eBeam Electronic Whiteboard review

Most of our time today was spent reviewing the eBeam interactive whiteboard tool. There are a few principals in our district who would like to use this instead of the SMARTboards which dominate the district.

The main reasons for using the eBeam is they are extremely portable and can be installed easily on any flat surface without cutting into the walls or removing white boards. There may be some schools that have asbestos issues which would make easy install important.

eBeam

Pros-

* Price
* Runs SMART Notebook and Web-tools well
* Retro-fittable
* Portability
* Scalability (cost not determined by the size of the board)

Cons-

* Smaller selection of gallery tools
* Batteries in pens

* (CL2032's @ $1 each)
* Increased waste

* Pen lose ($50.00 US) cripples the use of the software.
* Runs SMART notebook (Licensing issues?)

The feel of the eBeam was a little off. I am a big SMART user and this system didn't measure up.

Links:
http://www.prometheanworld.com/
http://smarttech.com/
http://www.e-beam.com/
http://www.mimio.com/ <http://smarttech.com/>