Controlling the Electronic Whiteboard’s Writing Surface without Cluttered Toolboxes: Shifting the Focus Back to Content Delive

We present an interaction technique for classroom teaching, through our software for electronic whiteboards, which allows the writing surfaces of the boards to be used as if they were ordinary whiteboards. Toolboxes that provide, among other things, options for changing ink properties, editing commands, and accessing files have been ubiquitously tucked away in the background. These tools appear only (and whenever) they are in-demand, at the stroke of a recognised ink-gesture. Because of this, the entire surface of the electronic whiteboard is at the complete disposal of the instructors. The incorporation of our context-aware ink-gesture recognition technique into the software frees instructors from searching for correct menu items on the board’s perimeter. Based on the input ink-gesture command, it analyses the current contextual ink information on the board’s writing surface, gathers the most probable of menu items that the instructors may require at that particular juncture, and pops them up close to where the instructors are currently writing. This becomes an added advantage when these wall-mounted boards are cascaded next to each other, as the distance and the peripheral view-range between the instructors and the static menu items increases inside boards that are further away from the left-most screen in the series of the cascade. Consequently, the dynamic popup menus shift the attention of the instructors back towards the delivery of their lesson contents (at full screens), as compared to them moving about too much between the boards to affect system commands in front of a live audience.