Eight creative uses of interactive projectors in the classroom

INTERACTIVE projectors, which support multi-touch finger gestures and interactive pens, have been increasingly popular among educators in recent years.

Many educators have found creative ways of using interactive projectors to support discovery-based learning. Here are some ideas on how you can tap on the capabilities of Epson’s interactive projectors to make the learning experience a whole lot more fun for students:

Pause and think

With an interactive projector, you can illustrate the growth cycle of plants, animals and human beings using video clips available on the Internet to help students learn better. For example, you can pause a video of a growing baby in her mother’s womb and label the different parts of the human body as they emerge. Similarly, you can pause video clips of speeches and let students draw thought bubbles to illustrate what the speaker’s audience might be thinking. With Epson’s interactive projectors, these annotations, along with the images, can be captured and printed for students at the end of the lesson.

Brainstorm for ideas

An interactive projector can also convert any surface into an interactive whiteboard without the need for a physical screen, letting students jot down their ideas during a brainstorming session. In a vocabulary class, for example, you can get students to organise themselves into groups, and list down words that begin with a certain letter of the alphabet. Or, they could come up with ideas on what Singapore could look like in the next 50 years. With Epson’s interactive projectors, these ideas can be captured as a PDF file and shared with students, or posted on a class website.

Mix and match

Learning is a lot more fun and engaging through interactive exercises such as matching games. This can range from getting pupils to link words with pictures of animals to matching famous quotes with their sources. This exercise can be prepared using a range of text and graphical tools available with Epson’s interactive projectors.

Explore the world’s geography

Google Earth lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3-D buildings, from galaxies in outer space to the canyons of the ocean. It’s a useful tool that teachers can use during geography lessons, where students can explore the world through 3-D imagery using touch gestures, and present their findings on a specific topic to the rest of the class from their own PCs. Epson’s interactive projectors can connect up to 50 smart devices and PCs, and at any one time, a teacher can assign up to four different students to deliver presentations on the screen.

Go on a heritage tour

Many places with historical and cultural value offer virtual tours online, which can be shown to students using interactive projectors. More of such virtual tours, such as those found in Google Maps, are increasingly interactive, keeping students engaged. In Google Maps Street View, for instance, students can explore panoramic images of places such as the Bukit Brown cemetery and the Tiong Bahru air raid shelter. With Epson’s interactive projectors, students can mark out features of a historical site before heading onsite. On their return to the classroom, they can annotate images of the site with notes and learning points.

Be a chemist

BBC Brit’s Biggest Bangs is an interactive YouTube video that lets students mix chemicals – often with explosive results – behind the safety of a computer screen. With Epson’s interactive projectors, groups of students can choose two chemicals they want to put together and observe the resulting reactions. This is a useful online resource that lends itself well to an interactive classroom setting.

Show and tell

Robotics is a great way to instil interest in science and technology. With an Epson interactive projector and a document camera, a teacher could easily demonstrate how to use tools to design robots, so that the whole class can easily see. After designing their robots, students can share their designs with their classmates. Epson’s multi-PC collaboration function could allow four groups to display their designs side-by-side. The rotate, resize and other interactive tools would be useful in highlighting each robot’s features while annotating design modifications.

Rub and reveal

Educators can raise the level of interactivity in the classroom by using rub-and-reveal techniques made possible by Epson’s interactive projectors. For example, you can use the text tool to type some text, then draw over the text using digital ink in the same background colour to hide it. The text can be revealed using the eraser tool to rub out the digital ink. This technique can be applied to a chart, diagram or illustration, which students can label before the correct answer is revealed to them. The good news is, you don’t even need to hook up a PC to enjoy these interactive features!

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