A quick note to anyone who is working on a school or church concert. Have your singers and actors speak directly into the microphone.

Most common microphones are designed to pick-up sound that is directly in front of them. They do not pick up from the sides, behind or too far in front. There are microphones that are designed with a larger pick up pattern but most microphones have a cardioid pattern and do not pick up anything outside of the cardioid pattern.

classic Shure cardioid microphone

Have your talent move to the microphone for their speaking parts. It is better that they move to the microphone rather than have them stand around the stage and hope that the microphone picks up their voice.

Grant

Thursday, November 10, 2011

StarBoard Link Buy 4 Get 5

Grant's Perspective on ... Hitachi StarBoard Link Sale.

Hitachi is offering a "buy 4 get 5" deal on their StarBoard Link product. The StarBoard Link makes a dry erase whiteboard and regular projector and interactive surface. See the details below.



Grant

Friday, November 4, 2011

New Lumens DC190 Document Camera Records Video and Audio

Grant's Perspective on ... the new DC190 Ladibug document camera.

I really like the look of the new DC190 document camera. The feature that I think is outstanding is the built-in microphone. It can record audio and video. This is a feature that the teachers and students will both appreciate as they can create their own basic video content in the classroom.

The YouTube video below shows a demonstration of the audio and recording capabilities in science and story reading exercises.




Lumens was demonstreating this document camera at InfoComm this last June and they had acutal teachers doing the demonstrations instead of their own sales staff making the presentations. I thought this was a good idea.

Grant